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So far, I've picked Dakota, St. Louis, Brittany, Boston, and Duluth, Minnesota for my novels' settings. I know firsthand the terrain of rural South Dakota and the layout of Duluth/Superior.
I've been to Paris, but not Brittany, so I read travel guides and early 1900's accounts of leisurely wanderings through that northeastern department of France. It was important to my story to have that specific setting.
I've not been to St. Louis, but I found in my local library great drawing of its Mississippi River steamboat docks for a different historical romance.
I've probably not visited Boston enough to do justice to that well-known setting. I did attend a girls private school, so I can write with authority about that environment.
Maybe I can color up little old Park Rapids to be more exciting. It's hard to have summer sex by the lake with so many mosquitoes, though.
You can't beat travel books for bacground. I use them a lot, especially when I am looking for hotels in various cities. They are a source of excellent information, Fordors is great. I've always, for some odd reason, wanted to visit the Dakotas. I love Brittany, it's a delightful area, rather like Cornwall in England in parts.
ReplyDeleteBeen to Normandy but not to Brittany, maybe one day I'll get there.
ReplyDeleteI love searching online for hotels and other background information but one's own local knowledge can always add that 'extra' authentic flavour - like the perils of mixing sex with mosquitoes, for example!
Hi,
ReplyDeleteI prefer settings I know in detail, and for foreign shores I tend to pick places I've been to. Any foreign I places I haven't frequented I glean info from fellow bloggers for authenticity. Not sure I'd trust to a tourist guide for info unless it's a big city setting with loads of pics etc!
Hee hee, mozzies and outdoor sex romps. :o
best
F
Travel guides are an excellent way of knowing a city and its hotels.
ReplyDeleteDrat those pesky mosquitos!
ReplyDeleteUsing familiar settings makes things so much easier in my mind...
Using familiar settings - yes, I agree. Think I've said this before, but many years ago I watched a movie which had been filmed in my home town. A bus stopped outside the Town Hall and I think everyone in the cinema reacted in the same way - 'buses don't stop there'. The illusion was destroyed immediately and it's stuck in my mind about 40 years later. I don't want to destroy the illusions of anyone reading my stories (who might know the location better than I do) by making a simple kind of error like that.
ReplyDeleteSo familiarity with a place can be important.
If I had to know all about a place before I set a novel there, I would not have had three very successful novels set in Spain!
ReplyDeleteJust as I have never lived in Medieval times, I research and research.