I'm having trouble deciding a country for my works

Ok, hello there! This one's a bit more complicated than it appears. This has been bothering me for so long, and I've tried posting about this before, but the post is always so long no matter what I do, so I end up discarding it. But you know what? Screw it! I'll just try it. Here I go...

I'm having trouble picking a country I'm comfortable to culturally set my story to. I mean this in the sense that when I'm writing, I'm always a little afraid I might accidentally write something that just isn't culturally accurate.

I think you might think to yourself: Why not write about your country? It's not that simple, because I moved to the UK when I was a young child. I never actually learned to write in my native language, so writing about my country? It just doesn't seem right to me. It won't work.

Moving to the UK is something that took me many years to properly accept, it never felt like my home, and I struggled academically very, very, VERY hard both due to personal difficulties (spoiler: unidentified autism) AND the sudden change of language, as well my former school's ability to deal with a student that couldn't speak. Wonderful, right? I ended up finishing high school without successfully achieving a single qualification! That's because I still couldn't speak, I could only write a little, and not very well at all.

Being the outcast and the friendless kid, the only thing I found solace in my time was anime. I engaged with it quite a bit and found so much inspiration to do better in what was a really difficult time for me in many ways. It somehow really pushed me to do better in the low-level courses I ended up after high school, and I truly did surpass myself multiple times. It's no stretch to say that this period of my life was changing.

I ended up getting my national secondary education English qualification successfully along with many others. From there, I learned about books, and I started reading, then also started writing my own stuff after the course was over because I liked it so much.

I already wrote a Sci-Fi book that took me around 2-ish years. I wrote it English, since it's the only language I'm actually competent in. The book itself is set in Japan. So I, a non-native, writing in English, set the novel in a completely different country I've never set foot in. Do you see the problem?

There was reason for that. I poured a lot of love into this book, as well as my personal feelings and experiences indirectly, through a character I specifically designed and could relate to so I could mirror them. But that's more complicated than it sounds, throughout writing and editing, I found small discrepancies in the setting that just didn't make sense. For example, I'd mention how year-after-year my character achieved nothing, but is that something the educational system would permit in Japan logistically? In the UK, I know it can, but in Japan? A country known for its strict social discipline? I have no idea. And its no specific question to research with Google.

I completed the book after a full year of editing and spending a whole summer in front of a screen, and I'm actually quite happy with the way it turned out for what was my first proper thing. But for my second book, do I want to do this again? I don't think so, it's just too much work, and I don't want to accidentally offend anyone, or have an Uncle Roger type of guy come laughing at me. It's too much risk.

That said, I love writing for what it is, and while I do love to set my stories in Japan, I think I won't opt for this again. I want to, but I shouldn't. I think I'll engineer abstract settings into my stories from now on, choosing unconventional names for my characters that can't be linked back to a specific country. I'm not sure how I can work this out, but writing doesn't have to be logical, does it? As long as you are creative, you can do anything!

That's my thought anyway, would the community here have any input?

 

Not setting your stories in Japan is good. If you want to learn about the country, don't do it from anime, please.

Write about the country you know most about. Ask yourself, can you depict life accurately in that country?

I sometimes set my stories in the US, because it has all the elements I need, which are not necessarily present in the UK. I've been to the US exactly once, when I was 10, but I'm pretty sure I can reasonably accurately depict it, but I still get some small details wrong, which would be obvious to a native.

The key is to do research.

 

No, that's a normal risk for anyone who strings words together for other folks to read. Someone is always going to be offended, and someone else is always going to laugh. (I had to google Uncle Roger. Shrug. So he makes his living off ridiculing people? The hell with him.)

There you go! You've dealt with a lot of challenges in your life which gives you an interesting perspective on society and belonging. Incorporate that perspective into your writing instead of denying it. There's nothing to stop you from inventing countries and societies along with the stories of people who live in the same.

My son-in-law watches anime. I've occasionally watched along with him and wondered about obviously non-Asian characters being the focus of obviously Asian plotting and location. It seems to work within its context, so why not drop characters from your own country of origin into jolly old England and make the difficulties you experienced yourself part of the scenario?

 

You're sort of on this track already, but a solution is to choose a "setting" in which no one alive has personal experience. Namely, a fantasy land, the past, or the future. Even if there are people who can dispute your realism (ie. historians, if you choose to write about the past), there's a high chance they're not your target audience, and even if they are, they're signing themselves up for suspension of disbelief, as most readers are.

I don't want to be suggesting you switch genres, though. I know you said your first book was sci-fi, so writing in the future could fit well into that genre. BTW, writing in the future doesn't necessarily have to be dystopian, if you're wary of that. Just make things a little bit more *shiny* and make things up! Like you said:

 

I am feeling so utterly thankful for all your wonderful responses, thanks so much. I never expected people to reply to my can of worms story, wow...

