Romance stories set in your hometown or city.

[Ron]

17 hours ago, ReaderPaul said:

One author not on this site invented a fictional city, then put it in a fictional location.  Oops!  There was a town of that name right where the city was supposed to be.

That is very funny. Imagine the odds of this happening and they just might be right up there with winning the lottery.

[Ron]

I gather that familiarity with a location isn't a problem, as it is to Ms. Goldstein. On the other hand woe and destruction will fall upon any writer who dares get the facts wrong. Is that about right?

[Valkyrie]

37 minutes ago, Ron said:

I gather that familiarity with a location isn't a problem, as it is to Ms. Goldstein. On the other hand woe and destruction will fall upon any writer who dares get the facts wrong. Is that about right?

Pretty much.   

[AC Benus]

On 2/12/2018 at 10:59 PM, Timothy M. said:

I guess the only GA romances set in my home towns in Denmark will be the ones I write myself.   If anyone uses a place I'm familiar with, it would be fun but I'd probably be critical of any mistakes.   Especially spelling mistakes  

Thankfully, so far no one from London has called me out on any mistakes in the story I have set there.

The author on GA who does the most meticulous research on locations, as far as I know, is @AC Benus. His story topics are usually filled with awesome pictures of places. 

Thanks for the shout-out. I haven't read all of the replies here, but one thing I sometimes do is have the person talking about the new locale be an outsider. That way, so-called mistakes may be simply common misconceptions. Say a visitor comes to SF and mentions Frisco. A local character can say that's something not heard around here except by visitors. 

 

And you, @Timothy M., have an ongoing brilliant setup with Clueless Camping. Our narrator is a visitor to Denmark, and you get to be our guide to all the best things to see and do  Brilliant! 

Edited February 14, 2018 by AC Benus

[Timothy M.]

7 hours ago, AC Benus said:

And you, @Timothy M., have an ongoing brilliant setup with Clueless Camping. Our narrator is a visitor to Denmark, and you get to be our guide to all the best things to see and do  Brilliant! 

 

  Thank you, AC   I do get readers asking me if I'm working for the Danish Tourist Board.   And some have wanted to visit Denmark after reading, a compliment I'm very proud of.  

Edited February 14, 2018 by Timothy M.

[TetRefine]

I once read a book that had a section of it set in Philadelphia. The first mistake they made was saying that numbered streets run east/west. Wrong, they run north/south in most of the city. Named streets run east/west. Secondly, it described the first neighborhood I ever lived in here as an ethnic-white, working class neighborhood run by the Mafia. While that neighborhood certainly used to be a Little Italy where the Mob controlled everything, that hasn't been true since the 80s, and the book was set in 2011. It's now a very desirable, diverse neighborhood where you can find people from just about every corner of the globe. Also, the Mafia hasn't controlled much of anything in Philadelphia since it murdered itself into oblivion decades ago.

 

I was so annoyed at the lack of even basic research that I stopped reading after that. 

[Former Member]

17 hours ago, Timothy M. said:

 

  Thank you, AC   I do get readers asking me if I'm working for the Danish Tourist Board.   And some have wanted to visit Denmark after reading, a compliment I'm very proud of.  

I get asked if I work for the California Tourist Board!  ;-)

[comicfan]

I've used real settings in my stories. Stories that include real places, are places I've lived, worked at, or visited. At the time of I am writing those places can easily be found. Naturally a few years later half of them might be gone. 

[DynoReads]

I read a story set in western Pennsylvania, a fictional suburb of Pittsburgh. That wasn’t so bad, but the writer had the characters visiting an amusement park I was very familiar with, went every year as a school trip, Conneaut Lake Park. She had the park on the wrong lake and road, the time to drive from Pittsburgh was impossible unless you did 90mph. Worse she move an historic roller coaster from Waldemeer (might have that spelled wrong) to Conneaut Lake. Also the characters were visiting the park during the years it was closed due to bankruptcy. I contacted the author who said she had done 8nternet research, and provided me the sites. Unfortunately she hadn’t done much more than read the google description, which is how she moved rides. I gave up on the story, too annoying.

