STORY STARTER
Write a descriptive narrative about the world your novel is set in.
Step away from your main plot and consider how the world shapes your story. If your story takes place somewhere familiar (like the world today), focus on which elements of it will play into your story.
Small Town Life
This small, once-thriving town with it’s old dilapidated and sometimes dangerous buildings, the store fronts that once held magical and beautiful things of trading. The homes that are still inhabited and the houses that no longer hold love and warmth, is over one hundred years old and most of it’s residents are products of the bygone era of tobacco markets, river boats, and manufacturing. Yes we had manufacturing. Although most of the town’s current residents don’t remember or were not around in its hey day, they speak to the travelers who may visit one of the dwindling businesses that line the state route that follows the river and made the town what it once was, they tell the practiced history over and over again. To anyone who may want to hear and to those who may not. They are proud of their hometown and want visitors. They need visitors.
Each corner turned is a lesson in making do with what you have. The once glorious home that was paid for by the ancestor you never knew who left this house to their child who in turn left it to theirs and moving forward thru time until there is no recollection of the faces or the physical beings of those who once lived there. Now the house is close to disrepair and it seems the only things holding the weathered structure together are hopes and dreams. But the people who live there, they take care of their home, they keep the grass mowed they place decorations on the porch every major holiday and thru the course of the seasons that dilapidated house may receive a new coat of paint, possibly new shutters, new roof, and even a new porch. But it still remains a house that is over a hundred years old and because of love it has remained. It may have been the recipient of neglect at some point in it’s life but that old home, and I call it a home because of inhabitants have given their love to it. I look at this home with the lights in the windows and the laughter coming from it’s depths and although it has no lips to curve, no mouth to speak, this house smiles at me.