Location — on Earth, that is

[ScintillaMyntan]

When you set a story on Earth, do you use locations that really exist? How specific: down to the city, down to the street?

How much do you need to know a place in order to write about it? I could see people saying things like "You can't accurately write about New York (or some other place) if you haven't been there." Does a 'sense of place' feature in your work?

Most of my stories are just set in generic American cities or towns. I might suggest the feel or demographics of the place by throwing in some details, like what brands of cars you'd see there or whether there are kids playing. If I need a name, I'll make one up. It's easy enough with some place-name prefixes and suffixes. A personal favorite, for instance, is that "Aber-" is a Celtic word for the mouth of a river, so stick "Aber-" on a real river name and you get a town that suggests its geographical location without being a real place. So if you ever see a contest entry with something stupid like Abercolorado, that's me, and I'm not going to do that.

That works as long as I don't run into something like my on-hold novel project, which has the protagonist traveling around meeting geographically distant people, so I'd need somewhat more specificity; I probably couldn't get by with "And then he went to a place 200 miles away." That was actually a problem; I get worried about being called out for not depicting a place accurately. Maybe I'd offend people by depicting the place too badly, or on the other hand ignoring some of its actual problems, for example if someone thought it was a big omission on my part to have a group informally in power in a city without them having run into the city's rampant organized crime or something.

I sort of do want to one day write something set in a place I actually know and have been to. There's something cool about using familiar landmarks, having little details that very local people could be in on.

[RAVENEYE]

Yes, I am terribly worried about the issue of offending people actually living in the place I'm writing about or getting details skewed or flat-out wrong. So I'd say, you can't do enough research. Even once you start actually writing the story, it can't hurt to keep digging into details a little deeper using diverse sources. You never know what helpful tidbit of info you'd run across that will add a touch of place to a scene.

I'm currently writing about 1870s Egypt. My general research brought me across two pieces of writing by women traveling in Egypt on both sides of the year my story takes place: one a published travelogue, the other a collection of informal letters. Both English women had a drastically different take on the Egyptian people than English men writing about the same places. So I will try to capture those differing attitudes in my male and female characters. Those contemporary writings, combined with vintage tourist photos from the time, all me to glean details that I can color in my own character's experience and (if all goes well) capture that sense of place.

The photos are neat b/c I can compare what the ruins and tombs looked like a century ago, to their clean, reconstructed appearance now.

But I also have to know about the political situation of the time. How were foreigners received/perceived? How were women perceived and treated? What were the imperialist attitudes of Europeans, and the resulting attitude of Egyptian citizens? All this is background information, but it will color the story and make the characters' dialog and behavior more true to the times.

Since I'm writing about a place that was so well documented, and is so beloved to travelers the world over, I feel a HUGE responsibility to get the details right. I'm bound to get something wrong, and someone is bound to pounce me for it, but it won't be b/c I was careless with my research or half-ass trying.

That said, I'm adding a large fictional house to a place where no such thing existed, and this will be the primary setting for the main storyline. Given how well documented this particular area is, it will be obvious to those-in-the-know that the location was my own imagining, but to most readers it shouldn't matter at all.

And, no, I don't think you have to actually visit a place to get it right. I'm sure it helps, and probably makes the job easier, but there are ways around it. I hope farida  responds to this aspect of the question, b/c she's the perfect person to go into that side of things. 

[farida]

Oh, don't worry. I've never been to California or to the year 1959, and yet THIS HAPPENED.

I say don't worry, but do worry a bit. You HAVE to do the research. Fortunately, there's lots of resources out there. Old maps, travel descriptions, weather forecasts (current and historical), photos, ect. Understanding the culture of the time and place is also vitally important. If possible, interview people who live there or lived through these times.

You can pull it off, if you put in the work. I don't think that not having been to a place should ever stop you from writing about it - after all, fiction is all about escapism.

That said, the proof will be in the pudding. If you're serious about publication, your publisher will probably get a sensitivity reader who is familiar with your chosen culture to check it's ok. For self-publishing authors, perhaps seek out other authors from that region and ask them to read part of your story for accuracy.

In either case, it's important to be aware of what you know and what you don't know, and then go find out, rather than assume. And as always, if in doubt, leave it out.

