Middle Grade Settings: An Introduction Having photos in front of you can help you write about your settings I’m going to make a confession. Settings are not something I often spend time planning. Perhaps my stories are the poorer for it, but the settings come as I’m writing or editing. The Glass Room, in Taking Wing, is not something I planned before I started writing. Personally, I’m a very visual writer, seeing my characters as though they are a video in my head, and I write what I see. As such, the setting just happens! There are benefits and drawbacks to this. The main benefit is that the writing process is more interesting. Not everything is set, and my story can still give me surprises. The drawback is that, similar to AI, I cannot know that I’m not stealing settings from films and books I’ve seen/read previously. I certainly don’t mean to plagiarise but the concern is a real one! With that in mind, I have started to at least have a vague idea of my settings before I start t...
A couple of weeks ago, I shared my book review for Simon Elliott's book Alexander the Great versus Julius Caesar. Since then, as I mentioned in the review, I have completed the first draft of a short story set in 46BC-45BC which, now needs some serious editing before it can go out there... But it will be appearing later this year! It was about Caesar and he featured as a character, although he's not the main character.
So, having spent so much time writing about him and his time period, it's only fair I redress the balance and today look at Alexander the Great...
I feel like I know a lot more about him than I did when I started watching this song. He's a character from history who speaks to us all in our youth, because he is the epitome of the youthful adventurer. We all imagine we can do immeasurable things, although hopefully not as brutally as Alexander did them!
His story, though, was not one of rags to riches, but riches to glory. He took a great nation across the world to become a legendary people. But his interest in his home nation seems to have dwindled as he took on the world, a fact which led to several of his native Macedonians feeling aggrieved enough to confront him on this repeatedly. I think, in his eyes the Macedonians were Macedonia, and through them he maintained his link with home even as he travelled hundreds of miles away. The spirit of his nation was in the souls of the people.
From the point of view of historical fiction, we all have these characters. My sister is writing a book set in the aftermath of the Battle of Hydaspes River which I'm really looking forward to reading! But we don't have to be writing in fourth century BC to have Alexander the Great in our stories. That youthful yearning to prove yourself was written into Cat in Day's Dying Glory, the young commander desperate to prove his worth to himself was written into Robert in The Year We Lived. In Alexander's legacy it's clear that these things did happen, which means our characters are entirely justifiable.
All in all, if you're writing a youthful hero you couldn't do better than to have a quick look at this man's life. His story is timeless and he has continued to influence scores of generations over the years, his life passing from fact into legend. Perfect writing inspiration!
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