i was very impressed with all the things people picked up on in the photo.
Mine was inspired (if that's the right word) by the apparently exaggerated curvature of the horizon. After setting aside the idea of a very dense world (which would provide a smaller world with a similar gravity** to Earth's), that left a number of possibilities:
- a fantasy world (where the laws of nature don't work in the same way as in real life);
- a dream*** (or vision);
- a virtual world;
- something being experienced by a non-corporeal narrator.
I rejected (1) because I like my fantasy worlds to have rules, and I wanted to limit the fantasy effects (so that the pertinent ones became more obvious), and (2) for the same reason, plus I wanted a world where logic ruled (albeit with tweaks). Possibility (3) had everything needed, because the creator of a "realistic" virtual world would, or should, be striving to avoid making too many things strange. Option (4) was a bit too wide-ranging (in the same way as (1) and (2)), but had its merits (mainly to do with what the narrator might be).
In the end, I went with (3)
and (4) -- adding an emphasis on the world's size by showing that it was shrinking -- and leaving the reader to decide what was really going on.
(Oh, and thanks to Daniel Defoe for the footprints on the beach, which allowed me to play with the idea that someone's footprints might not always be the same size as their feet****.)
** - The musings about gravity persisted, and entered the story when the narrator said:
...it looks and feels like Earth – even down to the gravity....
*** - As with gravity, "dreaming" was kept in the story, as the final twist (or non-twist, if the reader prefers).
**** - I intended the footprints to be part of the "virtual" world -- a footprint is merely the displacement of some (small) parts of the world -- and so evidence that it is shrinking (and that the narrator is not).