[Alatariel]

For my current WIP, it starts off on Earth before moving to my fictional world. For the first few chapters my characters are in Berkeley, a place I went to college and spent a lot of time bumming around. I never lived there, but I grew up in the Bay Area and know the climate really well. And even though I didn't live in Berkeley, I did spend ALL my time there for almost two years for the theater degree. I may not have slept there, but I spent all my waking hours there because that's what theater life demands. Especially when you're doing two shows concurrently plus classes and lab work (our lab work was doing tech for another show, so I was involved in three shows at once during my last semester). It was exhausting but I know all the good eateries, study spots, shops, cafes, and other weird quirks of the city. Later, after college, I did a few shows at the Berkeley Children's Theater, so I got to be in a different part of town and experience even more of the atmosphere and unique qualities of the city. And lemme tell you, it is a VERY unique city. I love it.

Since my main character is a college student at UC Berkeley, I get to use a few of my old haunts as part of the setting and real street names. I understand what the library feels like (freezing all the time) and how to sneak food in and that they require student ID to even get into the building. Lots of small details that make me feel confident writing in that setting.

I don't write many stories in the "real world" and if I do they are short and non-specific. But maybe one day I'll write something longer that takes place on Earth. I think I'd write about locations I know, but guess we'll see! I'd be SO intimidated to write a story like RAVENEYE because the historical aspect plus a unfamiliar setting would probably send me into spirals of anxiety. I'm impressed to say the least.

[RAVENEYE]

I just remembered another story I wrote! It fits so well into this discussion. Back in the last couple of years Old LF was around, I think, is when I wrote it. I remember getting crits on it. Anyway! The story was a flash piece that involved a woman's internal journey over the loss of a baby while she's traveling on one of those speed trains across Europe.

I NEVER would've written a story in such a setting if I hadn't gotten to travel in such a train a few years before. The train took the exact route I did, from Stuttgart to Paris, pausing for a few minutes on the French border at Strasbourg. At the time of writing it, I remembered so well what the city skyline looked like, and the river beneath the bridge we waited on, so it was easy to translate that into the story. The only difference was that the story took place at night, so I got to imagine what the same scenery would've looked like after dark.

The story finally sold to flash freeze fiction.

So every experience is usable. Throw away nothing as meaningless or mundane. It could be important to your fiction. 

[ScienceGirl]

My favorite thing with setting is to take a tiny dot on the map and turn it into a lively city. I live in Kentucky, and we have tons of "dots on the map" to choose from. I also sometimes take names of roads and make them whole towns. Like there's a little spot called Dreyfus a bit off I-75's beaten path and I've got an entire series dedicated to it. A community college, a big high school, several churches, baseball teams. LOL it's really fun to get creative naming all those things. You can literally call them anything.

But when I do write about real places, I always go there on Google Maps. AND... Email their librarian! You can get a ton of info from them about the feel of the place.

One of my favorite real places I wrote about was LaFollette, TN. I'd totally move there one day. There's this little restaurant I found online called Katie's Carryout and Catering. It had the coolest comments and this big table where everyone seemed to sit together and share their meals. So, I called them up and asked about it. Wrote them into the story and had the character order from the cook, who they called Duck. THEN, the most fun. After the book was published, I drove to LaFollette and ate at the restaurant and handed the owner a copy of the book. I met several of the locals. It was awesome!

[RAVENEYE]

Apr 22, 2021 16:53:01 GMT -6 ScienceGirl said:

My favorite thing with setting is to take a tiny dot on the map and turn it into a lively city. I live in Kentucky, and we have tons of "dots on the map" to choose from. I also sometimes take names of roads and make them whole towns. Like there's a little spot called Dreyfus a bit off I-75's beaten path and I've got an entire series dedicated to it. A community college, a big high school, several churches, baseball teams. LOL it's really fun to get creative naming all those things. You can literally call them anything.

But when I do write about real places, I always go there on Google Maps. AND... Email their librarian! You can get a ton of info from them about the feel of the place.

One of my favorite real places I wrote about was LaFollette, TN. I'd totally move there one day. There's this little restaurant I found online called Katie's Carryout and Catering. It had the coolest comments and this big table where everyone seemed to sit together and share their meals. So, I called them up and asked about it. Wrote them into the story and had the character order from the cook, who they called Duck. THEN, the most fun. After the book was published, I drove to LaFollette and ate at the restaurant and handed the owner a copy of the book. I met several of the locals. It was awesome!

Emailing the librarian is something I never considered! Of course, that makes all the sense in the world. Practical tip, that. And to be able to hand your book to the people that inspired some of it?! Dream come true. Truly lovely.

I once set a magic realism story in a fictional small town I called Saint Claire and based it on the town where I graduated High School. There is no such place, and since I never mentioned factual things like which state it's in, what major interstates are nearby, the town "became" any and every small country town from the Midwest on south to the Gulf. 

It was so much fun diving back through childhood memories and capturing them in the story.