So my stories tend to go a lot of places I haven't been - including the stories where the primary setting is my hometown because characters travel. I'm not an expert at this by any means (I've had some good shots and some fails) but a few things I do: 1) Google Street View. Get to know the place, what it looks like. Not just cursory stuff, go down to the neighborhood level. Figure out what streets you're on, etc. Try and figure out what different sides of town look like. 2) LOOK UP THE CLIMATE DATA ON WIKIPEDIA. Make sure you know the average temperature at different times of the year, how often it rains or snows, any odd weather phenomena - and local climate coping mechanisms. (Duluth, Minnesota, for instance, has covered walkways and tunnels all through downtown so that people can get around without going out into the cold). 3) Stalk the local TV news stations on social media. I follow a bunch of local news Facebook pages for my settings - this gives you a feel for the local population, how they talk, how they perceive themselves. 4) See if you can find locals posting stuff on YouTube - even if they're just video-blogging their make-up routine or whatever. Again, this goes a lot to how people talk. It's hit or miss but it's very enlightening. 5) If you can find good books written in your setting by people who live there - read them. I'd only do this if you're planning on using a place as your MAIN setting - but I've been planning a book set in Copenhagen and purposefully written in the Nordic Noir crime novel style. For that, I'm reading a bunch of Nordic Noir so that I can mimic the prose style and descriptions.
My current WIP novel takes place in various places around the world in the 1960s. The first part of the story arc takes place in Lebanon, where the MC returns later on to tie loose ends, and segments also happen in Austria, Germany and the US.
It's actually one of my favorite aspects in writing; I've always held strong interest learning about other cultures so for my own story, it is all of latin america within a fantasy world.
This thread reminds me that I have to get serious about the German setting of the sequel to my WIP. "West" Germany, since it's set in 1983, but where? I've spent enough time in that country to know that the various regions are vastly different. *groans at the idea of all the research time it will take* *thinks maybe she should forget about doing this for NaNoWriMo*
