Can I Make My Story Setting in a Place I Have Not Been?
You might be feeling trepidation about where your story is going to take place.
Maybe you come from a small town and haven’t traveled much. Maybe you’re afraid to break the rule, “write what you know…”
There’s a part of you that imagines your story in amazing places, but the other part of you thinks, “I’ll look like a fraud because people will be able to tell I haven’t been there.”
Andy Weir never went to Mars.
Unless I’m mistaken Weir isn’t an astronaut and he didn’t go to Mars and yet he wrote a fantastic story about it that people love (The Martian), in fact, Weir has written lots of fanfiction about outer space, but has clearly never been there.
It sounds like he did his research and looked at many pictures and did his due diligence to make sure that the story turned out good even though there was absolutely no way he was going to be able to walk around his setting.
As long as you do your research there is not much reason why you can’t do the same. Sure, it would be nice if you could spend a month on the block where you want your story to be, but it is not completely necessary.
Places “where nothing happens” are great places for something to happen.
You might have your story set somewhere you don’t live. This might be because you imagine yourself and your characters in places you want to be. You might find your hometown boring as a setting.
I disagree with the premise, “my home town is boring. Nothing happens here.”
Think about Stephen King. He set many of his stories in places he knew in Maine. Think of Derry, Maine. Small U.S. town, middle of nowhere, just about nothing happens there. (You may not have been in Maine before. I have family in Maine, trust me, almost nothing happens there.)
But that sometimes is the best place for SOMETHING to happen. Places where nothing ever happens makes for a really interesting contrast when something weird does happen.
You don’t have to be in a place to write about it.
Maybe the shows you love happen in places you are not. Maybe this is why you imagine yourself and your characters being there.
For me, I often imagined myself being in the times of knights and dragons. This put most of my imagined settings in those eras by default.
I’ve never been there and I won’t ever be able to, but I can research them heavily (and maybe go to a renaissance fair or two.)
The point is, we can learn a lot about a place even if we’ve never been there and we don’t even have to leave our house. It would be nice, but at this point, with the information that is available to us, it is unnecessary to say to a writer you have to go there to write about it.
Go ahead and try to change my mind in the comments.
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Focus on getting the senses right.
If you are going to lean heavily on the setting there are certain senses you MUST do right.
You must pay attention to smells.
How would you do this?
Use smells you are familiar with.
If your family makes a dish that is common to the area you want to write use that certain dish as an anchor for placing the reader’s imagination there,
“Eli opened his eyes and rolled over. He knew exactly what time it was. Light was pouring through his window and what always gave it away was perogies. The shop across the street started making their perogies at 6 A.M. never delayed. In winter, he would groan, gag a little at the smell, and then pull the blanket back over his head to try to forget he existed, but this was summer. The smell of perogies meant freedom.
A burst of energy filled his chest knowing all that he could do that day. He practically flew out of the bed without a second thought.”
Obviously, this needs editing, but the point here is to give an example of how you can start to anchor the reader into the setting with a familiar smell that gives more depth to the setting when it matters.
Think a lot about sight, sounds, and smells when it comes to choosing where you want your setting and do enough reading in forums and such to find out what people there see, smell, and hear on a regular basis.
Ask someone from there.
Today, it is easier than ever to join a Facebook or Reddit group and ask people from where you want to write what it is actually like there.
Ask them about their childhood. Ask if they remember the smells and feelings they would get in their homes and around their streets.
Were they afraid of certain neighborhoods? Were there stories of haunted places that filled the heads of the children in the area? Or was it pleasant with the sweet smells of a fresh ice cream shop?
Did they live by an airport or train?
Did the bus have its route on their street? Did the ice cream truck drive by at a certain time? Did they ever notice the same woman or man riding a bike every day and why?
Little details like these can take our readers to where we want them to go and it can convince any reader that they shouldn’t question whether you have been there or not.
Try to focus on the little details.
When we hone in on the little things in the setting it gives the readers the sense that only the writer would know these tiny details because they’ve been there.
“The crack in the sidewalk next to my house always reminded me of a mouth filled with sharp jagged teeth.”
If you say this to someone compared to, “I tried not to step on the crack in the sidewalk of my front door.” They are going to feel more like you’ve been there and are giving them insider details about the place that only someone that has been there could know.
The setting doesn’t carry the story but it can change the feel of the story.
Just because you set your story in a busy exciting place doesn’t mean the story is going to get points for it.
The story and setting just have to mesh and that’s it. The setting adds to the story, but a story can be translated to many different settings.
IT could have been written in another small middle of nowhere town, and it would still be relatively the same story.
Settings are more powerful of a change if changing the setting leads to big changes in the senses.
Compare your story being in Antarctica compared to NYC. Big difference there, and the setting would actually change the feel of the story completely.
It’s almost impossible to get every little detail right.
Getting every tiny little detail just right can be a big time-waster.
And writing about it isn’t helpful. Some people may notice a thing or two out of place, but as a writer, you just can’t be expected to get the hotdog vendor’s brand right but miss key components of the actual story you’re trying to tell.
Focus mostly on the story and use the setting to add to it and bring it to life for your reader.
You don’t have to do this but personally, I think creating a fictional setting based on a real place is very interesting for both the reader and the writer.
Also, if you think your hometown sounds too boring to put stories into just ask the person that doesn’t live there if they think it is boring too.
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That’s all for the moment.
Hope this helps!
Happy writing!
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