[CassieQ]

I'm not huge on settings with my stories, so I usually don't base a story around a certain location.  If I did, I would want to at least visit it or talk to someone familiar with the area, depending on how in depth I would be going.  

 

I do recall reading about a romance author that was using our campus for one of her novels when I was in college.  She was looking for "good make out spots".  I remember finding it very funny.

[FormerMember4]

52 minutes ago, DynoReads said:

I read a story set in western Pennsylvania, a fictional suburb of Pittsburgh. That wasn’t so bad, but the writer had the characters visiting an amusement park I was very familiar with, went every year as a school trip, Conneaut Lake Park. She had the park on the wrong lake and road, the time to drive from Pittsburgh was impossible unless you did 90mph. Worse she move an historic roller coaster from Waldemeer (might have that spelled wrong) to Conneaut Lake. Also the characters were visiting the park during the years it was closed due to bankruptcy. I contacted the author who said she had done 8nternet research, and provided me the sites. Unfortunately she hadn’t done much more than read the google description, which is how she moved rides. I gave up on the story, too annoying.

I don’t understand this. If you’re going to be a lazy writer, Why bother?

[mollyhousemouse]

3 minutes ago, BlindAmbition said:

I don’t understand this. If you’re going to be a lazy writer, Why bother?

good point jp!

[FormerMember4]

8 minutes ago, mollyhousemouse said:

good point jp!

Thanks molly. It’s just disrespectful to the art of writing.

[Former Member]

5 minutes ago, BlindAmbition said:

I don’t understand this. If you’re going to be a lazy writer, Why bother?

But even best-selling authors like James Clavell do it! His characters in Shogun acted very uncharacteristically for the era and, more importantly, the culture. It was entertaining, but not historically accurate,

 

I know and have known many Mexican-Americans, seen many Mexican movies, and live in an area that used to be Mexican territory. I even lived less than 20 miles from Mexico! But I cannot claim to understand Mexican culture. If I were a writer, anything I wrote would probably be more of a caricature than anything realistic. And I think culture is at least as important as geography.

[Ron]

2 hours ago, DynoReads said:

I contacted the author

I may call on you in the future as a beta reader... just so you won’t call me out on the details later. 

[stephanie l danielson]

I write a lot of mine based on where I grew up. I love it! I've lived here over 30 years, so I know the area very well and like to 'advertise' that in the story.

[William King]

I write about places I know, Speechless, my short story is set in a real part of London. But I also write about places I have never visited and only know from what I've read, Google maps (street view is pretty good!), pictures found online. Sometimes I have taken a place I know and moved it to another continent. I have also mentioned places just by name, that are real, but the rest of the description, such as it is, is fabricated.

 

We are talking fiction, it's amusing to read a story, part of which, or the whole, maybe set in a place you are familiar with, but I don't think I would pull an author up for getting a detail wrong or changing things about the place. I'm not writing a travel guide! Research, yes, but inspiration, and atmosphere, story and plot, the background setting is just that, background.

 

[Former Member]

That’s why they append disclaimers to movies that characters, situations, and other details are fictionalized.  ;-)

[BabyXander1990]

Myself, the story I'm going to start is going to be based in Connecticut, but it will be a fictional area. A few local places (Hartford, Old Sturbridge Village, The Ledges (in Vermont, a nude beach), Valley Railroad, Boston (and the sports teams), New York (and ditto on the sports team) and a few other real life places.)

[NapoleonAChase]

I generally write about places I've been, lived, etc. unless I go the high fantasy route. It's either 0 or 100 for me.

 

If I'm writing contemporary, I want you to be able to walk by a place and think, "yeah, someone like Chase's characters might have met or started a life here. Maybe I could, too."