Writer's Weekly Question

I'm going to try doing this writing meme I found on Karen's blog, which mentioned the meme. The meme is on It's Creative, But is it Art? Usually, memes like this lose my interest when they move into areas I can't answer easily because they don't fit how I write. I lasted 2 weeks on a weekly writing meme over on LiveJournal. So, we'll see how this goes.

The question of the week:

"In creating the world your characters live, work, and play in, what sorts of things have you had to consider? How do you go about creating a world that allows your characters to do what they need to do, and yet make the world accessible to your readers?"

For much of my writing, I use reality, so there isn't much to do. It's NYC! I just need to create the characters. If I use another setting, I research it a bit.

For my science fiction novel-in-revision, the setting is Mars, so I had to read up on the planet, create my cities, then do the characters. Whether or not it's accessible is up to the readers, I guess.