Finding the Magic

I wish I had a go-to place for setting the scene. It'd make things so much easier for me.
But, I don't. I let the characters take me where the book should go and sometimes I get hung up along the way.

Recently I wrote a carnival scene. In my head I envisioned a surreal scene like something out of the movie "Big Fish". But I didn't get that across at all. My character is a transplanted Portland boy who is supposed to be enthralled by this small carnival. Never mind that Portland has the two week Rose Festival along Waterfront Park. I needed to make the Cypher carnival something so special he'd forget the big city spectacle he'd grown up with and be immersed in the small town atmosphere. I needed to bring the magic, and I didn't.

And it's so important to get those things across, to take your readers to a place maybe they've never been to before. I'm pretty sure nobody's ever been to Cypher, Indiana since I made it up.
But just because I made it up doesn't mean I don't have to sell it. I need to make my readers believe that it actually exists or could actually exist. I need to make it real and that's where setting comes in.

And that's my struggle.