I know what you mean, I've been around anime all my life, and I understand. Despite being written by the Japanese themselves, anime can really somehow spawn a false image of Japan in your head, but that's of course not intentional. It's just people taking things at face value too easily, especially when the heat of liking something particularly much clouds their judgement. It's okay though, I read more than watch nowadays, as modern anime has me kind of jarred for some reason. Though I do read Yoru Sumino's books, they are really unique.

This is actually precisely what I was thinking, I already have a particular idea written down in my long list. It is just an idea though for now, so if I were to develop it, I don't know what kind of challenges I'd come across.

My Sci-Fi book was actually set right before the world turns into your typical dystopian setting. That's not really because I like the genre, but rather, it again drew on my personal experience. In the book, my character is actually a beta tester for a device code-named "Wall-Breaker", which as the name suggests, breaks the walls (the bezels around your screen in the literal sense) confining the UI elements of a computer operating system, therefore 'merging' it all with your reality by acting as an active dynamic transceiver through means of emulating various cells in the cerebral cortex such as the motor neurons (for interaction), Photoreceptor cells (for visuals) and finally the Cochlear cells (for sound).

In a nutshell, the story heavily follows her development when she, an outcast and shut-in, is caught in the affairs of a secret society investigating a world crisis that involves the electrical and physical planes of reality merging together slowly as a result of these devices being created. That's the main conflict, and aside from being just that, I used this many times as a metaphorical device to express both my experience in computer addiction as well as my concerns for the rapidly evolving technological world. That's the kind of thing I love to do; using fiction to portray my ideas in the forms of characters placed in a conflict to show a grand argument and its many sides via other characters. I also loved Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 for this reason!

If I'm honest, I really liked what I did with that story, it wasn't at all straight-forward as I might make it appear, but I wrote and re-wrote for countless hours and made it work. One side of me really wants to present it to the world somehow, but another tells me that I shouldn't, especially because of the points discussed here. I was all over the idea when I first had it so I went ahead and set it to Japan, so yeah, there you go. It's just a shame that I worked on something so hard but I'm barring myself because of this mistake. I deeply love this story, so honestly, I can see my future self trying to work something out.

From now on, I simply don't have to make this mistake again. If I like elements of the story-telling style of the Japanese, I don't think I need to set in Japan to necessarily make something inspired off of them. In the end, that's what I fell in love with, not necessarily anime itself.

 

I wanna see the West Virginia version of Romeo and Juliet.

Where they're brother and sister.

 

It often is relevant, yeah. If I write about teen drama, then that'll differ per culture, won't it? Different cultures have different dynamics, social etiquette, systems, etc. All those will have impact on a person's upbringing, so it very much matters

Anyway, as the others wrote above, I'll get creative with non-conventional settings. Hell, for all I know, I might just make up a colony on Mars kind of setting

What I will really miss from Japanese settings are the names, that's for sure. Japanese names are extremely interesting in how they are written with Kanji, which have meanings behind them. But I already experimented with Latin a little bit and I might be able to do something similar.

 

I know it's a different culture and people, but Jhumpa Lahiri is a good author to look at regarding this issue. Her stories and books are almost exclusively related to the disconnect of being a Bengali spending most of her life in the US. They aren't autobiographies, but they certainly deal with conflicting experience of culture, trying to live in both worlds simultaneously, or rejecting one for the other.

She doesn't tend to be an easy read, but The Namesake is an alright novel regarding the issue. Interpreter of Maladies is a short story collection that's much better.

Just a suggestion.

 

I read the preview available in Google Books and I was pretty drawn in pretty quickly, she wastes no time to capture you, does she? I might buy it and read it later on. Thanks for the suggestion!

 

I apologize if my answer oversimplifies the problem, but there is a part of me that thinks TC is overcomplicating it.

It seems to me there are two rather obvious answers, and I'm not sure of the "why not" on them.
First - Write about the UK.
When TC self suggests 'just write about his country' he self answers 'because he moved to the UK' and then spends a lot of time writing about his experience in the UK (granted not pleasant, but a lot of writing comes from pain). I mean this seems like the most obvious answer to me, when I'm writing a story and the setting can be 'anywhere' (contemporary) I will usually just pick the place outside my window (or a reasonable facsimile).

Second - Write about Japan
TC's reasoning for not writing about Japan seems to be he's never been there, I've never been Mars but I've written stories about it. I get the 'not wanting to get anything wrong/offend people' but... and I say this with the upmost respect... there is no shortage of information about Japanese culture out there. Anime would be a bad place to start (but it's okay as an influence) but there are countless resources, books, movies, documentaries, you can even go on Youtube and watch a walking tour not the same as being there, but it's can give you a basic feel of the area.

