Thursday, April 28, 2016

Popular settings which have an impossible number of stories



However much we may love these settings, trying to collect several stories creates a bit of a reader's dilemma. Wanting to buy into all of them would be impossible in the mutually exclusive sense. If we get emotionally invested in any one of them, it would mean there's no way the others could have taken place. It may have to come down to choosing our favourite and sticking with it.


1) Biblical and Historical Novels
I'm talking about the type which adopt actual, historical figures from the Bible or later times as their main characters. If Nehemiah was staying with this particular family while he was organising the building of Jerusalem's wall, then there's no way he could have simultaneously stayed with these other people from a different novel. It's simply because he can't have been two places at once. If Mary of Bethany had a crush on a particular fictional man, then the attachment she made to another fellow in this other novel, when she was supposedly the same age, couldn't have happened.


The next setting is very far away and intriguing, and I've noticed it's had a lot of popularity in recent years.

2) The surface of Mars
It's a barren place in reality, but apparently a very fertile one for the imagination. One author may have it populated with the traditional little green men we see in funny cartoons. Yet another may imagine settlers from Earth venturing to create colonies there. A third author may choose to have aggressive Martians deciding to attack Earth (think The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells). And the fourth author may have just one hapless hero stranded on the Mars we know from photos and science books (think The Martian by Andy Weir). They can't all be true!

The third setting becomes impossible because of the sheer volume of literary characters who supposedly paid for passage. They couldn't have all fit.

3) The sinking of the Titanic
It was certainly a huge ship. Nobody who has watched the Hollywood blockbuster with its built to scale model could deny that. Just the same, the number of characters from different sources who supposedly set sail could surely fill a dozen Titanics. There are scores of main characters who either perish or get rescued. There may be even more side characters whose authors decide that having them board the Titanic is a convenient way to kill them off. All these doomed passengers are not merely in novels but movies, comics and soap operas set in the turn of the century. Who would have believed in 1912 that this sad setting would take off so many years later?

With the Titanic, maybe we can choose several of our favourite stories to be true simultaneously. It was big enough that the main characters of different novels would've been strangers to the others on board. I guess it's only when enough of them choose historical, named figures such as the captain and staff, that it gets mutually exclusive. Or maybe if there are too many fictional characters supposedly holding down the same positions simultaneously.

Anyway, I think books with well-loved settings are all great fun to read, and just because some novels cancel others out, it doesn't take away from the enjoyment of each one at the time. Maybe you wouldn't want to be reading two of them at the same time, but I don't do that with novels anyway. Why do you think some settings just fire off plot ideas for so many different authors? And while we're at it, can you think of any other settings which might fit this list?  

11 comments:

  1. That's an interesting thought, Paula. Another space one that came to mind is the moon. I've just finished reading The Lunar Chronicles and they have a whole civilisation living on the moon under special bio-domes. I'm sure there must be lots of other moon books that paint a completely different picture. If it's a totally different world like the type created in sci-fi and fantasy, it probably wouldn't worry me if every book had a different take on it, because we can still enjoy the imagination of the author. It's probably trickier in historical and contemporary books. Maybe you could write a crossover book where all of those characters from the Titanic novels end up in a lifeboat together?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Nola,
      Wow, there's scope for lots of good ideas with the moon. How about a historical factional novel set on Apollo 11 with Neil Armstrong and co?
      Also, a story set aboard a Titanic lifeboat might really take off well (as opposed to floating along well).

      Delete
  2. I usually read novels with the same or similar settings as independent from each other. It's only if they're written by the same author that I'm worried by those kinds of contradictions.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Lynne,
      Yes, that scenario really bothers me too. Especially if the stories which contradict each other happen to be in the same series.

      Delete
  3. Novels with SEALs or other special forces operatives. Are there really that many?

    ReplyDelete
  4. And Lynne's comment reminds me of another: Dukes and Duchesses in Regency, Victorian and Edwardian England. There simply weren't that many. And they certainly weren't as single and eligible and Christian as fiction makes them out to be.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Iola,
      Yes, the SEALS and Regency aristocracy definitely belong in the list.
      I love those Christian regency romances, and you're right. Britain simply wouldn't have had enough space for all those single ravishing beauties and heartthrob bachelors.

      Delete
  5. What an intriguing post, Paula. As for popular settings - how about WW2 books & movies, or iconic places like Paris or New York, or Amish or Pairie fiction, or Arthur and Camelot, or Australia's first fleet or the Gold Rushes. And Iola's suggestion of Regency, Victorian and Edwardian England or a medieval England-esque milieu for a lot of fantasy or immediately after WW3 or WW4 for many dystopias:)

    But isn't that the beauty of fiction. While it is nice to have a greater variety of settings - we can enjoy different authors imaginative visions of the past, future and present. To quote from Alice in Wonderland:

    "Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things."
    "I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Jenny, yes to all of those! Sir Lancelot couldn't have possibly done all the exploits attributed to him in Camelot stories. And all the WW3 dystopian novels definitely paint different pictures, all scary. Here's to variety and originality when it comes to creative writing. I guess it's a bit like showing a photo of a setting to a class of students and for a story from each of them.
      That Queen of Hearts did have some good things to say.

      Delete
  6. Well Barbara Cartland was the queen of inventing Dukes and Earles, and there's been a load of other peers of the realm invented, and lands and castles to boot. I don't suppose they all existed, and certainly not all at once. The British Isles are not really that large, after all.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Meredith,
      Barbara Cartland was so prolific she probably filled the British Isles with too many dukes and duchesses all by herself :)

      Delete