Today, I worked on a few simple sketches of locations that will host my initial scenes. I want to get an idea of the feel of the place and the general organization, so that I can describe it from my character’s perspective when I start writing, but not go into too much detail. Of course, I won’t know what details are necessary until I start writing, but for now, I just need to get enough down so that I can understand my characters’ relationships to the place and also describe how they would move about in scenes that take place there.
It was fun to write those descriptions, as compared to the more tedious experience I had trying to write complete descriptions of the capital city as a whole earlier.
While my next setting to describe is another major city where the midpoint action takes place, I’m hoping to take today’s experience and keep the description relevant and fun to write as I go.
I still have that major city to describe, as well as a few locations within it, then at least two more minor settings where a specific chokepoint battle and the final confrontation of this story take place. I think those are all I need in terms of settings. Then I’ll be able to sketch some general maps, write out the story timeline, and – I think – get into the actual writing process!