writing about a place you've never been to?

Discussion in 'Setting Development' started by Tesoro, Feb 19, 2012.

  1. Cosmic Latte

    Cosmic Latte New Member

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    I think Shadowwalker's got it right. What about Memoirs of a Geisha? From what I read, the author lived in NYC and, while he researched Japan and its customs, he never went there. And of course, he could not have gone to the pre-WWII Japan he wrote about. Although what most people seem to remember about him was his ability to write from the point of view of a female protagonist, his work is also celebrated because he effectively captured what life was like toward the end of an era in Japan.
     
  2. Tesoro

    Tesoro Contributor Contributor

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    In my case, the setting doesn't have that much importance, other than being the right place for both characters regarding their professions and being a place where they would actually meet, and that is important since it's a romance novel. ;) I give a litte detail from time to time, but there won't be pages of purple prose about it. it's a big city and as much as that can be a fascinating place it doesn't have much importance for the actual story. It would just add a little more flavour, but the focus is on the romance, not on the setting, if that is ok. :)
     
  3. hippocampus

    hippocampus Active Member

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    I agree. I'm trained in forensics, but I don't let the fact that the folks on CSI can get a fingerprint match in 30 seconds bother me too much. It's just a continuation of suspended disbelief.
     
  4. shadowwalker

    shadowwalker Contributor Contributor

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    Or how they can so easily get images off reflections! My suspension of disbelief dies there... :rolleyes:
     
  5. Jowettc

    Jowettc New Member

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    Having a very rounded knowledge of the subject and / or place is the key, i think - as many people seem to be agreeing. Knowledge is not simply, googled information. I dispute that this makes writing boring. Everyone writes to that which they find fascinating and of which they therefore have knowledge.

    Agatha Crhistie was a nurse and a pharmacist and gained a lot of her knowledge about the methods of death in that regard. She was also fantastic at reading people which her books are largely about. The settings where places she had been to or lived in (or parodies thereof) - Her second husband was an archaelogist and she spent time in Egypt with him - Death on the Nile was inspired by her time there.

    Aldous Huxley was an english student, drug user and spent a time working at an advanced chemical laboratory which he credits as a major experience in his writing for Brave New World.

    Issac Asimov was a professor of biochemistry...need i say more.

    Michael Crichton who succesfully wrote ER and The Andromeda Strain, amongst other things, was a medical student.
    Before anyone says he wrote Jurrasic park - did he make dinosaurs...No clearly not but then they can be farbicated from pieces of knowledge - no-one can prove they did or did not behave a particular way - theories abound but facts on things long gone are hard to verify, or challenge.

    The richer the experience, the richer the pool of knowledge to draw upon, the richer the work.
     
  6. shadowwalker

    shadowwalker Contributor Contributor

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    I don't think anyone would dispute that. However, that doesn't mean one should only write about places (or people or subjects) which one has personal experience with. How much research and what kind depends on how much importance these things have to the story - the greater the importance, the greater the research. If that means one must travel to the location - because the location if of tremendous importance - then one should travel there. If, however, it is the general setting and no intricate details are needed, there is absolutely no reason one should have to travel there to include it. At whatever point between those two instances the importance lies, so should the level of research be dictated.
     
  7. Chad J Sanderson

    Chad J Sanderson New Member

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    It's insane to believe you have to go to a place to write about it accurately. But if that place is real, the only way to create an accurate representation is to research. Let me repeat that for importance.

    Research. Research. Research.

    Research is one of the most important things any writer of any genre can do to give their work a sense of accuracy. Read books about the area, look at maps, google the plants and animals, find pictures of architecture, watch videos, or even find a contact from the area to fact check for you. Research can certainly be enough to create a realistic foreign setting, and don't let anyone tell you differently.
     
  8. NeedMoreRage

    NeedMoreRage New Member

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    It depends on the story you are writing. If setting is key, and therefor requires a ton of details, then it would be best if you visited the place. There are far too many details about a location that no amount of research over the Internet and in a library can ever tell you. Anybody who actually lives in the location would probably be able to see things that you either left out or just got wrong, and that can impact the validity of your story.

