We’ve all heard it before. Setting is as vital to any story
as its characters. It can drive motivation, entire scenes, even the plot
itself. But we’ve also heard the old adage write
what you know. Don’t let that fool you into playing it safe. Writing what
you know doesn’t mean every story you write takes place in your hometown or the
city you currently live in. Writing what you know, in terms of setting, means
you take an atmosphere and insert it seamlessly into the story without having
to draw every detail from real-life experiences.
For instance, Die for
Me (Amy Plum) is a book that centers its protagonists in Paris, France. The
main character is an American who is forced by tragedy to relocate to the (in
my opinion, STUFFY) European city. It’s uncommon enough that to describe it for
its intended audience (young Americans) presents an opportunity to provide them
with an unconventional place that gives off the atmosphere of wonder. It suits
the purposes of the novel well. However, I can guarantee you that, if you want
to place your story in Paris, it isn’t necessary for you to take a trip there
and explore every corner of the place, first-hand, and transpose your
experience into the book.
It’s all about balance. A clever mix of imagination and
reality can blend finely to accentuate the world-building of your book with a
few easy tricks.
1. Take your novel to a place no one’s ever been before. This is a tricky one that usually involves a lot of time dedicated to building your world—as in, continent, globe, atmosphere, whatever the story encompasses—and giving it its own depth. Good examples of this are Under the Never Sky (Veronica Rossi), The Lord of the Rings (J. R. R. Tolkien) and Homeland (R. A. Salvatore). They individually construct a whole universe from scratch and the details within that make it complete. This method is especially popular with high fantasy books.
2. This place looks familiar, but there’s something different here. This technique draws directly from writing what you know and adds a twist on it, in terms of specific areas of the city or country. Authors who use this approach are often very in-tune with the setting, i.e. the city, and give it a flare that’s important to the book. For good examples, note the City of Bones in City of Bones (Cassandra Clare), which the main characters access in Brooklyn, New York (the author’s city of residence, as well as the protagonists’). It is stated by one of the characters that the City of Bones has many entrances, one of which just so happens to be in New York, and the City of Bones itself is integral to the progression of the novel. Another good example lies within Little Brother (Cory Doctorow), where the main characters are involved in an Alternate Reality Game called Harajuku Madness, and they meet up at a café in San Francisco that drives the entire premise for the rest of the novel. The city is specific and the author demonstrates obvious intimate familiarity with it, but he inserted the café in the city where the characters encounter something that changes their lives forever.
3. Something feels different? Make it the norm. Because I don’t have any insight on any authors who have taken this approach for their books, I can’t provide examples, but I can say that another way of straying from using strictly what you know and only what you know is using what you happened across once. Maybe it was an unusually cold and foggy day in the middle of fall when that kind of weather for your town is reserved for early spring. Maybe the summer temperatures were an all-new high this year and that’s extremely uncommon, a record, in fact. Use that! Place your characters in a strange situation and either instate it in a common, well-known city or make it its own city with that very characteristic as a normal thing. In Threshold (Bill Myers), it’s an extremely hot summer that isn’t lost on the story’s main characters, to whom this fact becomes integral in their discoveries of their fates as the novel progresses.
4. Three words: Compile it all. Use a street from your old neighborhood, a nearby construction zone from a vacation house you spent the summer in when you were 7, the distance of your high school and the cramped quarters of your first apartment with a roommate to develop the block on which your character lives. Make it believable enough to flesh out. It’s like Cobb says in Inception: “Use details, a stop sign, a lamp post, never entire areas. It’s the easiest way to lose your grip on what’s real and what isn’t.” …Not an exact quote haha. But it gets the point across. Maybe not the second part, but the first part for sure.
1. Take your novel to a place no one’s ever been before. This is a tricky one that usually involves a lot of time dedicated to building your world—as in, continent, globe, atmosphere, whatever the story encompasses—and giving it its own depth. Good examples of this are Under the Never Sky (Veronica Rossi), The Lord of the Rings (J. R. R. Tolkien) and Homeland (R. A. Salvatore). They individually construct a whole universe from scratch and the details within that make it complete. This method is especially popular with high fantasy books.
2. This place looks familiar, but there’s something different here. This technique draws directly from writing what you know and adds a twist on it, in terms of specific areas of the city or country. Authors who use this approach are often very in-tune with the setting, i.e. the city, and give it a flare that’s important to the book. For good examples, note the City of Bones in City of Bones (Cassandra Clare), which the main characters access in Brooklyn, New York (the author’s city of residence, as well as the protagonists’). It is stated by one of the characters that the City of Bones has many entrances, one of which just so happens to be in New York, and the City of Bones itself is integral to the progression of the novel. Another good example lies within Little Brother (Cory Doctorow), where the main characters are involved in an Alternate Reality Game called Harajuku Madness, and they meet up at a café in San Francisco that drives the entire premise for the rest of the novel. The city is specific and the author demonstrates obvious intimate familiarity with it, but he inserted the café in the city where the characters encounter something that changes their lives forever.
3. Something feels different? Make it the norm. Because I don’t have any insight on any authors who have taken this approach for their books, I can’t provide examples, but I can say that another way of straying from using strictly what you know and only what you know is using what you happened across once. Maybe it was an unusually cold and foggy day in the middle of fall when that kind of weather for your town is reserved for early spring. Maybe the summer temperatures were an all-new high this year and that’s extremely uncommon, a record, in fact. Use that! Place your characters in a strange situation and either instate it in a common, well-known city or make it its own city with that very characteristic as a normal thing. In Threshold (Bill Myers), it’s an extremely hot summer that isn’t lost on the story’s main characters, to whom this fact becomes integral in their discoveries of their fates as the novel progresses.
4. Three words: Compile it all. Use a street from your old neighborhood, a nearby construction zone from a vacation house you spent the summer in when you were 7, the distance of your high school and the cramped quarters of your first apartment with a roommate to develop the block on which your character lives. Make it believable enough to flesh out. It’s like Cobb says in Inception: “Use details, a stop sign, a lamp post, never entire areas. It’s the easiest way to lose your grip on what’s real and what isn’t.” …Not an exact quote haha. But it gets the point across. Maybe not the second part, but the first part for sure.
If you’ve never been to Oregon AND have no. freakin. clue.
what it’s like there, but it’s important to the characters and story that
events transpire there, Option 1, Option 2 and Option 3 are probably not the
best choices for you. If your world grew up on its own and is meant to not
resemble anything like our current world, Option 2, Option 3 and Option 4 are
probably not gonna be your friend. Point is, find a medium, get your angle and
work it. You’re not going to convince a reader who has lived in Amsterdam for
three-fourths of their life that your character has too if you’re going for the
raw details-of-the-environment approach and it rings more true to the tune of
Michigan than Amsterdam.
At the very least, do your damned research. Characters are
meant to be propelled by their environment. They need a place to be with enough
life, reality and stamina to sustain their propulsion. Don’t embarrass
yourself, but don’t be afraid to explore either.
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