Starting earlier than “almost bedtime” today. Not that I’m sure it’s going to help–it’s nearing ninety here and I’m pretty sleepy because of it.
Onward. Day Three.
Read over your list from Day 1 and then turn to a blank piece of paper. Close your eyes and think about what kind of feeling you like to have when you write or read. Write down four words that fit into that feeling: two adjectives, a verb, and a noun. Now return to the page with your list of climates and emotions. Do any of them match up? If they do, you have your climate. If not, try to find closest-match words.
If you spend 10 solid minutes thinking about this and still can’t decide, pick two climates that express moods you like. You can make up your mind later, and you can even build your world with both climates containing equally probable sites for your story.
Drat. More thinking required. What’s up with that?
Okay, closed-eyes typing…I want…from setting, when I read I want new, and exotic. I want to be led into a place and shown it. I want to feel like my guide knows the place but maybe not as well as he/she might think. I want mystery and I want magic. I want to escape into some other reality. (Oh, look, I closed my eyes and forgot the instructions!)
Umm…Mystery. Exotic. Shown. Reality.
Yeah, that’s not much help. I have mystery and exotic with karst landscape and that’s not where I want to take this. Nor to the hidden wonders of an Everglades-like swamp. Though swamps are great fun and highly variable, I want to do more than that.
So here’s me, going off the beaten path. (Did you place bets on how long that would take?) I’m going to make my chosen setting suit what I want to write.
Here in the desert southwest, there’s lots of advice on what to wear. Some of it reminds me of Lawrence of Arabia–light layers that move, letting sweat evaporate and trapping cool air near your body and protecting you from the sun. And just like the current “gangsta” look of baggy clothing supposedly begun so prospective murderers could hide their weapons more easily, desert clothing can hide a lot. Like identity. Or the give-away that someone is lying. Things stolen and whisked out of sight…
I’m thinking too of the Sphinx when first found by the Europeans. 
So much more there, that they didn’t find until they started digging…and how about this? A town in Namibia eaten by the desert.
Oh yeah. Anything could be buried under that sand–and that’s what Flame is looking for, the rumored anything. This treasure will make her rich for all her considerable life, she’s sure of it–all she has to do is find it (and not lose it like the last one.)
I am liking this!