Rather a Story

Okay, flist. I'm going to try this cool new thing tonight called "actually writing." Crazy, right?

So, comment here. For every comment I will write you 100-500 words. Anything goes. Existing 'verses, new ideas, anything. Any fandom I have written in is fair game. For the record those are, in no particular order:

Supernatural (FPF and RPF)
Hawaii Five-0
Leverage
Teen Wolf
White Collar
Avengers & related characters (mostly MCU, but I have read some of Bendis' comics)
Cracked (Season 1 only, I have not been watching S2)
Burn Notice (though only the once)
Dresden Files (I am NOT caught up on all the books, so be nice about spoilers!)

If you happen to know of a show that I watch(ed) (or a book series that I read, for that matter), and you want to prompt me for that, feel free. I'll try to list a few shows I can think of off the top of my head (I watch a lot of TV, apparently):

Haven
Person of Interest
Grimm
Covert Affairs
Lost Girl
Elementary
Farscape
Firefly
The Pretender

Uh, that's all I can come up with right now. But yeah, improvise if you want. :)

:::ETA::: There have been a lot of requests for Fusion, but since all the prompts are pretty loose, what I will do is work on a separate instalment and post that instead.

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?

This is something of a follow-up to a conversation in my post about the hypothetical Gen Big Bang, in which I discovered to my shock and dismay that not everyone agrees on what constitutes gen fic!

Thus I am conducting a poll for SCIENCE!

Please spread the word, I am really curious to hear opinions on the subject.

[Poll #1666301]