While I enjoy a book that is set in a location where I’ve never been, I find setting a book in a real place is hard.
Over the years, I have set most of my books in areas that I
enjoyed visiting. When I have set foot somewhere I’ve not been before, I can take
in the nuances. The smells, sights, atmosphere, and climate. I like to add
those to my books.
However, the downfall of setting a book somewhere others
have been, I have to make sure I get the geographical places correct, the
buildings, the roads, and the waterways correct. Which makes writing a real
setting harder than just making something up. In a fictional town, you can
place the businesses and streets where you like and no one will question their
validity.
When writing my historical western romance novels, it was easy to use real places and go off of Sanford maps of towns in the 1800s. I enjoyed following the streets with my finger and taking my characters down the streets. Many instances those maps have the businesses marked on them. Even though I used the maps, there is no one alive who could have said, “that wasn’t there” except perhaps a historian of that area.
In my Isabella
Mumphrey Action-Adventure trilogy, I had to use information from books,
websites, and people who had traveled to Guatemala and Mexico City. They were
two places I hadn’t been and my husband didn’t think I needed to travel to. 😉
I then had the books read by people who either lived there (Guatemala) or had
traveled there to make sure I captured the feel of the areas.
For my Shandra
Higheagle mystery series, I set it in a fictional Idaho ski resort. But I
used information about two areas in Idaho to make up my fictional setting. That
series also has books set on the Confederated Tribes of the Colville
Reservation. For those books, a friend who lives on the reservation gave me a
tour and read the book for accuracy.
My second mystery series, Gabriel Hawke Novels, is set in the area where I grew up. It gives me a chance to go back when I want to get photos for covers and social media and to make sure I remember things correctly. Though to keep from anyone saying I am writing about them, I changed the names of the towns in the county where I grew up and populated it with my own characters and businesses. I keep all the geographical places the same. I did set one of these books in Iceland after I’d traveled there. That was fun to write that setting as I had the characters go to places I had visited.
My newest mystery series, Spotted
Pony Casino mysteries, is set on the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla
Reservation. In this series, I am keeping everything except the casino real. I
have made up my own casino so I didn’t have to get into all the true details of
running one to write the series. This way I can have my own way of running it
and because I have people murdered in the Spotted Pony, it is not to be a
reflection on the real casino. I am currently talking with several people to
have them beta read for more accuracy in the culture of the people who live
there. I had a woman from there help
with the first book in the series but then things started happening in her life
and she became too busy to read for me.
Many people say setting can be as strong an element in a
book as a character. I agree. I don’t believe my last two mystery series would
be what they are without the setting I have put them in.
Do you like a setting that stands up to the rest of the book
or do you prefer character-driven stories and minimal setting?
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