Young Writers Society

Hey guys!

So, the piece I'm struggling on at the moment is a scene where my MC walks through a room full of representatives from all different countries. What I'd ideally (and rather ambitiously) like to do is turn this into a metaphorical walk across the planet. My aim is to link each person to a part of their culture or landscape using an oh-so-clever assortment of adjectives and descriptions that will turn the room into some sort of social collage.

The issue I have is that I'm gonna have a mega load of names and places to drop in and in this case it's the descriptions of the places that are more important than the places themselves.

Thoughts?

Hmm I think I need more info on the context and actual scene and setting. My recommendation is to avoid proper nouns like the plague and stick to only descriptive terms. Also, less is more in these sort of situations, and I think if you pick a handful (say, three) very *different* representatives, that will give the feel of what you want without needing to describe EVERY person who's present.

That's a really good point. The worldbuilder in me is saying 'Do It Like Tolkien!' and the storyteller is saying 'but-then-this-scene-will-be-a-novel-in-itseeeelf.'

The scene is a gathering of world leaders (or their representatives) who have been summoned for an annual event that's kind of like a culture fair, involving sports, fighting tournaments and arts displays. The main purpose is that each year they renew and sign the Global Peace Treaty.

The world it's based in is similar to earth in its diversity, some countries are made from dense cities in which research facilities are on the brink of mixing genetics and bionics, and in other areas people are still using slings and spears to chase wildlife across savannas in order to avoid starvation. These different societies are vaguely aware of each other, but are too far apart to really engage.

In this scene the king of the poorest country has arrived at the pre-welcoming ceremony of the annual event and is, essentially, scoping out what the rest of the world has been up to whilst he's been purposefully ignorant of it. It's the first scene that really introduces the existence of the rest of the world beyond his country.

Something to consider might be how to keep tension and conflict in the scene. Things he's worried about or jealous of or whatever when he sees the others, or maybe people with whom there's been some tension in the past, stuff like that? So it's less of a "here's all this worldbuilding stuff" and more "hmm I wonder which of these guys will be a problem." Might give the scene some inertia, too.

@Megrim you are genius. Thankyou! ^__^

I agree with Megrim. If you build some personal relationship between your MC and the other political leaders, then he can do all of the introductions for you, rather than having to lay down a bunch of boring descriptions of people and places and such. It could be as simple as, "And that hair, so good, but I couldn't get over the pig nose."