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First of all, I'd like to say that I am as novice a writer as they come. My english is bad, and I've never ever written a fictional story beforehand. However, it's now been years since my mind first started randomly creating a story in my head, and I'd really like to try writing it down.
Since all of the elements of that story are nothing more than a jumbled mess of thoughts yet, I thought that I should best start by simply jotting down a basic timeline, character profile, and world setting.
However: I'm already struggling to do something as simple as that. This time not (only) because I've never written before, but mainly because of an inconsistency in my story.
It mainly is about the timeperiod the story is set in. Thing is: By only dreaming, and not really trying to put together a working story, I just took elements from all kinds of periods, and packed them together. In a real story, this would make no sense at all, especially given the type of objects.
Let me give more detail: My story is set on a continent of two states, who have been alternating between periods of war and "cold war", since, like, forever. However, due to other aspects of the story (=personal life of the main character), I don't want the technologies of war to be up to date, at all. Instead, I'd really like it to be a war like a few 100 years back: Preferably with technologies like in the 1600'. Now, while this may all seem well, here comes the problem: I'd like the majority of the rest of the world to be evolved close to today's standards, and some other things even past that. In my mind, I had imagined great doctors with insanely advanced technology at their disposal, being able to go as far as to identify most diseases quickly, and even partly decipher one's unconscious thoughts (I will undoubtedly have to scrap the latter and replace it by some other way to let other characters know about the main characters past/fears, because it's just way too much bullshitery otherwise... No idea yet though). At least in major cities. I also wanted citizens to already live like in today's world, with smartphones, passenger airplanes, and so on.
As you can see, this makes absolutely no sense. I can't just make the warfare really old fashioned while keeping normal lives up to today's standards.
I did think about some ways of avoiding to have to change this, for example by implementing some kind of treaty banning modern arms because of too many casualties in previous wars, but that just seems, and actually is, as if I couldnt have come up with anything better. Anything else I come up with is even worse.
That's not even everything yet, though. While I want people in the cities to live our lives, I also want some small villages on the outskirts to live like at least 100 years ago: Providing for themselves, no fancy technologies, etc etc (those villages will already be about a dozen years older once the plot comes to the cities, but still.)
As you can see, I have some major problems trying to sort out the period my story is set in. There's just so mich contradictory stuff. And I'm at my wits end.
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I agree that this should be in Worldbuilders SE, but the answer to your problem is probably in changing the focus on what drives scientifical discoveries.
In our world, many technologies were developed for military reasons, but imagine people were focused on medicine.
In parts of Italy, neighbouring towns would show-off their wealth by building these huge towers (for their time) and getting their hands on the best artists to decorate churches and cathedrals. In your world, perhaps having the best doctors is what makes civilisation evolve. Perhaps they do have all the necessary technology to develop killer weapons but they never thought of it because it's developing medicine and surgery techniques that gets you power and money.
Focusing on medicine might mean develop electricity and also machines to quickly transport people around. Creating a healthy lifestyle, without slaving with domestic chores, could be seen as a preventive for back problems. This would mean that 'machines that make life easy' would become an industry far more powerful than today's gun industry.
On the other hand, you'd have to make sure there are geographical and political reasons that play down the need for a war. Typically, war fills someone's pockets; if it doesn't benefit anyone, most governments would shy away from it.
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