Creating a village

Maybe . . . something like an early New England village like Concord, or Williamsburg, or the typical English village? Or are you looking for a realistic fantasy village?

SherryTex said:

Well,since the orriginal story is French and about soldiers and the stress of the relationship between the towns people and the soldiers, we had two strains of thought 1) American Soldiers in Iraq
2) Soldiers who are con men acting as soldiers, in a fantasy land village (like in Ella Enchanted).
I admit, I'm in favor of the second, if only because it would be easier and there would not be the additional loaded political quality.

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This is a tough one!

My first flash was a small ville in Georgia during the American Civil War.

I agree that Iraq is too charged with political overtones.

It is a classic situation, soldiers bunked up in some small town or village, been repeated a million times in literally thousands of places round the world over the past several hundred years.

This tells me you have wide choice, despite the story originally being French. It is a universal story. You could set in in Vietnam, Korea, the American West, the Civil War, the Revolutionary War, almost any conflict you could name; if you wanted modernity you could set it in Bosnia or Kosovo and use UN troops as your soldiers, or in the Congo, where war has raged for a decade, or in southern Mexico (Chiapes) where regular Mexican army forces have encamped to thwart local Indian uprisings ("Zapatistas").

And then there's your idea of a fantasy type situation.

Wide choice it seems to me.

Hey even today on Okinawa and in Korea locals are constantly upset by the presence of US troops and there have been several cases in recent times of soldiers misbehaving and causing major issues to erupt.

The pallete is huge, all ya gotta do is choose.

SherryTex said:

Which is why I thought creating the characters --who would supply the carrots, the potatoes, beans, what have you, might help sculpt the village itself --sort of an organic process of growing the village.

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Every village contains families that grow the food, to one extent or another; villages are usually surrounded by tilled land or rice paddies or farm fields, and every villager has a garden plot, big or small. This has been true and remains true today in most of the world.

SherryTex said:

My problem with inserting the story into real life is two-fold, not having enough knowledge of life in those settings, and the political overtones that will overlay any story set in the "real world." It is my thought that the reaction of the villagers would indicate the distrust and resistance to the outsider soldiers.

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Research!

You can quickly learn about life in any setting you choose. I wrote something recently that included a wedding scene in Ukraine, a place I have never been and know little about. In ten minutes on the web I found a complete and detailed description of a Ukrainian wedding ceremony, text of the words used, descriptions of the attire, comments on the traditions, every last detail.

People will react to the presence of soldiers in their midst, especilly if they are bunked up and there to stay awhile; they'll worry about their daughters, about their prized possessions, perhaps even about their very lives. Distrust and resistence are inherent in that relationship. Strangers are always looked upon curiously, nervously, and hesitantly by locals. Trust has to be earned and this doesn't usually happen overnight, unless one of the soldiers saves a drowning boy the day after their arrival, especially if his rescue is at some sacrifice to his own self.

Keep plugging!