This is not where I parked my car...
Writing about a place that is "not your own" is one of the biggest challenges a writer can face. In my current draft novel that hasn't even made it out of its second chapter, I chose to have my main character live in Brooklyn even though I have personally never been. I've been everywhere else in the state of New York but not Brooklyn. Thankfully one of the visiting authors at my summer MFA residency, Justin Taylor, is a Brooklyn native and I was able to run my first chapter by him. He returned my chapters with a number of notes on things as simple as what train my character would have taken in order to get home and how unrealistic I had been when quoting the worth of her pre-war apartment. Today in my LitHub Daily there was a fantastic piece by Sloane Crosley on the perils of writing about Los Angeles as a New Yorker.
Most times we can't control what settings will inspire us. Strangely it's more difficult to choose a real life setting one has never visited, is actually far more difficult than creating a whole new world. The challenge is to write that city, town, country in a way that rings true and passes muster when your novel is read by a resident of that area. Are your details true and accurate? Does it sound like you actually know what you're talking about?
It's risky, but Sloane Crosley says it can be done and done well. She mentions Donna Tartt, author of The Goldfinch who has never been to Las Vegas yet her novel has won the Pulitzer Prize. So can I do it? We shall see! As Crosley says in her piece she is happy she set most of her novel outside of New York because "writing about a place that's not your own stretches the imagination in a way that aligns with why novels exist in the first place".
xoxo
Poison
Most times we can't control what settings will inspire us. Strangely it's more difficult to choose a real life setting one has never visited, is actually far more difficult than creating a whole new world. The challenge is to write that city, town, country in a way that rings true and passes muster when your novel is read by a resident of that area. Are your details true and accurate? Does it sound like you actually know what you're talking about?
It's risky, but Sloane Crosley says it can be done and done well. She mentions Donna Tartt, author of The Goldfinch who has never been to Las Vegas yet her novel has won the Pulitzer Prize. So can I do it? We shall see! As Crosley says in her piece she is happy she set most of her novel outside of New York because "writing about a place that's not your own stretches the imagination in a way that aligns with why novels exist in the first place".
xoxo
Poison
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