A lot of the bestseller-writers like SK spend a lot of attention to the detail of their settings. The point I think is that you get a realistic world (modern America in King's case), which make the fantastic elements more fantastic in contrast, because they happen in such a real and recognisable world.
But would horror in a fantastic setting be less effective? For example is a vampire or monster in modern America, in today's world, scarier than one in, say, Mid-World or some other fantasy land?
I get the feeling that it doesn't matter so much as long as you have characters the reader can care about and put them in peril and know how to describe this peril well.
What I'm wondering is: what do you win by adding so much detail when it's set in the real world? King always mentions all the streets, roads, and highways for example, although to a degree he 'bends' the real world (of Maine for example) to the needs of his writing, it's not exactly the same in reality as he writes it- so basically even though it seems totally realistic and existing it isn't quite.
Lee Child in the interview with King said that even though he uses New York in his novels, it's sort of his own version of it.
Does a book to be succesful for audiences nowadays really need to be so precise in terms of a setting that actually seems very close to real places (even though it often isn't really completely so)? When you look at all the bestseller writers it seems so, because all of them (at least the ones I know) write that way.
Or could an audience also be captured by a book that doesn't spend so much time describing the settings?
And, what do you win by this way of writing? Does it make the book a lot better, scarier, more suspenseful etc.?
But would horror in a fantastic setting be less effective? For example is a vampire or monster in modern America, in today's world, scarier than one in, say, Mid-World or some other fantasy land?
I get the feeling that it doesn't matter so much as long as you have characters the reader can care about and put them in peril and know how to describe this peril well.
What I'm wondering is: what do you win by adding so much detail when it's set in the real world? King always mentions all the streets, roads, and highways for example, although to a degree he 'bends' the real world (of Maine for example) to the needs of his writing, it's not exactly the same in reality as he writes it- so basically even though it seems totally realistic and existing it isn't quite.
Lee Child in the interview with King said that even though he uses New York in his novels, it's sort of his own version of it.
Does a book to be succesful for audiences nowadays really need to be so precise in terms of a setting that actually seems very close to real places (even though it often isn't really completely so)? When you look at all the bestseller writers it seems so, because all of them (at least the ones I know) write that way.
Or could an audience also be captured by a book that doesn't spend so much time describing the settings?
And, what do you win by this way of writing? Does it make the book a lot better, scarier, more suspenseful etc.?