McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft

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Der Sturmbrecher:
Kali makes a good point about the Chicago in DF.


--- Quote ---Earlier on this board, I wrote about how I approach things when I want to use a city I don't know much about.  Here's what I said, maybe it'll help give you some ideas:


Quote from: BobForPresident on October 05, 2009, 04:35:45 PM
Not every street has to have a specific name as long as you create a believable flavor for the city. For example, the world Harry Dresden inhabits "feels" like Chicago. Butcher seems to have picked just a few key ingredients of Chicago life: bars, extremely cold winters, towering buildings downtown, and has expanded on those aspects of Dresden's Chicago (that's the key, btw. It's Dresden's Chicago, not Chicago, Illinois).
--- End quote ---


You will need to do some research to make it accurate enough to be enjoyable, but you don't have to look up everything to the point of geographically mapping out your plot with a road map of new York. Although if you did it well, you would definitely earn some writer's respect.

You having been to New York will help, but I would recommend seeing if you know anyone who lives there. Ask them about details regarding what you want to know, and anything else they feel like sharing. Never know when a brainstorm will pop up! The absolute best tool you have in getting information is asking other people, because they are your audience. Or your prospective audience, anyway.

I went to New Orleans, last summer, as part of a Lutheran teen convention. While I was there, I took a tour of one of their old cemeteries (they bury their dead in tombs above ground as opposed to below). I learned more about New Orleans in that tour than I would have gotten out of  reading an Encyclopedia article. For instance, a common misconception is that the people of New Orleans use tombs is because the ground is too wet, and that graves would flood. In actuality, they sue that method because it is very efficient. In one tomb, there were at least 2,000 people buried. The heat down there acts like natural cremation, meaning that once one body is finished, you can reuse the tomb. I have to admit, it is more space efficient than our cemeteries in Ohio.
This isn't to say that you have to visit the place to get a good idea about what its like, but it does show that an excellent way of getting enough information about a place to write with comes from talking to people who have experienced it.

Starbeam:
It also helps being able to look things up online, check out Google maps, and so forth.  One thing to be careful of is that you make sure what you say is right.  I read a book set in Vegas that said the neon cowboy had been demolished with the Frontier hotel, when it was never attached to that hotel and is still up in the covered walkway thing with the LED roof.

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