Close to home

[Andreas_Kreuz]

Where do we place our stories? On a real map with existing place names, or in an imagined location? I sometimes use actual place names, but they are mostly some distance from where I live or grew up. I am now plotting a story where the landscape and geography play a role. There is a river harbour and vineyards in the hills beyond the city. Originally, I placed this story in Portland, Oregon, but being from Europe, I think this is silly. After all, we have an erotic life here on this side of the pond too. So a place that would offer a similar geography would be Frankfurt, Germany. But this is so close to home that it feels cringy. And it makes an emotional difference whether it is a 2-hour drive towards Mount Hood, or a 20 Minute drive towards the Spessart Hills. One is an escape, the other remains next door. Can you understand such feelings? Do you write "close to home" or project into distant or even invented locations?
How does it feel writing "close to home"? Or am I overthinking?

 

[PennyThompson]

Most of my stories take place in somewhat vague US college towns with moderate density and cute walkable downtowns, usually not named and usually not based on any one specific location but taking elements of different places I've lived in or visited.

It's a setting that is easy for me to visualize without excessive research, and provides enough... Infrastructure, I guess? For the scenes and scenarios I tend to write.

@Actingup and I cowrote one story set in Grand Rapids, Michigan, specifically because it met some story beat needs. Working class guy, college instructor wife, a place with significant blizzards. It also led to some beautifully resonant coincidences for a scene involving a shitty concert venue that was demolished around the pandemic.

At least one reader told us he was from GR, and felt like we captured the setting convincingly

 

[yowser]

Probably the last.

Fiction is wonderfully elastic, encompassing the made-up and the real. I am perhaps in the minority but I like stories set in real places, so I can virtually travel (or revisit) interesting areas of the world. Setting can do so many things for a story, establish mood, expectations, serve as a fulcrum for character motivations, sometimes even act as their own character. (Durrell's Alexandria Quartet comes to mind.)

I've written places I've lived (Berkshires, Cape Cod, San Francisco, Cambridge, et al and places I have visited) and I think adding the right details can furnish a pleasing 3-D effect to a story.

Please write your tale any old way you want.

 

[anthrodisiac]

I write both specific locations and unspecified locations. I've specified Fullerton and San Diego (even got a comment from someone who went to the same Ralph's as the one I mentioned in my story), but most of the establishments are fake. I use real parks (I love public parks as settings; really grounds the story) and neighborhoods, sometimes using Google Maps to look at houses and crib from a real house on a real street without naming the street.

If I'm using a real location, and the characters are interacting with more than just a couple private residences, I try to do my due diligence and find local flavor, interesting things and places that ground it. Like the Ralph's example, but also the park the characters go to across the street from the Ralph's.

Mostly though, I leave it somewhat vague. A particular town/suburb at most, or general area of something, but I usually have my own idea where it is, roughly, just so I can sketch out details accurate to the time and place I'm setting the story.

 

[BeechLeaf]

I've committed myself to setting mine in the county of Miltonshire, so I get to make everything up. I like making things up. But against this, I also revel in the specificity and familiarity of real locations - the big houses in the back streets of Belsize Park in London, or (I haven't actually done this yet) a specific interesting shop in Milsom Street in Bath. Ideally I'd want to combine them so that it all feels right, and real, and moreover not generic. There's a kind of urban fantasy to it: some readers are familiar with part of it, then here's a street - or a county, or a shop, or a bridge - that they hadn't known about before, just around the corner, but the realism makes that part just as real-feeling.

 

[NotWise]

I use both. A lot of times details of the location aren't important and a generic locale works. Other times I'll use a real location because it eases problems with fabricating details, and sometimes I'll use a story to celebrate a real location.

Using a real location becomes a problem if you forget that your readers don't share your familiarity with the location and you don't fill in the blanks for them.

 

[AStrangeDesire]

I've based story-locations on real places, but changed the names. For instance "Still Lake Campground", the setting for my OnTheJob event story, is a real campground, I used the layout etc, but changed the name. Since everything happens in a single 'workplace' it helped me figure out the movement of the characters.

Other stories, like 'Training with Emily' are also real locations, even if I don't name them.

