Hi everyone. So I'm about to get started on a YA novel that takes place in the south. I was thinking maybe South Carolina, North Carolina or any small southern town. The problem is, I've only been to Virginia and it wasn't for very long. I know for a fact I want my novel to take place there. Could any of you advise this aspiring fiction writer how to write a novel in which the author has never been to the setting? I really want to completely absorb myself in the Southern way of life, particularly how adolescents have fun and live life in small towns. Thanks everyone!
Hi there! I'd recommend absorbing as much content about the area in question as possible, both educational and story-based. Consume tons of movies, documentaries, books and such that take place and/or are about the area or culture you want to capture.
you could start with various travel guides for the area and then dig into the various attractions, events, and historical landmarks. example for Charleston, SC: https://www.aaa.com/travelguides/charleston-sc http://www.charlestoncvb.com/itineraries/ Approach it like you are a tourist at first planning a really long vacation in the area and you want to learn everything about the place. https://www.nps.gov/fosu/learn/historyculture/index.htm http://www.magnoliaplantation.com/ https://www.charlestonparksconservancy.org/park-finder http://www.boonehallplantation.com/ http://rainbowrowcharlestonsc.com/ http://www.thecharlestoncitymarket.com/ https://www.google.com/destination/map/topsights?q=charleston%20south%20carolina&site=destination&output=search&dest_mid=%2Fm%2F0gkgp&dest_mid=%2Fm%2F0gkgp&tcfs=%5B%5D from vacation to you like it so much you want to move there... start looking at it like you want to buy a house or rent an apartment, with all the right demographics, jobs, schools, economy, crime rates, weather. https://charleston.com/summerville-about once you are living there you want things to do https://charleston.com/charleston-insider you could also look for local newspapers http://www.sciway.net/news/newspapers/charleston.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I would say just have fun with it.
Google Street View is great for planning a "road trip" through any town you'd care to visit. I once "drove" from Cardiff to London.
Go for a holiday? Not to disagree with the above advice, but cities and areas generally show a very tourist friendly version of themselves to the world as opposed to what it's like to actually live there. If visiting is an option, it's probably your best bet.
I was going to essentially say the same thing as @The Dapper Hooligan. There's a massive difference between living somewhere and being a tourist there. If you're a tourist you go to the big annual flea market/swap meet/food festival. If you live there you might work there in some fashion to make money off the tourists. If you visit a small town, you may love some giant historical barn and be fascinated by who built it, why, etc. If you live in that town you may think of the barn and get a rush of memories from when you and some friends broke in, got drunk, and whatever. To an outsider small southern towns are hard-working (often poor) farmers. To the teenage farm kid, the days are long and hard, but the nights are bonfires, drinking, and racing ATV's through mud pits. You want your character to be the person who lives there - not visits.
I'd say google maps and as much research as is sensible .... my book the darkest storm starts in Georgia and ends in Wisconsin (technically it ends in Canada) I've been to the states several times but I haven't visited every mile of the protags trip north , and its neither affordable or a good use of my time and money to take a week to fly into Hartsfield Jackson, then drive down to Pensacola, then to Mobile and then all the way north to Green bay , so instead I've st the main action set pieces either in locations i do know or in the middle of no where where sufficient detail can be gained from research ... i'm also helped by the fact that i'm writing about a future neo fascist america so some context can be made up
Does it have to be a real place? If you set it in a real place and don't get the setting right then people who do know that place will realise you don't know it well. If, however, you set it in a fictional place, then it doesn't matter whether it truly resembles the place(s) that inspired it or not.
Thanks so much guys! My only question now is how to find resources on how adolescents live life in small towns in the South.
