Settings and How to Handle Them

[ratherastory]

Okay, fellow writers, I have a question.

How do you handle real-life settings with which you're not familiar? I've been reading (dangerous, I know), and many of the books on writing all agree that having a strong setting will add richness and depth to your story.

On the surface, I totally agree. I am a big fan of good world-building when it comes to sci fi and fantasy, for instance. I also love books in which I get a real feel for the setting, the stench of a city's underbelly or the stark beauty of the cityscape at night, the fragrant smells of farmland, etc. I can usually tell when an author is writing about a setting they've lived in or experienced first hand.

The few times I've used setting to good effect, it's been when I was familiar with the locale. In my long-abandoned zombie novel, I was able to follow the characters from street to street and describe in very accurate detail not only what they were seeing, but the kind of weather they were experiencing, the colour of the buildings, etc. In another story, The Built in a Day Job, to be precise, I used my recent trip to Rome in the springtime to evoke all the sights and sounds and smells of the city that were vital to what I was trying to accomplish in my story.

So what am I supposed to do when I need to set my story in one or more places with which I'm not at all familiar? Somewhere I've never been? I can give overall impressions of a place based on research, but I have no idea how to get the level of detail I would like to put into a story. Is there really a shop on that street corner in Memphis? Is that a one-way street? What bus routes should my characters be taking in Calgary? Is there even reliable public transit? What's the weather like in Colorado in March? What did Cambridge smell like in summer in the late 1800s?

So how do you handle it when you have to write in an unfamiliar setting? Any advice?

Comments

[claudiapriscus.livejournal.com]

I think a lot of the stuff, like bus routes or local shops you can either research or just go whole hog in inventing. I think the trick is to look at how you'd describe a place you're intimately familiar, and notice the cues by which you add texture to it. So that's what I try to do- treat setting like you would a character. come up with the idea, then fill in the back story and motivations. I think this works because usually, it seems like the more familiar you are with a place, the more likely you are to describe in not necessarily in technical detail, but in sensation (including feelings/memories). If I were to tell you a story about the murder bar (a building on main street in my home town), I'd describe the feeling of standing outside on the sun-baked sidewalk in high summer as a kid, peering with my friends through windows encrusted with several decades of dust, barely able to see more than some old blinds covered in dead flies and an unlit neon sign for a brand of beer they haven't made in 30 years. I'd tell you that what we were trying to strain our eyes to see was some evidence that the legends we'd heard about the place were true, that the owner just locked it up one night and walked away after the murder of her sister, leaving everything in place as it had been that night. I'd tell you about how it felt to hear that story, and about the way the glass felt gritty under your fingers. Etc. Etc. But I don't need to have actually experienced the murder bar to apply those kind of details, though of course it does help. What I don't really need to tell you is the murder bar's exact details or description, because the emotional connection is more important and more useful.

[ratherastory.livejournal.com]

the emotional connection is more important and more useful

That's a very good point, thank you!