Using real locations in my novels.
Google Maps was something I couldn’t have lived without at that point. It helped me see A to B as far as road layouts are concerned and I could jump in and do a virtual walk down any street.
I became very concerned that I would get this all wrong and the readers would write to me to complain that I shouldn’t write about something I knew nothing about. I think that might be every author’s biggest fear. It’s why we research so much. I did my utmost to research the London locations using online resources.
The locations further north in the country I knew very well. In fact, I placed Charlie Robertson’s home in a house I lived in myself in the 70s.
I’m so fortunate that my husband loves the concept of a research trip and is quite happy to go with me to hotels, towns and cities or anywhere else I feel I need to go. I think the research is one thing you can get a lot of pleasure from when you’re writing, he certainly thinks so.
Being able to visit real locations certainly helps me in describing the setting for my readers. I talk photos, lots of photos. They are great for checking details and for jogging my memory.
I like to think I’m a visual person and wherever I’m laying down words be it at the keyboard in my office or a notebook in my garden, you can be sure that in my mind’s eye I am moving around in the space I am describing. I have never been in a farmhouse in Malton, but I have been in plenty during my lifetime. The large, very lived in kitchen that appears in Presenting with Daniel is an amalgamation of all those kitchens.
When I needed to visit Leeds for business, I decided to stay at the hotel at Yorkshire’s cricket ground hotel. Amazingly wonderful for me, that game at Scarborough was moved to Leeds just days before my stay. It meant I could also sit in the West stand with some wonderful fans who gave me some insight that really helped with the plotting. Actually, sitting in the stand watching Yorkshire play Lancashire was something I couldn’t have appreciated had I never been there.
Research is a major part of writing a novel for me, so being able to visit locations has become essential thankfully virtual systems make that a simpler alternative when needed.
The worry over getting it right, so that the actual locations would resonate with readers, made me think that when I write a new series, I will use a fictional location. In fact, my main fictional location appears in two of my current books. Hurst’s Bridge is a small market town currently floating somewhere between Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire. I do realise I will need to ground it at some point I’d love to know where you think I should place Hursts Bridge and why
Check out my fellow bloggers. This month we are all chatting about the same topic. Real Locations in our books.
Please leave a comment.
You’re right about travel being useful. I travelled a fair bit for work in the 1990s and picked up a lot of good settings. I always notice if someone sets a book in my home state and hasn’t been here. It’s just subtly wrong.
Good point on the “feeling” of being somewhere. You mentioned being in the stands for a game and the energy that comes from actually being there is so different than watching the same game on TV. The same would be true about something like walking through a park alone at night. You might have even been to this park in the daylight, but alone at night, there are sounds and just an eerie feeling that can’t be ignored.
Having a fictional location is a wise move. One of my little tricks has been to place a house on a street that doesn’t exist, but otherwise to get the neighbourhood right. Then I won’t risk upsetting the real occupant.
🙂
Great post, Belinda. When I wrote my anniversary serial, City of Discoveries, for DCThomson, the editors invited me up to Dundee. We went up in the lift to the top floor of their Albert Square building where there’s a 360 degree view. Amazing – and so useful for plotting the serial as I could see where the tenements were that the workers would have lived in, where the well-to-do would have been , how close everything was to the docks – amazing! There is always a reader who will have been to a real place and research is all in describing that type of setting. anne
I too have used an old house I lived in for a setting in a book. It’s easiest that way, though I feel like eventually people are going to recognize the layout. We always had single story homes, so branching out into an old Victorian for the Nora novels has been a challenge.