Last - The far side of the moon aka anywhere.
I suggested UK and Japan because I feel like TC is dismissing them both and I'm not sure why, they seem like the easiest (UK) or most fun (JPN) options based on what TC has said. Now if the case is TC just doesn't want write about either and wants to spread their wings and explore new lands to write about, I say go for it, but I got the impression TC needlessly avoiding some obvious options, and I wanted to point them out.

Just my 2 cents.

 

Hey, first of all, thanks for taking the time to write your reply. Now to answer your first point, I don't want to write about the UK because I feel dejected towards the country, I'm only here because I have to be here. I'm not saying the UK as a country is bad and uninspiring, far from it, but I just don't feel the slightest bit attached to it, so I can't write about it. I'm just not feeling it. I have read some British authors like Matt Haig and Ema Carrol and I actually recognized how they are British from their writing alone, but still...

Trust me, I'd love to, but I feel constantly stressed to get everything right because if I don't, what would be the point? Japanese culture is amazing and I just don't want to disrespect it. For the record, my first book was set in Japan, so I have more than two years of experience writing based on this country, which is why I feel so tired doing it. I'd really always research and carefully think things through, either referencing articles or videos, and by doing that, I would sometimes feel as I'm making a mistake altogether. I'd reconsider why I'm writing about a country I don't belong in, which is a bit sad, but it's true. In simpler words, I'm scared of Japanese people reacting badly to me and rejecting what I write. I really don't want something like that.

That said, I never actually posted that book anywhere, so I don't know how people would actually react. It's my first book, and while I do actually like it, and I only really say that after screwing up multiple drafts and rewriting it tons of times I would love to put it out there, but again, I feel very reluctant about it especially because the story is deeply complicated and touches on sensitive themes.

There is also the problem of 'publisher compatibility'. For now, this is only a hobby, and while I really like it and actively work on improving myself everyday, the harsh reality might take it away from me someday. But if, hypothetically speaking, life permits me to stick with it for a long time to get a good enough to make something that is actually compelling with the potential to impress agents, the fact that it is written by a Greek, living in England, and is set in Japan with characters having names like Ruiko or Hazuki, is just... strange. I truly think that no agent will take me seriously, I'd be at a disadvantage, and we're talking harsh stuff as it is.

So yes As we have discussed above, I'd have to get a bit creative to solve this problem. I don't need to write about Japan, or Greece, or the UK. I can write about a made-up country, or I can have abstract settings that are non-specific. Or I can write about Mars, and maybe the Moon too. What's important is how I don't need to write in Japan to keep that 'spirit' Japanese stories have. They are my roots in many ways, but I need to grow beyond those roots and give sprout to a nice tree that goes beyond them. My roots will still be a part of me, just that people will see what I grew out of them instead of the roots themselves, which will be beneath the ground

That seems right to me anyway, I hope that metaphor captures what I'm trying to say.

 

I won't disagree with that. I might figure something out someday to write in Japan again, though for the time being, I think I have my next idea to work on (no Japan involved) so that won't be for a while. Plus, getting more experience in writing will probably help me do a better job at it if I have another shot in the future. I'll write more to work up the courage it takes to post a draft in some beta reading group that can give me some harsh criticism of what I'm doing wrong, and right if that's anything at all I can really see having some confidence helping in that regard, if I can earn it.

I was also thinking of giving the first chapter of my first book for people to criticize. It doesn't get into the story, it's more like a pilot that introduces the cast and other important elements, so it can work pretty well as a short standalone for people to nitpick and judge without getting into the can of worms that is the story itself. I really want to know how 'I am doing' beyond my own opinion.

 

To play it safe, you could add a disclaimer that any errors are for artistic purposes. Or you could admit that it was a mistake. A book that I bought had this in its acknowledgements section. This book was published in 2007. I already found an error in its beginning scene. The writer claimed that every Korean chain-smoked on a Korean flight. In reality, smoking has been banned on all Korean flights since the early 1990s. (I don't remember the exact year). If you're going to ask someone who has been to a country that you want to set your story to, make sure that person experienced that country within the last few years. Many countries change more often and more quickly than other countries do. The best way to write a novel with the least errors is to travel to that country. Unfortunately, the increased flight tickets has made it difficult to travel long distances. I suggest using a country closer to your home such as Ireland or France.

 

I'll keep it in mind! But my concerns are a tad bit... deeper than the surface of things such as the examples you mentioned. In a nutshell, if I write a character with a specific conflict, it might be fundamentally incompatible or highly unlikely with said culture.

