Sigh, I'm in a mood. I'm at a point in my story where my protag is in a hover flying over a city with wonders she's never seen before. I need creativity my genetics have not blessed me with. Arrrrgh!
I've been doing research recently, which has led me to a series of 'bird's eye view' maps of certain American cities in the 19th Century. They are drawings, not photographs. While they won't contain odd structures like what you're probably looking for, if you were to take a look at them they might give you some ideas that a photograph wouldn't. Is your scene a fantasy? A future sci-fi thing? A steampunk thing? If you're interested, I'll give you a couple of links, if I can find them. Actually, just google "bird's eye view maps images" and you'll get lots of them... modern, ancient as well as 19th century...
Two words: Space Nuns! .... maybe her dog gives birth to a cat. .... maybe her long-lost sister is the mayor of the city .... maybe her long-lost brother is the mayor of the city .... maybe her long-lost brother gives birth to a cat .... maybe a Space Nun gave birth to a cat ... there are many variations!
Maybe ook at some photographs of fantasy art - whenever I'm in a slump I go to Ebay or art sites and start looking up pictures of stuff.
You are so right. I am using imagery. It's my saving grace. There are some incredible images out there in Net land. I hope you all don't mind I was just having an aarrgh moment. Oh, and the ideas are all very helpful. Thanks guys.
I wonder if there are any fantasy art interpretations of famous cities? If you character is above the action, that could be neat to sort of reference a city but a unique description of it.
These are the one's I've been perusing currently: Futuristic cities Slums Industrial cities Well crap, the Google search links all fail, no idea why. Just search for the titles I noted and click on "images". You should get to the images that open on my tabs. Hmm, it appears Google image search is temporarily mucked up. I'll post an update later. In the meantime the Pinterest links work fine. Future cities, Pinterest More future cities, Pinterest Even more future cities, Pinterest SciFi cities, Pinterest There really are endless ideas, I was just in a rut as to what I wanted. But I have good news to report, I figured out what I needed for the scene. BTW, my favorite one is a real place in Singapore: Gardens by the Bay Hmm, that one works in Google images. The others still don't even though I can find them directly. Weird.
I like to "fantasy-fy" or "sci-fi-fy" (technical terms there), currently existing structures in our world today. For example, I have in one of my novels a building made entirely out of living trees that have twisted to form the shape of the building - that shape being, in my mind, very similar to the Taj Mahal.
@those images of futuristic cities: Yeah, we wish. More likely, it's going to be a down-to-earth version of the the pods in the matrix. I'm envisioning a global grid of identical cells, each with a bed stand of nutra pills and the internet. Maybe underground subways, a few massive factories, and a slew of islands for the rich.
I've debated this in my head for my novel. The grimy street level, crowded with riff raff is overdone currently but I do have clear class divides in my book. And what to do about suburbs? I was surprised at the lack of individual houses around Amsterdam the first time I went to Europe. Much of the world has slums and huge apartment complexes while free standing houses and smaller apartment units dominate the Americas. Setting can give one a lot to think about. Anyway, I'm trying to create my city to say things about the population and not just what I think people will build n the future. It you're writing a Brave New World or Fahrenheit 451 type story then ticky-tacky little boxes makes sense.
They're referred to as "hovers" but they aren't hovercraft as you'd see them on Earth. I've compromised on the 'flying cars will never be invented' problem with some adaptations. Some vehicles fly, and if you are rich you can afford the fuel. Some fly but the middle class only fly them where there are no roads, otherwise they set down on mag-lev tracks and stick to the ground. And some vehicles are stuck on wheels, the roads often jammed. I'll be doing more tweaking before I'm done on the wings, jet engines, and/or helicopter type blades.
First off, cheers to you for the hovercraft. There cannot be too many of those. Second, I did a quick google search and ran across this picture of a futuristic city and thought it looked really neat: http://www.shirleyyang.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Mega-City-Of-Future1.jpg A process that has always helped me in designing towns is approaching from a pragmatic view. What sort of things are needed in the city? Industry, housing, commerce, tranportation? How does the local geography affect the appearance of the city? What about local culture and religion. These questions and others like them have always helped me in city design.
How funny, when I look in Google images and use the quotes, I get the three avatars from this thread. Without the quotes, though, I get a whole new slew of image types (diagrams and maps rather than artistic visions) and thats actually very useful.
Install Google Earth and roam free, perhaps you'll have some idea afterwards. http://www.google.com/earth/index.html
When I need creativity I listen to music. Music without lyrics. Like scores from movies and video games. Background music and such. Calm your mind and feel out scenes. Get overly detailed with it in your mind. What does the MC face feel like? Is the sun up? Does the length of the MC's hair affect anything? Is the MC sweating anywhere? What's the temperature? Ask a bunch of questions about your scenes and the overall mood of the story.
Google street view; which I abuse. So, so much. There's only so much atmosphere you can get out of a bird eye view, but street view is what people see and where it's all at. If you want to hop around randomly and play a fun game while you're at it, try Geoguesser. It's a free browser game where you have to guess where you're at based on where google street view puts you. Sometimes you're in the country and sometimes you're in a city, but no matter where you are, you have to look at things differently. It's no longer 'well, I'm in Spain', it's 'this is... Spain? France? Brazil?' Having to focus on details like that really made me look at environments differently and observe parts of the environment I would have never considered before. Forcing yourself into random locations where you have no idea where you are is both confusing and beyond exhilarating. You see the world differently, and if that doesn't promote creativity, I don't know what will. I highly recommend it.
A weird suggestion that always works for me: read something NOT related to what you're writing. It's strange, I'll be reading something from a completely different genre or even non-fiction and I'll get creative ideas. Maybe it's just that you find different kinds of ideas in different genres or because the creative mind works best when you're not stressing it for ideas (maybe that's why inspiration usually strikes in the shower). Good luck!
