A place of personality

 This week I've started writing a completely new novel.  It's something I haven't done for about four years, as I've spent the lockdown period and some time before it rewriting existing manuscripts.  

A large part of the action of this new novel will take place on a very large space station.  The station has twenty levels, and I spent several hours yesterday working out what should be on each level.

There are some things which are obvious, like life support systems and power supplies which need to go into every compartment.  I figure there'll be thousands of people living on the station, so it's likely that the occasional dispute or fight or other unrest will break out occasionally.  So that led me to decide that there needed to be a security service on every level.

So already the shape of the station was starting to emerge, but I needed to discover much more about this place.  People would have to move around between the levels, so I invented a lift system that would take then to any area of the station.  And this was where the personality of the setting started to come out.  The lift system doesn't only go up and down, it goes horizontally and diagonally too, so that people can reach any location on the massive station within a reasonable time.

My main characters live on the station, so I started thinking about their accommodation.  I decided I'd create a whole accommodation level.  As well as sleeping quarters, it would have places to eat nearby and some recreational facilities.

One of the things you'd have to do there is constantly refresh the oxygen supply, and one of the best ways to do that is to plant trees.  So here was another opportunity to add personality to my setting.  The station is jointly funded by three different species; Humans, Yadra, and Sidor.  So I decided the parks would have trees from all three species' home worlds.  I also added blue and green grass to the Human green.

I then sent one of my main characters to eat at a cafe.  Its big attraction is that it's right by the outer hull of the station and you can look out onto the blackness of space through viewing windows.  So that was where my character ate breakfast.  I added the detail of checked tablecloths which reminded another character of a pavement cafe in Paris, Earth.

The details which define my setting are dictated partly by the station's function. and partly by the characters' experiences, and they're what give what could be a very bland large structure a true personality.