Kristi picked location this week for her topic.
I touched on it yesterday, replying to Christi, (yes, two different ladies)!
Last week, I said that I prefer to write/read about cowgirls and cowboys.
That would lead me to location. I'm probably not going to set a cowboy downtown Manhattan, although it's been done, of course. Most of my characters are going to live in rural Colorado or Arizona. Places I've lived and love.
I love where I live (SW Colorado) and I love to bring the places I ride, visit, live to readers. Not everyone can visit the mts, or the small towns I grew up in, but they can go there in my stories. I can bring my horses, dogs and other assorted animals to the readers. Not everyone can spend thier Saturdays riding through the aspens, but I can take them there. Hopefully, if I do it right, they can feel the horses between their legs, smell the aspen leaves and pine trees. Not everyone can herd cattle or direct a working dog, but they can live it through my characters.
In my friends' and CPs' stories, I can be on stage, or visit Puerto Vallarta or Indianna. Places I haven't been, and probably won't ever go, but I feel like I have, thanks to them.
What could be better than that?
I agree, I can't visit the west but I go there in my mind, on the back of my mount who has long since left this world and together we are one again. I like those dreams.
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My stories take place in Philly and along the New Jersey Shore. It's what I know and feel in my heart. I pick other places to touch upon. My heroine, for example, lived for a few years in Chicago. I've never been there but for me, it was a place this character fell in love with. So, part real life, part fantasy on the novel setting bit.
ReplyDeleteI love your western stories, D'Ann! When I'm reading one I feel like I'm back in Nebraska or visiting Colorado again and I just sigh.
ReplyDeleteThe important thing, with setting, is to be in love with the place yourself I think. Otherwise, how can you make readers fall in love with a little town in Colorado or a resort in New York or a principality in the Mediterranian? Your love for your 'country' makes reading your books soooo much fun!
It is fun to be able to consistently go back to set yourself into your favorite places - and leave out the intemperate weather that might be driving you crazy that day, for example!
ReplyDeleteThe series I'm writng now takes place primarily in Seattle, Washington. However, other than being born in the Caribbean, and six months in Canada, I've been nowhere but Brooklyn, New York.
ReplyDeleteI love it. There's no place like Brooklyn and I wish I could set all my stories here. It's a diverse, melting pot of culture, people and untapped beauty.
Plot requires often times that I travel out of B.K, and I do the research necessary for that but you'll always find me coming back. Right back to my backyard, 'cause there's no place like home. :-)
On average, my stories are set in rural areas. I wish I could write about the steamy jungles of South America, but I've never experienced it before. I need to BE THERE to write it with feeling. That's why I keep telling my husband that I need to go to St. Croix--because I have a story to write! LOL
ReplyDeleteI write about the West. Texas to be exact. I'll be honest, Texas has fascinated me ever since the TV show Dallas. I love stories about the Lone Star State and I love learning about it so that I can take my readers, and myself, there. I love cowboys and the romance of cowboy lore. All of my stories happen in small towns and on ranches.
ReplyDeleteSadly, I've never been west of Pittsburgh, PA. I grew up on a small farm in West Central PA and now live in a small town about 20 miles south and west of the state capitol of Harrisburg. Someone asked me once why I don't set my stories on a PA farm. My first response was I can't imagine writing about the Amish. Second response was I want to write about a place that I'd like to visit.
At this time in my career it's Texas...10yrs from now it might be mideavel Europe or some far off planet at some time in the far future. That's what makes us writers, we can take people to places we ourselves may never have seen or even imagined.
I think you have to have some feeling for the places you set your stories, and it shows if you don't. If you're a city person and you try to write about a small town in Ohio because, after all, you've been to one in Nebraska and they're all alike, aren't they. Not! Same goes if a country mouse tries to write with feeling about Philadelphia because she's just spent the weekend in NYC. It's not gonna work. The reader isn't dumb.
ReplyDeleteMy current WIP is located in Hawaii. I'd never leave there if I got to go back. I loved the people the culture everything. I might be from Texas but I decided somewhere I've bonded with Hawaii. Unfortunately I'm having to work around what I can find online, since it would be practical to hop a flight out there right now.
ReplyDeleteSetting is one of the hardest things for me to write about....I thought I could write any old setting, but when I tried to write NYC, it never occurred to me people didn't just drive everywhere. That was a shocker! Now I try to find someone who lives in a town I'm going to write, and helps me filter information, or write about some place I've been myself.
ReplyDeleteI love visiting your "west" via your stories. I see the pics of you and your family on horses and it's as foreign to me as obsessive shoe shoppers (I usually have two pair of shoes that I wear to the death).
ReplyDeleteBut if I ever go out on book tour I'm heading your way for a day on the trail--just so you know.
Margie~ and everyone else~ there's nothing I love more than showing off my little neck of the woods, so any time, you're welcome!
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