Capturing Places
June 24, 2017
Captured Places
Have you ever walked through a place you loved so much you drew scale drawings of it and built models? I love architecture. I plan each building and area – in most of my stories, even down to the plants and what color flowers are in season!
Once, I walked through a house with my parents. This house was three levels with huge seat windows in every upstairs bedroom – the architecture of its large, open, bright rooms inspired the castle rooms in The Princess and the Swans.
The drab gray stone buildings in the K’vell training complex in Web of Deception came straight from a series of compact, functional, barracks-style buildings on an old property we explored once.
The Ann, Mary, and Susan Mysteries take place in my second-favorite childhood home. The inside of that house is exactly as it is in real life – including the wrap-around second-floor deck and the loft-lookout bedroom on the third floor. I added the aviaries, fields, and barn the way I wanted them (the only real-life outdoor structures in the stories are the dilapidated pool and the little next-door house) but even most of the bushes the girls hide in are on the real-life property.
In the Adventures of Long Tail, the chicken yard is exactly as we had it in the house Kimberly and Lucas were born in. (But the time stamped in those books is just before Jaquline was born.) Even the hen house is set up exactly as we had ours with the 4-level biddie brooder and incubator on top.
For me, it helps to visually see places in my worlds. Lego bricks are great for scale buildings! I even make maps and blueprints for most worlds and buildings so I never mess up my directions as I bounce from one storyland to another. Continuity is very important to me (my perfectionist nature, I guess, but seriously… if Long Tail’s hen house was different each time, or if Ethan went down a different corridor each time to get to the Observation Deck, wouldn’t that be odd?)
Writing also helps me capture the best of places I remember (or dream up). If I love a house, shed, barn, park, or yard layout, it will be in a book someday!
Thanks for reading!
Type at you next time…
~Nancy Tart
