Slow down and think

 I’m continuing with my re-write of my old novel set on an orbital shipyard this week.  The original manuscript is nearly thirty years old now, and belongs to a much earlier period of my writing life.

I still love the ideas I explored there, and I still love the setting too.  Darius shipyard is a major character in its own right, but in the original manuscript I didn’t really bring it to life.

Creating a complete secondary world like this can be extremely challenging.  Because the shipyard is in space, I have to think carefully about what systems would be needed to keep its inhabitants alive. In my planning file I have some lists which I created at the time of the original manuscript.  They provide a useful framework for working out what should be crammed into that structure, but they didn’t go far enough.

One of my weaknesses has always been under-describing my settings.  I’m a ‘focus on the action and the dialogue’ kind of writer.  setting is usually squeezed in around the action, and only created in as much detail as I need for that story. 

But Darius shipyard is different.  I'm sending my characters all over the yard, so I need to know how they get from one of the three rings to another,  What means of transport do they use for their journeys?  It would be one of miles rather than yards, so walking isn’t practical most of the time.  Who controls the traffic around the yard?  It occurred to me that if I have two rings full of berths with ships being built then there must be thousands of people out there building those ships.

This was the point at which I had to slow down and think.  Where would those people live?  How would they travel to work?  They’d need air to breathe.  How is the atmosphere maintained and refreshed?  And a huge shipyard must use an enormous amount of power.  How is it generated?  Hint: it involves the re-use of a readily available waste product).  Also, people need to talk to each other, and they need computing systems. Those too would need to be provided and monitored. These are just some of the things I came full with alongside offices, shops, and leisure facilities.  We’re talking about designing a city in the sky with millions of people living there.

To create the details I had to slow down.  I had to follow each journey around the yard through my characters’ eyes,. At every step they took I had to think about what surrounded them, and what they could see.

I had to regularly ask myself “What can they see now?”. I don’t find visualising things easy, and I almost have to force myself to do it.  But sitting down and doing that work is paying off handsomely as I’m creating a richly-detailed setting which actually works.