Are you ready to continue with your drawing? You are? Or do you think I'm a little on the nutty side? You'll be able to decide that later!
Now that you have your four major corners, how about adding to it by attaching minor neighborhoods? In my White House Dollhouse series, I had the neighborhood where the store is located but the character lived in a different section of the city. Since the setting was where I grew up, it was set in my mind and only needed a few tweaks such as the drugstore now being a coffee shop. That was easy but for those of you with settings in locations where you not so attached or knowledgeable of, you may need a drawing to have it fixed in your mind.
From many sources, I've heard never to write about your neighborhood. In my historical fiction, Body on the Tracks, I made the mistake of not drawing the tracks between the start and end points. I had the sun rising and setting at all different times and locations where it shouldn't. Needless to say, since my setting was a train, I had an awful lot of settings to draw because of the cars, plus the train's location along the route. It did border on a nightmare during the writing time, however, in the end, it made for a better, tighter read.
Now you see why the setting must come first, I hope!
Your assignment is to decide characters for the various stores, etc, in your setting block. While deciding upon characters, here's a question--what is in the stores? Ladies wear? A beauty shop? The character always needs to know where they are at.
Or do they?
Happy writing!
Barb
