Creating A Novel's Setting In Minecraft
"Is this really home? There's no place like it, but I still can't familiarize."
Creating a novel is not as easy as everyone tells me it is. And what I mean is that I purposely don't take writing lightly. I also hold everyone to unnaturally high expectations and proceed to not comment too harshly because I do care about the aspirations to become a writer. I've wanted to be one since I was ten, so I understand it. Even so, it's taken me a lot of money to feel like I'm capable of giving proper advice. And I don't like dishing it out unless people want it.
But this is a blog, so I'm just going to dish it anyway; writing a story is not supposed to be easy. Did you need me to tell you? Look at how many people seek advice about writing. Look at how many people are raking money off that. No one knows how to do it without guidance, and that mirrors exactly what writing is: an art form. And, like every art form, you need to be taught how to do it properly. Truthfully, it can be simple and still be good (children's books, for example). A casual read nowadays is as much as someone can process. Finally, monetarily-speaking, writing something entertaining, witty, inspiring, helpful... those are the best ways to make a book. If you want to write to make money, that's what you do. It's the essence of screenwriting. It's the soul of cheap romance novels... you know... the ones with very well-toned men on their covers... like my mom used to read...
Great writing has thought in every corner. Each word carries itself. You fret over and over again about composition. Pacing. Word choice... Where do I expand? Where do I cut? How much should the characters speak? Your readers sense these considerations. They really do. That's why the biggest consideration of all is your attention to the settings. World building. Narnia. Westeros. Middle Earth. Discworld. Writers who developed an entire universe in their minds just to get it into your own did it for a reason, and the reader reads to find that reason. I follow loyally in such footsteps. Only my short stories have small worlds.
All that said, and if not introduced enough, I wanted to create one of the settings for my novel. Lee's home (the Kerin's home), specifically, is important to him so it's exponentially important to me. Since I can't draw architecture, I used my love of building in Minecraft to do it instead, and I wanted to document what I did here. Hopefully the process is interesting. If not, just check out the pictures. I'm satisfied either way.
Overall Layout
When I first tried to imagine this house, I already knew that it needed a realistic floor plan. Structural integrity is essential; any wise architect would slap you like Batman until you agreed. For a solid house, you build rooms above one another so that the walls of the first floor support the floors and walls of the second floor. In your basement, you have cement walls like pillars for the floors above. Simple enough.
However, once I started translating this very, very crude drawing into Minecraft, things started getting out of hand very fast.
Exterior
The first gigantic hurdle I had to cross was being able to accommodate the garage since it wasn't drawn in my original floor plan. I had no relative size for it. This meant that the whole second floor of the house was off scale, and ended up getting stretched toward the east side.
This was actually a good thing, though. It made the garage the most interesting part of the house's south face. The second floor overhangs the entrance to the garage which not only allowed me to put in exterior lights, but a car port as well. Realistically, you could set up a grill there and be absolutely set for hamburgers despite adverse weather conditions (even Michigan snowstorms). This kind of feature on a house would just scream luxury, and oddly enough, the Kerin's are particularly well-off. So this worked out perfectly.
The porch and balcony above it were fun to work with. I used them for all the greenery to help contrast with the wood type I used in the build. I personally love open air porches. They break the building out of a block shape quite naturally. They're a good place to read, and, back when people spent time outside, they were also a good place to sit and keep an eye on the neighbors across the street (thank goodness I didn't live in such a neighborhood growing up).
Surely enough, the garage completely re-designed the east side of the building, altering both the bathroom and the bedroom above it. Mostly, windows had to be removed or re-positioned and it messed with interior design. On the plus side, though, there was a lot of room to make sure that they were placed well. It also allowed me to put in a back porch area (which was not on the original design either).
Interior
Probably the most difficult thing about the interior was making all the walls in the house double thick. Without two blocks between rooms, you can't 'paint' the walls. The second most difficult thing is to realize that the ceiling is too low. I unfortunately learned that one the hard way early on in the build.
The living room still needs some love, even though there is a point in the novel where Lee tells Amber (the other main character) out how ugly the couch is. I'm not too fond of Minecraft's acadia wood color, so that's what I went with to represent that distaste.
I wish there was more clutter in the garage. This family does own two vehicles, after all.
I love the carpeting in the hallway. Putting in some plants really helped it as well, but it's too bad I didn't choose a different angle (this one is taken at the top of the stairs) because there's a nice arrangement of paintings along the wall. As for the main character's bedroom (which he shares with the family's son), the part of the room shot from is supposed to have a drum set, but... well... I had no idea how to go about that, so it was a bare spot.
Strangely enough (or perhaps not), the main character's bedroom is actually supposed to be the master bedroom due to this private bathroom attached to it. I actually have to renovate the house a little more because of this since this is the only bathroom with a shower. Clumsy mistake on my part.
Lee loves these two rooms the most. The mother of the family (Sarah) has a dual doctorate in Etymology and History, but she can't use them anymore due to her declining health. Every book in her library is technical, and Lee doesn't read any other kinds of books willingly.
The master bedroom is directly connected to the balcony and the attic stairs. There's not much to it except that it's spacious and it's where Sarah spends most of her time sleeping.
There's a few extra rooms (like the entire attic, the half-bath/laundry attached to the kitchen, and the basement), but they're as bare as the garage, so they seemed a bit unnecessary to showcase. I also didn't cover all the angles I wanted to, but... I figured it would be exhausting to show all of it - a bit like trying to sell a house.
And that's all I have for this post. Too much? Too little? Engaging? Regardless of all that, I enjoyed documenting and sharing this with all of you, so I hope it was interesting.
Cheers, everyone!
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