A story in search of a location

by Rick Blechta

Once again I’m spinning off one of Tom’s Monday posts. You should read this one. It’s really good!

Unlike Tom, I often use locations for my novels and novellas in places where I’ve never lived. I generally set them in real locations, but in one instance (Orchestrated Murder) I used a nameless city, although it was based on Toronto where I live. In the subsequent two novellas in this series (The Boom Room and Rundown), my editor asked that I identify the location as Toronto. Now I wish I could go back and fix the first novella to reflect this!

But in all my novels, they are firmly set in real-world locations. One unintended benefit of this is that in setting them in far-away places, I have to visit them to make sure everything I include is correct and accurate. So far, we’ve (of course I’m accompanied by my wife who acts as my editorial assistant and translator) been “forced” to visit various places in England, Scotland, Wales, Austria, France, and Italy, not to mention several American cities and towns. Incidentally, the cost of these research trips is tax-deductible which is a very nice thing. Hey, there have to be some breaks for us poor ink-stained wretches, right?

In order to make this foreign-setting thing work, I’ve found it really helps to do a ton of “Google research” and use that to at least have a somewhat workable first draft or a very detailed sketch of your work-in-progress. That way, you know what you need in the way of useful research and can focus on that. It is also pretty well mandatory to make friends with people who live in that location to be able to help with supplemental information after you return home.

The only other thing I do which helps keep me out of trouble is that the story is told by a person who is an outsider. I think it would be the height of idiocy to think that I could pull off writing through the eyes of someone who lives in one of those locations. Inevitably, I would write something that would go clank in the minds of people who actually inhabit or know these places well, and I’m sure you’ll agree this wouldn’t be an ideal thing.

So that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!