Hey guys 'n' gals, I have been chewing-over an story nugget, but I don't know where to put this nugget. In other words, should my (fictional) town, Nautilus Point, be a coastal town, or more rural/woodland? I know that the name suggests a more coastal location, but it being out in the woods would sorta add to the odd/weird vibes...I think? :/ Considering the story is mystery/paranormal, I am worried that if I have it in a rural location I will be accused of ripping off Gravity Falls, a show that also envolves weirdness in a wooded town. What do you think i should do?
No one is going to think you're ripping off Gravity Falls (whatever that is) just because it has a similar setting. Just don't lift anything else from this show and you're good to go. I think you should give it a rural setting because that's clearly what you'd prefer.
Coastal and wooded areas are not mutually exclusive, so you can do both if you like. The coastal towns of Maine are solid woods all the way to the shoreline. It's a little freaky actually. The first few times I headed out there I kept wondering where the ocean was until BAM... the trees ended and the beach was right in front of me. Really all of New England was heavily wooded from coast to coast until they started clearing it for the more heavily populated areas. Not sure about the Pacific Coast, but Goonies looked pretty wooded right up to the shores. That's not exactly evidence, but the movie kicked ass.
It hasn't dated well and the little Chinese kid is even more annoying in this than he is as Shortround in Temple of Doom.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/WesternAnimation/GravityFalls I want lifting anything else from the show. So you think i should just go with the setting that I would prefer?
Yes. Doing what you prefer is always the best policy. Unless like me you want to torture yourself by writing from a POV you feel no connection to and don't fully understand, but that's another story.
Haha.. of course it hasn't. Not much from the 80s has, especially film. You kind of had to be there as a kid when it came out (an maybe you were, I don't know). We watched that movie until the VHS tape broke... literally.
Don't get me wrong. It's one of those films that fills me with that weird warm sense of nostalgia, but we get cynical, don't we? Well I do anyway.
Funny you should mention it. I'm about as cynical as they come, but I can't retroactively apply cynicism to points in my life when I wasn't cynical, if that makes any sense. I think that's what nostalgia is to a certain extent: symbols and events that take you back to a time or place when you weren't cynical yet.
That's a policy I can get behind I have lived in both rural and costal places, but I feel most costal regions are both too urbanized and populated to really fit the story's setting., which i picture as being somewhere in the Great Lakes area, maybe near lake Eerie.
My WIP is set in a fictitious (and weird) rural city on a northern coast. Mine is in a 2nd growth boreal forest on frigid unpredictable waters. The fisheries collapsed, mining is dead and lumbering, shipping and short-season tourism are all thats left to support a destitute population. I think the key to managing it is that you must remember that people love beaches and flock to them like seagulls. So if you want it to be truly rural, you have to make it inhospitable somehow. Then only a certain kind of folks will be willing to stay.
I'd imagined that the town's population has gradually shrank due to many people moving to the increasingly growing urban cities like Cleveland, Akron and Columbus. And Nautilus Point doesn't really have a lot going for it to attract a lot of newcomer's.
I know exactly what you mean. I have to say, though, I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Richard Donner's film making style. I love the Lethal Weapon franchise, but this style he has where he clearly encourages the actors to talk over each other's lines infuriates me at times. I'm sure he does it because he feels it's more naturalistic, but in a film it's quite handy if one can hear what the actors are saying.
Shadow over Innsmouth by Lovecraft was inspired by Newburyport, Massachusetts. It's interesting to see the actual town and then read the novella.
For what it's worth, when I hear "rural" I think cornfields, not wooded. I realize that they can both be rural, I just wanted to note that the word is fairly ambiguous.
I grew up a block from Lake Huron in a small, northern town on the Great Lakes, and went to university in Marquette, on the shore of Lake Superior, so I can attest to the fact that the shoreline of both of those lakes can certainly be wooded. The beaches will be much narrower than ocean beaches, and of course don't have discernible tides either. Some shorelines are sandy and some are rocky. However, I can't imagine a Great Lakes town named 'Nautilus Point' any more than I could imagine a Great Lakes cove named "Shark Bay." Nautilus and sharks are ocean natives.
...I never said it was right by any of the lakes, just in that general vicinity. I'm not an idiot, I know where Nautiluses live.
I'm looking at a Great Lake as I type, and the shore is wooded right to the water. (except for some man-made clearings). The Great Lakes are huge and have wiggly coast-lines... lots of room for a mysterious small town. But I would want the "Nautilus" name explained somehow... just like I'd want the "Point" explained if you're not on the water! So maybe the geography of the point resembles a nautilus? In which case, go, go, Team Great Lakes!
I'm curious about why the name of your fictional town seems chosen and "locked in" prior to your choosing (and writing) the novel's setting. I've found that such things change in the course of writing drafts. Seems like your comfort with the setting would far exceed the importance of a name of a fictional town.
I will come up with an explanation then. Because that's just how I work? I'm sorry that I don't fit into an "expected" model with how I work. :/
No need to be sorry--my question/comment wasn't an attack. Work how you want. If you post questions for comments, expect comments. We're all writers here--no judgements about writing methods!!!
