“The Secret of Creating the Perfect Setting When You Write Your Book! --An Expert's How to Write a Book Step-by-Step Guide”
Here's how to write your book with the ideal setting, the geography your readers will say you got just right!
by Steve Manning
I'm about to show you how you can have the ideal setting for your book. It will be incredibly well researched, your reader will never be able to say you're wrong about your geographical facts, and there will always be a building, church, or restaurant exactly when you need it.
Ready, here's how you do it…
When you take your reader into a work of fiction you know with absolute certainty that you're expected to have done your research with such precision that no one, and I mean no one, can say that you're wrong about something.
Now the only way you can do that with any level of certainty is to actually live in the city where the story takes place… and to have lived there for some time. You just can't get the information any other way. The internet, with all the glory it offers, can't give you the details your readers demand. Only a long-time citizen would actually know that the trams are yellow and green, that the bells in the bell tower haven't worked for a year, or that they've changed the streetlights from white to yellow.
Okay, now we get to the problems. You might have the info in your mind for one city, but two? Not likely. Three? Forget it. Your first choice is to use actual locals and get ready for a barrage of readers to tell you how wrong you are. They don't see all the stuff you got right, just the stuff you got wrong.
And you simply can't win no matter how well you know the city you're writing about. You may be able to write your book in two weeks or less, but the publisher will take several months to make the book a bookstore reality. During that time, construction has taken place, remodeling has been done and some twerp in the city planning department has stopped running the trams all together!
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And you will get things wrong. I remember reading one book by an author well respected as a relentless researcher. His character flew from Ireland to Toronto, hopped on a train to the downtown area, then rented a car and drove to Montreal. First, there is no train of any kind at the Toronto airport. Next, Toronto to Montreal is a six-hour drive. The character would have been better off getting a different flight to begin with.
Okay, if you can take the slings and arrows of outraged readers, go for it.
Your next choice is to eliminate settings entirely. You can never been wrong about something you never write about, and the research load drops dramatically. Stephen King is well known for setting his fiction smack dab in the middle of, well, his mind. Other than an ever so fleeting reference to somewhere in New England, you never know what the setting is.
The problem here is that the story really can lose an element of gravitas. We'd like to be in London, or Munich, or Istanbul and that strong hint of geography makes the story more real for us.
Finally we have the strategy you'll find with the Harry Potter series. London and Oxford are as real as real can be and, because the author is so familiar with these places, she can give us the geographical facts that make these places so alive. But Hogwarts? That's pure make believe.
So here's how you can do the same thing.
Your character can fly into Franfurt airport and then drive the 20 miles to the city of Konfeld, where all the action takes place. Or off to Sydney, looking at the aerial view of the stunning opera house before landing, and driving 25 miles to Konfeld, where whe'll sell the files for the agreed amount. Or touch down in Budapest and dash into a cab for the 10 mile trek to the sleepy little suburb of, you guessed it, Konfeld.
Just enough details about the major city to make it real (but not too much, remember, you're not staying there) and then we're off to the magical made-up city of Konfeld where you are, and always have been, the city planner. Your geographical facts are always right because you make them up as you go. But you didn't make up Frankfurt, Sydney or Budapest. They're real.
Now you've got the best of both worlds and the world's ideal setting for your story.
While we're on the topic of strategies, and if you haven't already done so, feel free to
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Time for a little unabashed, self promotion: If you haven’t asked for my Free CD, “How to Write a Book On Anything in 14 Days Guaranteed!” then you’re just plain nuts! It’s free, no charge, but you can bet this $100 CD will be carrying that price tag very shortly. How do you get it? Just email me at Free CD, Please, or CD_please@writeabooknow.com and make sure you include your name, your mailing address and your telephone number in the email.
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