I second/third the Google Earth. I was an adolescent in a rural southern town...to me, we were pretty much "normal." Whatever I saw kids doing in movies or on TV, my friends and I did the same stuff. Go to football games. Go see movies at the cheap $1 theater where there were always technical difficulties. Sleep over with each other, take walks on the back roads with our dogs. Play truth or dare on the trampoline when we were younger teenagers. Go eat at the fast-food restaurants. I basically lived at the tiny library when I lived in an incorporated town. There was, of course, the occasional friend with a farm and the boys would hunt there and we'd have bonfires and stuff, but it's certainly not all farms. And yes, 4-wheeling is a big thing...but I've never been on one. I liked to hike and ride my bike. If your characters live on the coast, they probably go to the beach all the time. There will also be difference between an incorporated rural town and an unincorporated one. I've done plenty of time in both. All my life I've lived in southern rural areas. An unincorporated one will have no parks or libraries, probably no sidewalks, more run-down because there's no one keeping it up. I lived in a town with 1800 people but it was incorporated and we had a tiny library (one room in the back of the town hall) and a nice playground. This was when I was 9-11 though so I can't tell you what the teenagers did in that town. When I lived in an incorporated, but ultra-rural, town, we had the most amazing county fair you could ever believe. Like what you see in movies. That was always a highlight.
Oh and if you have any specific questions about the teenagers in a small town thing, you can ask me lol, I'll do my best
I keep thinking of things to add. Like 4-wheeling is huge. Hunting is huge. SEC football is HUGE. Don't overlook those things. I hated all three, but they're major things.
4-wheeling and skidooing is pretty big where I am, too. Though I never really participated. I never liked hunting, but have killed the occasional bear after they crossed the line too many times. Up here "hunting" and "fishing" are basically code words for "We're going to get drunk while carrying with loaded firearms, in a place where we can't get help, and we're probably going to drown. Come looking for us if we don't make it back." I also never saw a football game until I was like 25. Up here we played road hockey or shinty in the summer and regular hockey in the winter, though I was always the goalie, so I can't even properly skate. As a teenager we used to all make the 20 or so klick hike to Quebec where the legal drinking age was lower and get drunk and smoke up at the strip club just across the border. It was a golden time.
Lol!!! I've heard about the hockey up north. We don't really have it down here except at the civic centers where there are hockey/skating lessons. But no big teams. I always kind of liked it actually. I never hunted either...but we had to shoot rattlesnakes and copperheads every now and then.
Well from what I hear SC and NC are hot, humid, muggy. Research plays a big factor in writing about places you have never been. I have never traveled the solar system, and I researched a ton on where to put things and how to describe them. Also if you can, try meeting people that live where you are writing about, that could also help.
And depending on where in the South you live, high-school football too. In a small town, often the biggest to-do is the Friday-night football game.
And remember when you hear a southern boy say the phrase "hey, y'all, watch this shit!", it usually ended in disaster. I think you are getting all the good advice here, find out what life is like for the people that live there. Google earth is also a good way to see what the terrain looks like, I used it a lot. Unless there is a need to use an actual place, like Atlanta, try creating a fictional one modeled as a composite of several small towns. My wife @K McIntyre did this in Parham's Mill, a small town somewhere in Western NC/SW Virginia named after my grandfather's and son's middle names. Set in 1950 we had to handle several things without giving out the date... people in their 20s and 30s recollected war experiences, were concerned about the was in Korea blowing up. Big console radios turned on with a loud click and pop, hummed then the music gradually swelled as the tubes warmed up. Things like that. Locals were farmers or worked in mills, all depended on springs, pumps and wells for water.
Good information here! I second all that about consuming media (movies, books, news stories) about the area to get a feel for it, preferably media created by people from that particular area. If there's any kind of reality TV set in the area, maybe look into that. I know reality TV can be (usually is) garbage, but I'd think showing real people living in a real place might give you a good idea of life there and how people talk, etc. You might look for forums about the area. You know, search for "what is it like in South Carolina" and try to find forums where people are talking about the weather, rentals, shopping ,etc. I've looked at forums where people who want to move to a certain town are asking questions and locals are answering and found that somewhat helpful in the past. There also tends to be Reddit boards for specific states and towns, etc. That said, nothing beats actually going there. If you can afford to, I'd suggest trying to take a vacation in the area and go exploring. You know, don't go look at the usual tourist traps or memorials, but just go walk down the street of some random small town and people watch. See how they interact with each other (and with you!) to get a feel for life there.
I found the research I was doing into what it was like, both in the 1950s and in Appalachia at the time to be very engrossing. I learned a lot. My friend Roger, who grew up in the area at about that time was a font of knowledge too. Use whatever resources you can find!