Location, location, location! (part deux)

by Rick Blechta

My post last week was a riff off one Aline had published the day before.

The importance of setting is indisputable. Every story is set someplace. If it’s a made-up land, then the writer is free to indulge themselves to the max, but what they write must firmly set their location in readers’ minds. The same is true if a writer is using actual locations — or portions thereof. Job #1 remains the same whether you’re utilizing pure fantasy or reality.

There is a large difference, though, when reality is used, either partially or completely: the writer should expect mail, good and bad. Anyone who knows that location well enough will certainly feel the urge to correct errors — and they may act on it. “There’s no bar on that street corner!” “That’s a one-way street and you have a car going the wrong way!” The answer to the first quote might well be that the writer needed a bar to be on that street corner for plot purposes so that’s what was done. Tough boogies. The answer to the second quote might be that the author boobed on the research. If one is using actual places for setting, it is critical that errors are kept to the bare minimum. Much can be gotten away with if the setting is not known to many, but get something wrong in Times Square and you risk being flooded with irate comments. Of course that would mean the book is selling well, which would make responding to irate comments much more enjoyable.

Which brings me to my own experiences. As I mentioned in last week’s post, I used the living room and garden of a good friend’s home in Scotland for the climax of When Hell Freezes Over. I didn’t think of asking if this was okay with him. I described the location of the house pretty specifically (it was critical to the plot). Only later did it dawn on me: “What if this book becomes a bestseller, a classic if you will, and people start showing up on my friend’s doorstep?” Don’t laugh. It has happened. (And I should be so lucky to write a classic thriller…)

Since that time, if I’m using real places for setting, I weigh my considerations more carefully. Two of my novels, The Fallen One, and its sequel, Roses for a Diva have my protagonist living in a large apartment block in downtown Toronto. It is easily identifiable. To my mind, that’s not an issue. It has concierges at the entrances. However, I would never use a specific apartment number. A private person does not need to dragged into my scribblings.

I always try to use real places for setting. It helps me to have a fixed image (plus reference photos) in my mind as I write. But now I’m more circumspect in being too specific (or shall I say 100% accurate if I’m using a private individual’s residence or a small business. If I set something in a public space, I consider that fair game.

To finish off about locations, I recently watched the second series of the Netflix production, Jessica Jones which is shot in and around New York City. The final episode used two locations with which I am very familiar. One is a diner in Ossining, NY that my mother-in-law really likes and we’ve eaten there frequently over the past two years. While watching, I’m thinking, That looks like Route 9 in Ossining. As the camera moved around I thought, That’s gotta be DD’s. A minute or two later my guess was confirmed when Jessica escaped from the place (after ripping out a table top and throwing it at two cops. Funny thing was, the signage out front was changed for the shoot, and unless one knows the specific area, you wouldn’t be able to find it. (I wonder if the owner’s didn’t want the notoriety.)

The climax in that episode, though, was the real kicker for me, It takes place at Playland, an amusement park in Rye, NY and is fully identified in the episode (the title of which is “Playland”). What’s really incredible is the climactic action takes place on the park’s Ferris wheel, which my future wife and I rode moments before she told me she loved me — and the location of that event appeared in one of the final scenes in the movie Big.

How’s that for locations with real impact — well, for me at least.

One way to have some fun with character names

by Rick Blechta

I’m one of those fiction writers who struggles with coming up with good character names, or should I say, I used to be one of those people.

The answer to my dilemma came to me “like a cold fist at the end of a wet kiss.” (Wish I could take credit for that bit of descriptive text but it comes from an old Firesign Theatre sketch.) I have perfectly useable names right at my fingertips: my friends!

It started back a number of novels ago in Cemetery of the Nameless. At first I didn’t want to throw actual people I knew into the mix as characters. I mean, what if they didn’t like who I made them? So in Cemetery, I used them for my sort of “Greek chorus” idea at the beginning of each chapter where various people make comments on the action going on in the story. It was a fun project, and the names of reporters, reviewers, and other musicians were all various people I knew. It worked out well for me, and the friends whose names I used loved it.

