Something I'm wondering about is how a writer makes a world feel "lived-in". How do we make it seem like this is a realm where real people live?
This is a little abstract, so let me use a concrete example:
During a scene, a character reads a newspaper.
Sure, there's a newspaper. But what's it called? What are the headlines? This is what I mean when I say "texture". Human societies have culture. Shouldn't our stories, as well?
Another example, from my story. One of the main characters is a Mareep. Her name is Zazo. It doesn't mean anything that I know of (probably does in some other language, but I've never even bothered to google it). But, within the world of the story, Zazo is the name of the main character of a series of young adult novels, and the Mareep's namesake.
To use a pop culture example, in the show Futurama, the characters regularly watch at least four programs: Hypnotoad, All My Circuits, The Scary Door, and the nightly news. Except for the second one, none of them really have much relevance to the plot of any given episode. So some less enlightened writer might say, well, they're just there for the sake of a joke. Only in part, actually. First and foremost, they establish the world. The Hypnotoad is strange, alien and unknowable, and yet inexplicably compelling. It is emblematic of the strange future in which Fry finds himself.
Of course All My Circuits shows how robots are just a normal part of this society now, replacing humans as the players on a soap opera.
The Scary Door is, yeah, a joke on The Twilight Zone, but I like to think of it as the vague remembering of the actual Twilight Zone by people thousands of years later.
and the nightly news features a vapid blonde woman and an angry alien that repeatedly threatens, ineffectually, to kill things/conquer Earth/etc. Aliens, too, in Futurama's future, have become largely domestic, a normal part of everyday life on Earth.
So, what do you do to add texture to your fictional worlds?
This is a little abstract, so let me use a concrete example:
During a scene, a character reads a newspaper.
Sure, there's a newspaper. But what's it called? What are the headlines? This is what I mean when I say "texture". Human societies have culture. Shouldn't our stories, as well?
Another example, from my story. One of the main characters is a Mareep. Her name is Zazo. It doesn't mean anything that I know of (probably does in some other language, but I've never even bothered to google it). But, within the world of the story, Zazo is the name of the main character of a series of young adult novels, and the Mareep's namesake.
To use a pop culture example, in the show Futurama, the characters regularly watch at least four programs: Hypnotoad, All My Circuits, The Scary Door, and the nightly news. Except for the second one, none of them really have much relevance to the plot of any given episode. So some less enlightened writer might say, well, they're just there for the sake of a joke. Only in part, actually. First and foremost, they establish the world. The Hypnotoad is strange, alien and unknowable, and yet inexplicably compelling. It is emblematic of the strange future in which Fry finds himself.
Of course All My Circuits shows how robots are just a normal part of this society now, replacing humans as the players on a soap opera.
The Scary Door is, yeah, a joke on The Twilight Zone, but I like to think of it as the vague remembering of the actual Twilight Zone by people thousands of years later.
and the nightly news features a vapid blonde woman and an angry alien that repeatedly threatens, ineffectually, to kill things/conquer Earth/etc. Aliens, too, in Futurama's future, have become largely domestic, a normal part of everyday life on Earth.
So, what do you do to add texture to your fictional worlds?