    My work around for this, because I've lived in a very dull place my whole life, is to make a place up if setting is very important and requires intense amounts of details. I am currently working on an Italian-American Mafia crime book and my first thought was to make the book take place in New York City. I live very close to the city and I've visited it countless times, but I don't actually live there and I don't know much about all of the boroughs and neighborhoods. I eventually decided to create a fictional city modeled around what I knew about New York City, instead.

    I can understand not wanting to do that, but if you have to be very specific about the setting and you've never been there, it's going to take a lot of research and that still might not be enough.
     
  9. shadowwalker

    shadowwalker Contributor Contributor

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    One thing to remember too - how many people reading your book are going to be down-home-natives to the place you're writing about? Out of 100000 readers - or even 10000 readers - how many would know that you can't get a black cab in Canterbury? Heck, how many people will know what a black cab is (other than a cab that happens to be black)? So you give a few locals a chuckle - or outrage a few sticklers. The majority of readers won't know the difference, and probably couldn't care less. Do your research based on the importance of the thing you're researching.
     
  10. funkybassmannick

    funkybassmannick New Member

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    Ideally, yes you should visit every place you want to write about in fiction. Realistically, it's okay that you haven't. Just do your research.

    Also consider your audience. If you write about a character that lives in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, do a bunch of research but still get things wrong, who is going to notice? People who live in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Are you writing this for the people of Oshkosh, Wisconsin?

    Medical shows might get facts wrong, but that only offends doctors. Historians might read historical fiction and be offended by subtle anachronisms. Ideally you would have made a work that appeals to them because they are so relevant, but realistically it's okay if it doesn't. Like Shadow said, they are a small percentage of your audience, and you aren't writing for everyone.
     
  11. KinkyCousin

    KinkyCousin New Member

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    I tend to set most of my writing around London as a precaution. I once set part of a short story in southern France (in a town where I stayed for two months) and I am considering setting a shorter story in Copenhagen, I've been living here for almost a year now.

    My problem is sometimes I have characters who are foreign to my main setting and they come from a country I have never been to. I don't have to give many physical descriptions of their hometown but I still worry about any short mentions to it sounding incorrect. Research is the best you can do, I don't want to be restricted to European characters only.
     
  12. UrbanBanshee

    UrbanBanshee Member

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    I personally think the biggest problem a writer who writes about a place they have never been runs into is when they only off offhandedly mention a thing or two too mark it is in that place, but other then that the descriptions feel fake. You have to know (research) at least a little about the atmosphere of a place. If someone writes about a city I lived in and makes it seem like it is a cute quaint place then I'll laugh my butt off. Things like horrible traffic, the type of smell a place has, all can add or take away from the credibility. It's why I use my personal experiences, but make up my own city.
     
  13. Tesoro

    Tesoro Contributor Contributor

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    wow, it's been great to follow this discussion. :) so many interesting points.
     
  14. jazzabel

    jazzabel Agent Provocateur Contributor

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    I think all this is a matter of integrity as a writer. How important is it to you to come up with the best work you are capable of?

    A few people made points about how medical shows getting stuff wrong offends only doctors (although they'd also offend the nurses, technicians and every patient and a family member who was in a similar situation, so that's potentially quite a lot of people). Same goes for every other highly specialised profession. You don't have to get it right at all, and it is true that most people will be none the wiser, but in my opinion, competent facts always make for better books.

    It doesn't matter to the reader that the facts are wrong, but if the facts are right, the reader can 1. learn something, 2. feel the genuiness which further contributes to them engaging in your story.

    Same with places (which are usually easier to get right than specialised topics) - even though research alone might be enough for the story you are writing, the closer it is to the reality, the better the story will be because it will feel less generic and more "real". Whether you feel like you need to visit that place in order to achieve that, or not, is entirely your judgement to make.
     
