Quote:
Originally Posted by sportourer1
As it is set in 1798 it must frustrate them that the central character has top travel at 7 miles an hour on a sailing boat.
|
It doesn't matter if the central character is traveling 7 miles an hour on a sailing boat or 7 parsecs an hour on a superluminal spacecraft. What matters is how long that character is being presented to the reader, and what he's doing during that time. Do we learn that he wants to kill a rival right away, or do we learn every thought he has about his entire life? The sailboat fellow could be thinking about killing his rival on the other side of the bay in the next couple of pages, while the starship fellow could be thinking about his entire existence as he travels across the galaxy for most of the book.
It comes down to knowing your audience. If your audience wants immediate action, then you give them immediate action, whether it's in 1798 or 2798. If your audience wants a deep and comprehensive introduction to the character, you give them that introduction, again no matter what the setting of the story. If you don't want to write what that audience wants to read, you need to be writing for someone else, because your market isn't going to change for you; it's going to ignore you.
You can write a stone-age thriller, or a classic Russian novel set a thousand years in the future. The setting serves the story; it doesn't control it.