Thanks though, I think this is still good advice.

 

The difference between Mars and Japan is that no one else has been to Mars either. No one would know if you got some of the cultural details wrong.

I believe Kim Stanley Robinson wrote about Mars and stated that the gravity was two-thirds that of Earth. It isn't - it's one-third. That's obviously incorrect and it's a detail that stands out if you know anything about Mars.

 

Yes ... and no.

Disclaimer: I am officially an olde pharte (that's pseudo middle English for "senior citizen"). I took a couple of years of Spanish when I was in junior high school (in the U.S.), and that included some exposure to what was supposed to be Hispanic culture. Fast forward several decades. Late in life I met a woman from a South American country, we fell in love, and we married. I have visited her native country with her a number of times, and I found that basically everything I was taught about Hispanic culture in junior high school was wrong. Maybe it was true at the time (late 1950s), but it certainly wasn't true in the early years of the 21st century. Beyond that, even though the population of New York City is greater than the population of my late wife's entire country, there is a lot of regional variation in her country, just as there in in the U.S. and as I have been told is also true in the U.K. That's just one country in South America. Just jumping across the border to visit one of the adjoining countries I found that basic vocabulary for such mundane things as "bus stop" and "parking lot" changed.

I suspect there's a lot of regionalization within most countries. I think if I were to write a story set in some real country other than the U.S. I would start by doing some basic research, then I would rough out the bare bones of the story, and then I'd seek out an editor (or maybe just an alpha reader) in or from that country to go over the fundamental plot constructs and alert me to anything I've gotten wrong enough that it detracts from the story.

 

Wow, that is really impressive. You really know what you are talking about. It sounds like a winner.

If for your next book you are looking for somewhere with isolated locations, might I suggest Canada?

 

Very true. Even down to simple things - for example, in the south of England, the evening meal is called "dinner". In the north, that term usually refers to the afternoon meal.

But one of the issues with doing research is that popular depictions almost always depict life in the political centre of the country. In the UK (or rather, in England), that's London. In Japan, it's Tokyo. In Thailand, it's Bangkok. Life outside those places can be very, very different.

As Iain Aschendale will no doubt tell you, people in Osaka are very different to those in Tokyo. Tokyoites take the concept of "honne and tatemae" far more seriously than those in Osaka - which means that Osakans will be much more likely to tell you straight to your face what they mean, rather than beating around the bush. And those street food carts that you often see in anime are no longer to be found much anywhere except Fukuoka in Kyushu. Japanese media rarely explain that, because Japanese people (for whom that media is primarily aimed at) would already know that.

It would be like... I dunno, expecting British buses outside London to be red. Or Americans to all say "Y'all".

 

Or expecting, sooner or later, to bump into a charismatic alien in an eccentric coat running from a sentient dustbin towards a blue phone box clutching a screwdriver.

Actually that happened around here just last month. No-one got warning. Just all of a sudden it was explosions, riots, smoke, screwdrivers and aliens everywhere. What a palaver. In fact I heard later that there was more than one Doctor staying in these boutique hotels around town that day, which just goes to show how hard it is to get the timelines straight, and you end up cocking it up and having to book three different rooms for your three different incarnations. Nightmare filling in that expenses claim.

Anyway, as you were, sorry for the deviation.

 

Interesting... why Canada? Could you elaborate?

But... I kinda have already decided. My next setting will be a fortress standing on an isolated island, hosting sixty-four amnesic children that were preserved from a thermonuclear war which wiped out all of society and left the world in nuclear winter. The only thing that protects them deadly environment is what they consider their God, "Hope", which is actually a highly advanced computer built by the scientists running the preservation project of the same name. The computer itself runs the infrastructure in the castle which supports anti-radiation barrier surrounding the island, occasionally communicates with the children to offer them clues, and keeps records of important literature of all kinds and types.

They are amnesic because their memory was erased on purpose in order to forget the brutal war which annihilated their mental health to such a severe degree, only a complete wipe could possibly heal them so they can make a new start. Because that's the intention at large here. But as a consequence, they have also forgotten much of what it means to be human. The book will explore a setting that is being built from the ground up within the story. Their "society" will be built from zero as they naively try to work together systemically, encountering common human problems which require remedy, that being a law of sorts.

So... in a nutshell... I want to show how a basic society comes to be. And at the end, maybe give these children the real truth, which the scientists wanted them to forget. I think that's one way to execute the idea of "engineering my own setting."

I don't know how it'll work out though, this is really all an idea for now. I have not written a word of this as I'm busy with something else at the minute.

 

Didn't know that was how it originated.

It's now just in normal use, of course, although round here, the evening meal is usually tea rather than supper, as in "time fer' us tea, like".