  15. shadowwalker

    shadowwalker Contributor Contributor

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    I don't think traveling to a place has anything to do with integrity as a writer or whether or not it will be the best work one is capable of. We're not writing nonfiction and anyone who accepts anything in a novel as totally factual is nuts. I certainly wouldn't consider myself knowing how to perform CPR because I'd read a description of it in a novel.

    Authors get things wrong. I could travel to any given city and roam the streets for what - a month? Six months? A year? - and still not understand all the nuances the way someone who'd lived there all their life would. Give readers the requisite flavor of a place - not the whole menu - and that's all they'll need.
     
  16. madhoca

    madhoca Contributor Contributor

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    Yes, and sometimes the setting is about both the people and the setting. The setting is part and parcel of the novel and can't be taken out of it--like another character, in fact, e.g. some writings of Hemingway = Cuba, and Jean Rhys = the Caribbean, etc. I cannot imagine writing convincingly about I place I had never seen, or a character from a place I don't know well, UNLESS the point was that they were a shadowy character no one could understand.

    The point about the black cab is that, for those in the know, it just illustrates that you have never been to the place, so if you are seeking credibility as a literary writer it would let you down badly--it wouldn't be difficult for critics to understand your information was all second-hand and it would make your other observations on the setting suspect. However, if you were writing a run of the mill or yarn spinning book it would be less important. Again, even potboiler authors do their research--if you don't think so, you are in a dreamland.

    And it is not true that Arthur Golden didn't visit the locations for Memoirs of Geisha--he did, and he worked in Tokyo for a time. He still got sued, of course, for misrepresenting many important facts about the life of a geisha...
     
  17. jazzabel

    jazzabel Agent Provocateur Contributor

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    SW, I feel like the only way to demonstrate that we are obviously talking about two different things, is to quote myself :rolleyes:

    I said:
     
    1 person likes this.
  18. funkybassmannick

    funkybassmannick New Member

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    This is from another thread, but it pertains here too:

    If you get a few things wrong but the reader still thinks you know what you're talking about: Success.
     
  19. shadowwalker

    shadowwalker Contributor Contributor

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    Not sure how the one quote justifies the other. You implied - whether you intended to or not - that not visiting a place impinged on the integrity of the writer, and that one couldn't write their best without visiting that place. Merely visiting a place doesn't necessarily mean one can gather all its nuances and idioms etc. In fact, it could actually render the writing more artificial - the 'tourist' POV rather than the resident's.
     
  20. art

    art Contributor Contributor

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    Very little to do with integrity and rather more to do with intention (and temperament).

    It must have already been said - apologies - but for most drama the setting is mere stage. Shakespeare can be dragged to dystopian Britain, to an LA high school, to wherever, and it is of no consequence.

    People are predictable. That's what makes drama possible.
    But certain things are more predictable still. Concrete for example. And mud. And trees.

    Sure if you intend the place to be something more than a stage, then, by all means go live there for twenty years. But, if not, your knowledge of concrete, of cars, of grass and a little googling should suffice.
     
  21. VM80

    VM80 Contributor Contributor

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    I'm going to agree with Art here.

    I once wrote a story based in NYC. Had I ever been there? Nope. Was it important for the story to know the ins-and-outs of every corner of the city (which, btw, I don't think all New Yorkers would know)? Again, no.

    I wrote about people and what was going on with them. The setting was not especially important, in this case. The things I mentioned were all things that could be easily verified by google etc.
     
  22. EdFromNY

    EdFromNY Hope to improve with age Supporter Contributor

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    The beauty about writing about NYC is that you only have to know the corner about which you are writing.
     
  23. Tesoro

    Tesoro Contributor Contributor

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    That is good to hear since one of my stories takes place in NY too :D
     
  24. jazzabel

    jazzabel Agent Provocateur Contributor

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    EDIT: @funky - I would hate to clog up the discussion, what I said wasn't important.
     
  25. funkybassmannick

    funkybassmannick New Member

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    Jazzabell and Shadowwalker: Please discuss what either may have said or not said via PM. It's a personal dialogue that clogs up a good discussion. Thank you.
     

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