Novel in a Bottle

As-Yet Untitled Ghost Novel #1 mostly occurs in one locale. About 80% of the scenes take place in that spot. We briefly considered making that the only setting we would use, but chose not to impose that restriction on ourselves.

It would be very hard to make it work. Not that “it’s hard” is always a good reason not to do things, but this would be a giant amount of work. Even if all we needed to do was eliminate 20% of the scenes (or figure out how to move them to the right setting) that would take a lot of effort. But it would be worse than that, because we would have to change things around in other scenes too in order to keep everything lined up. This book was not planned with “only one setting” in mind, and doesn’t really lend itself to the treatment.

There are certain types of story that lend themselves to certain types of constraints. For instance, mysteries often work very well in first-person narration. The satisfaction comes from feeling the solution come together — all the clues must be assembled into one picture, and it’s the picture seen by the narrator. But there’s not much epic fantasy that’s told in the first person. Having just one viewpoint available greatly limits the bandwidth for world building.

When only one locale is available, you get a bottle episode. Some stories don’t have to stray beyond one place. Strangers thrown together at a remote motel is a standard trope. But many stories do want some room to run. There’s a reason why “strangers coming and going yell exposition at each other across the lobby” isn’t such a well-known setup.

A writing partner is someone you don’t mind sharing one location with.