Settings & worlds · Tip 44 of 82 · 4 min read
Make Everyday Places Exciting
Your school, a supermarket or the bus stop can be thrilling settings if you look at them in a new way.
You don't need to travel to a jungle or a distant planet for an adventure. Some of the best stories happen in places your reader visits every day. The trick is learning to see ordinary places with fresh eyes.
Change the time
A school at nine in the morning is noisy and busy. The same school at midnight, with the corridors dark and the radiators ticking, is a completely different place. Try setting your story when nobody else is around.
The supermarket lights flickered off, one aisle at a time, until only the freezers glowed. Kit crouched behind a stack of cereal boxes and listened. Somewhere near the bakery, something was rustling the bread bags.
Change the size
Imagine your character shrinks to the size of a pea. Suddenly the kitchen floor is a huge desert, a dropped spoon is a bridge, and the cat is a terrifying monster. Shrinking or growing your character turns any room into an adventure.
Notice what's usually ignored
Every place has corners nobody looks at. The locked cupboard in the school hall. The drain cover on your street. The lost property box that's been there for years. Ask yourself: what could be hiding there?
Okay 😐
Josh waited at the bus stop. The bus was late. He was bored.
Wow! 🤩
Josh had waited at the same bus stop every day for two years, and he had never noticed the tiny brass handle on the back of the timetable sign. Until today, when it turned on its own.