Many science fiction and fantasy writers will agree when I say that it’s a lot easier to write about a fictional place, then to put a story in a real world, present-day setting. It’s true that in a fictional world you have to go to the trouble of making up the details, but as long as you’re consistent, who’s to say you haven’t got it right?

But when you set a story in the real world, readers expect your story world to have a sense of place that reflects reality—especially if they’re acquainted with the reality of your setting from personal experience.

If you live in the place where your story is set, no problem. You might even be okay if you’ve visited the place long enough to get a real sense of it, and to understand where things are, and what the local customs might be.

But what if you’ve never been to the place where your story is set? And what if lots of other people have been there? Then it gets scary. You’ll be eager to throw in details because details will give your setting a personality and a sense that it is real; but at the same time you’ll want to withhold every detail you can so that no one can catch you having the traffic moving the wrong way on a one-way street, or azaleas blooming when they don’t grow in that city. In the end, it will be a balancing act.

I might be especially sensitive to this issue of “sense of place” because I’ve lived nearly all my life in Hawaii. When writers who don’t live here set stories in Hawaii, their settings often ring false to me. Even among writers who do live here, it sometimes seems like they’re setting their stories in some shared, idealized, imaginary Hawaii, rather than the real thing.

So am I advising you not to set your story in some place unfamiliar to you? Not at all! My rule is, if you can pull it off, go for it. But if you do, consider having someone who does know the place take a look at your story before you finish the final draft.

Most of my novels have been set in made-up story worlds. The two exceptions are Tech-Heaven, which takes place mostly in California and parts of South America, and Limit of Vision, which takes place mostly in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. I felt pretty comfortable with the settings used in Tech-Heaven, but Limit of Vision was another matter entirely. I was worried. I did my very best to portray a realistic setting. I had some leeway, because the story is set a few decades in the future, within a rapidly changing country. Still—I’ve never been to Southeast Asia. I was taking bits of things I knew and brewing whole settings out of them. So I went looking for someone from Vietnam to read the manuscript for me, and I was lucky enough to find a student in the English department at the University of Hawaii. Working from her feedback, I adjusted a few odds and ends, and felt much more confident in the story I was telling.

My most recent venture into reality has been a short story set in Manhattan. I’ve been there, once, fifteen or twenty years ago. Not enough to give me a real feel for the place at all! So I ran this story past a native. I’ve learned some inconvenient things from her critique, and the story will need adjustments to do a better job of rendering a sense of place. But in the end it will be better for it.

Of course, getting-to-know-the-setting is a great excuse to travel. If only I could figure out how to finance that level of research…

Posted on: Monday, April 30th, 2012 at 7:06 am
Categories: Writing.
Tags: sense of place, story settings