Everyone Comes To Marlowe's
My prior post went over a form of exploring other people's worlds; this one is about creating my own. I've had an ongoing literary world that I've been working on for years, of a slightly different modern setting. More specifically, I've been working on a short story set in this universe, with the title alluded to in the title.
The titular location, Marlowe's, is a (fictional) downtown bar in Orlando that is the centerpiece of the story; and the adventure follows William Chandler, a private eye. Well, sort of - he's a freelance insurance investigator whose cases usually involve lots of paperwork and going through files. But as the title suggests, the story is supposed to evoke the feeling of Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon, and film noir in general.
My usual process for creating stories is to sort of 'catalog in reverse' - create lists of the characters, the locations, and writing a general outline of the story itself. If I go and write straight through, I've found that I tend to heavily revise what I've written after I'm done to the point of almost complete disconnection from what I wrote originally.
The setting is back in the year 2000, but with a few subtle changes - most of which are 'window dressing', but some factor into the story itself. A few of the concepts:
Turkestan - A new nation has formed recently not only out of the former Central Asian Soviet republics, but also western China; it bills itself as the "Crossroads of the World", and elements of its culture have shown up in the rest of the world.
Prussia - During World War II, the region of East Prussia and the city of Konigsburg was freed by pulp action heroes instead of the Soviets, and the region became its own independent city-state post-war; a separate "Prussian" culture, distinct from Germany, developed.
Eddies - Nickname for the Department of Unusual Technology agents; with the outlawing of mad/weird/super-science, these agents are tasked with investigating any circumstances that might involve prohibited inventions or research.
The Worlds of Osgood - The third major theme park in Florida, alongside DisneyWorld and Universal Studios Orlando; the eccentric and wealthy Harvey Osgood originally opened his Worlds of Adventure in the early 1980s, and added the new Worlds of Tomorrow to coincide with the new millennium beginning.
UFO - The state of Florida went with a standardized university system, similar to California; instead of UCF, the technical school became the University of Florida - Orlando. Naturally, all the iconography related to the school revolves around aliens and space flight.
The Nixon Incident - Based on the real-life visit by Nixon to give the graduation speech at FTU during the Watergate Scandal, here we have a incident where Nixon tried to stage an attack on himself at the ceremony by a 'mad scientist' to divert attention from his scandals; instead, the scapegoat ended up actually being at the ceremony and in the chaos a number of students died. Nixon was quickly impeached and thrown out of office, but much like in RL, President Ford pardoned him. A memorial to the dead still exists on the campus grounds.
My pace on writing this is slow and erratic, one of the reasons that I'm doing this blog in the first place, to help jumpstart the writing process.
Next time, I'll discuss my other big project: namely, a computer game in the style of the old text adventure games from my youth.
The titular location, Marlowe's, is a (fictional) downtown bar in Orlando that is the centerpiece of the story; and the adventure follows William Chandler, a private eye. Well, sort of - he's a freelance insurance investigator whose cases usually involve lots of paperwork and going through files. But as the title suggests, the story is supposed to evoke the feeling of Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon, and film noir in general.
My usual process for creating stories is to sort of 'catalog in reverse' - create lists of the characters, the locations, and writing a general outline of the story itself. If I go and write straight through, I've found that I tend to heavily revise what I've written after I'm done to the point of almost complete disconnection from what I wrote originally.
The setting is back in the year 2000, but with a few subtle changes - most of which are 'window dressing', but some factor into the story itself. A few of the concepts:
Turkestan - A new nation has formed recently not only out of the former Central Asian Soviet republics, but also western China; it bills itself as the "Crossroads of the World", and elements of its culture have shown up in the rest of the world.
Prussia - During World War II, the region of East Prussia and the city of Konigsburg was freed by pulp action heroes instead of the Soviets, and the region became its own independent city-state post-war; a separate "Prussian" culture, distinct from Germany, developed.
Eddies - Nickname for the Department of Unusual Technology agents; with the outlawing of mad/weird/super-science, these agents are tasked with investigating any circumstances that might involve prohibited inventions or research.
The Worlds of Osgood - The third major theme park in Florida, alongside DisneyWorld and Universal Studios Orlando; the eccentric and wealthy Harvey Osgood originally opened his Worlds of Adventure in the early 1980s, and added the new Worlds of Tomorrow to coincide with the new millennium beginning.
UFO - The state of Florida went with a standardized university system, similar to California; instead of UCF, the technical school became the University of Florida - Orlando. Naturally, all the iconography related to the school revolves around aliens and space flight.
The Nixon Incident - Based on the real-life visit by Nixon to give the graduation speech at FTU during the Watergate Scandal, here we have a incident where Nixon tried to stage an attack on himself at the ceremony by a 'mad scientist' to divert attention from his scandals; instead, the scapegoat ended up actually being at the ceremony and in the chaos a number of students died. Nixon was quickly impeached and thrown out of office, but much like in RL, President Ford pardoned him. A memorial to the dead still exists on the campus grounds.
My pace on writing this is slow and erratic, one of the reasons that I'm doing this blog in the first place, to help jumpstart the writing process.
Next time, I'll discuss my other big project: namely, a computer game in the style of the old text adventure games from my youth.
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