As further books were written and I got more comfortable with the idea, I began to name minor characters after people I knew. With my current novel release, Roses for a Diva, I jumped all the way into the pool. Nearly every one of the supporting characters are friends and people with whom I grew up.

If you’ve read that book, you’ll remember Leonardo Tallevi, the general manager of the Canadian Opera Company (a real entity). Lenny is a friend from way back and a great tenor sax player. I left off that last bit, but I did use something of the real person in my character. A Roman cop is another old friend, Steve Pucci. Drummer Tommy Giorgi turned up as the conductor for the Rome Opera, and Eddie Furci saved the day in Tosca.

Back in Toronto, the two detectives from the Toronto Police Services are former colleagues from my band teaching days and very good friends. I don’t even know if they’re aware I “borrowed” them. Somehow I don’t want to be the first to break the news.

Minor characters are fine, but I don’t think it would be fair to use a real person’s name – at least, real to me – for a main character in that it would be too restricting. Walk-ons are one thing, but protagonists and antagonists need depth (warts and all) to be believable, and I know what I’d wind up doing to a real person would probably lead to hurt feelings — if not law suits.

As for main characters, I rely on my wife to tell me what their names are.

So…problem solved for moi. And it’s a hoot to do. Does anyone else use a dodge like this?

Pidgeonholed!

Vicki’s post from last week, as well as others here on Type M recently, plus some side discussions I’ve had with people, have got me thinking how the crime fiction genre has gotten divided and subdivided and then subdivided again over the past several years, to the point where it’s getting quite, well, silly in many way. Publishers, readers and writers, we’re all guilty in this…crime.

Several years ago, I was describing a novel I was working on to an interested bookseller. “Oh, it’s a chase thriller then.” Huh? “There’s a category for this kind of story?” “Certainly. I have customers who will read nothing else.”

I’ve found out since that there are now very specific categories called things like “woman in peril”, “crafting mysteries”, “food mysteries”. Vicki has started a new series that I guess should be called a “library mystery”. All of this on top of the older categories made up of things like “thrillers”, “hardboiled”, “police procedural”, “amateur sleuth” and “cozy”, to name a few of the main ones.

But now it’s all sliced and diced and readers and publishers are demanding that your novel fall into a neat, little pigeonhole. From a marketing standpoint, I can see why publishers and booksellers might want this. It used to be that you only had to deal with whether you were writing standalones or a series. Bookstore owners usually knew what they were selling so they could tell you about a specific book. Even if you preferred a certain kind of story, you could often be persuaded by someone’s enthusiastic endorsement. If you’re purchasing a book and lack that personal description and recommendation, you might well hesitate to put done as much as forty dollars on a hardcover.

So for various reasons, we’ve become a lot more exclusive these days. It goes far beyond economics and marketing. As I’ve already mentioned in a recent post, many people won’t step outside the little box into which they’ve put themselves. I guess some of it has to do with comfort zones, and for sure, those are important. If a person is not up for a “blood and guts” storyline, it would be a shame to sell them a book that contains this sort of thing.

But these “product placement” boxes may also lead to comments like, “This story is unlike anything we’ve seen. We wouldn’t begin to know how to market it.” Now, unless the writing being commented thusly on is drop-dead, best-ever stuff, the person saying this might well be tempted to take a pass, be they agent, publisher, bookseller or book buyer. I know it happens. One of my novels was stillborn because my description of its plot led to a very similar comment being made by my then-agent. That’s a shame. I still believe it might have been a very interesting story, but I have little enough time to spend on writing to take chances with a dodgy plot line somebody might not be interested in buying into.

Often the best and most groundbreaking writing comes from something experimental or just plain different. These days, for some very good reasons — but also some very bad ones — experimental writing and storylines have a much harder go of it. We’re probably missing some exceptional writing and stories because of it.

Here’s your homework: come with an exact and specific category in which to place your work if you’re a writer. For readers, describe your ideal sort of book. You must be very, very specific so that you can go right to a bookshelf in a store to find it. For my current novel, Roses for a Diva, it would have to be something like “woman in peril, psychopathic chase, musical thriller”.

Sounds enticing doesn’t it? And I’ve also given away a large part of the plot, too!