Times Between
Apologies for the long delay in posting to the blog. I dream of the day when my “regular” job can be writing more things for the fine people who have tracked down Saavd. Between life, work and trying to split time amongst various writing projects, I have fallen behind on my musings for Saavd and for writing in general. I have, however, expanded my horizons with travel.
Every writer draws from their own experiences to a greater or lesser degree to create their characters and stories. Regardless of the style or “category” of writing, the assumption is that readers are going to be human-type people that will relate best to human motivations. One of the challenges to speculative fiction is to present believable situations with reasonable reactions on the part of the characters inside an environment that is outside the readers’ experience without becoming so alien that the reader cannot identify with the characters. The more rich the personal experience of the writer, the more engaging and interesting the stories that can be told. The daily environment that people must learn to live within exerts tremendous influence on their approach to other people, the world around them, and their interaction with anything, and anyone, from outside that environment. People that live in large urban areas such as London or New York have similar characteristics, regardless of their other cultural backgrounds, just as the people that live in more remote, less populated areas live similar lives regardless of the particular continent they live on. Living in the high mountains places its own demands on those who choose to live there, just as survival in the middle of several million people packed into a small space does. The broader and deeper the knowledge of differing lifestyles, current and historical, that a writer has to draw from, the more varied and vibrant stories they can tell. Every experience, every interaction, every exposure to something new or different are potential components for story-telling.
My own interests and the stories I wish to tell lie along the lines of suspense, speculative fiction and fantasy but, even though I have little interest in historical fiction, any world that encloses one of my stories must have its own fictional history that readers must be able to relate to. I think that the characters populating my stories must connect in some way to the reader, otherwise they will have little reason to keep reading. The more different characters I meet, the more different characters I can write.