Thursday, July 12, 2012

CHI-CA-GO!

The setting of a story of any kind can either enrich it or drain it of all life and color. Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn contains some great character development and interaction, but the setting is so vague I pictured everything occurring in a large dark room. In stark contrast, Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian puts so, so many paragraphs into describing the scenery and historical context of said scenery that it reads like non-fiction. When you write a story, you and the characters you've created have to commit to the context of the scenery in which you've anchored. And so, after choosing Chicago as the setting for After, Katy and I have had to get better acquainted with a city we've never visited.

Katy originally chose Chicago because it's an iconic city that is close to Canada; relevant because in our setting Canada has essentially become a no-man's land. I was in love with idea because Chicago is home to The Second City and WBEZ, which have provided me with some of my favorite writers/comics as well as This American Life. Since then, its been exciting to look up cultural landmarks and imagine them gutted, re-purposed, or simply burnt to the ground! There was a Cataclysm after all...

Attempting to make the setting more than just a background is the key concept; or at the very least the job of the writer. I already know Katy can handle to scene and make it look how it needs to, but I'd be slothy sloth if I kept the city bereft of any character or context. Some of the best-written shows/movies/comics have achieved this by making the setting a dynamic character in and of itself: The Wire used a statically dysfunctional Baltimore; Firefly the under-doggedly rustic Serenity; and Scott Pilgrim utilizes the unabashedly Canadian Toronto. Ideally, I hope to do the same with our newly apocalyptic Chicago. I'm researching the hell out of the city any time the setting takes a dramatic shift and hoping the context is informed but not hammered in orc-ishly. Oh, and we have been plotting a trip to Chicago in what we hope is the near future; there is just that whole lack of money/vacation time business that needs to be worked out

Below is a video of Tom Waits' song "Chicago" from his newest Album, Bad as Me. The footage is taken from old Maxwell Street in Chicago, and it has such a hauntingly hopeful yet ominous quality. I listen to this song constantly while working on After. In my moments of severe delusion I imagine it being played in the movie trailer for the film adaptation of our yet-to-be-released webcomic. God damn it, that is very embarrassing to see written down. I've got to stop drinking that sweet, sweet delusion juice given to me by that wizard behind the Olive Garden...



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