To me that helps me visualize where things are happening. Even if I don't reflect all those background details, it helps me visualize the setting while I'm writing and 'stage the action'.

Over time I'm getting more and more used to using real locations and will likely continue to do so, unless the story calls for something that doesn't work with places I've been.

 

[Rob_Royale]

I write close to a former home. I lived in Florida for a long time and it's a very familiar place and I know most of the state rather well. It's easy to imagine my characters there.

 

[MrPixel]

I don't write close to home. I do write about very real places and use recognizable locales within the area; Google Maps and Street View are my friends. I also have one series based in a suburb of a medium-sized city two hours away, one that I pass through semi-frequently and know the layout.

 

[Britva415]

How does it feel writing "close to home"? Or am I overthinking?

I do write close to home and don't feel cringey about it. I also write places I've never been and aren't close at all, and don't feel like I have to do that to keep things at arm's length, I do it because it serves a particular story.

Feeling cringey isn't overthinking. It's a feeling. Can you think your way out of it? Do you believe you need to? That's thinking. Does it matter whether you overcome it or not? It depends. You can either figure out how you feel about that, or you can decide one way or the other, to get over it or not.

 

[Actingup]

I like to use real locations for some travelogue type stories, and to set others in vague imaginary locations. Both work. I based the hotel and sauna in last year's Nude Day story on an actual hotel that I'd stayed in in Munich (you can judge how realistic it is), and I've used London, Paris, Darwin, Melbourne, Hobart, Sydney, Beppu, Riyadh and some other places for stories that I'd like to think are vaguely faithful to place (the Riyadh one was the least realistic as all the action was inside a hotel, but at least I'd stayed in the hotel). As @PennyThompson mentioned, we used Grand Rapids in a story, but unlike the places above I've never been there although I know Michigan a little, and I found that a little harder.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Do you write "close to home" or project into distant or even invented locations?
How does it feel writing "close to home"? Or am I overthinking?

I've written my homes into stories, my characters drive the same streets, walk the same pavements, but they're always named somewhere else, pointing the signs well away from my actual location, mixing up my geographies a lot. My geography though, is possibly the easiest bit about my, "Give them a single piece of truth in a story, and readers will think it's all real," approach to writing - @anthrodisiac's immersion, now that I think about it.

I suspect some fellow Australians might glean where I live, if they've read enough stories, but I doubt anyone who doesn't live in Australia would have much of a clue. Enough to know, well this isn't anywhere in America or Britain or Europe, so it's probably somewhere else.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I've committed myself to setting mine in the county of Miltonshire, so I get to make everything up. I like making things up. But against this, I also revel in the specificity and familiarity of real locations - the big houses in the back streets of Belsize Park in London, or (I haven't actually done this yet) a specific interesting shop in Milsom Street in Bath. Ideally I'd want to combine them so that it all feels right, and real, and moreover not generic. There's a kind of urban fantasy to it: some readers are familiar with part of it, then here's a street - or a county, or a shop, or a bridge - that they hadn't known about before, just around the corner, but the realism makes that part just as real-feeling.

I've just travelled in time - I can picture that toy-shop vividly, but it was more than fifty-five years ago that I'd go into the centre of Bath and look at the things in the window. Thank you!

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Unless there is some specific reason to get specific, my tales are generally set in an unnamed generic town, city or hamlet located somewhere (generally in the state of confusion, but that’s another issues). Almost every town has a Main Street and a City Hall. When necessary, I’ll dig in and do research, but it’s by exception.

 

[redgarters]

Location-wise I don't write close to home. Most of my stories are set in either the US or the UK, countries I've visited but never lived in. I do tend to write those close to the places I've visited - London, New York, North Dakota, because I have a bit of a feel for the place. But I've also enjoyed the challenge of setting a story in Tennessee, a place I know nothing about, really. The story that's closest to home, in both location and geographical living experience, is set in Northern Norway.

 

[dirk2024]

I have a story that visually, to me, is my region but the names were changed to protect the innocent.

I have stories with no mention of where it takes place.

Some where I've made it all up, all ficticious.

Then I have some that are specific to a known city, even including actual places with that city.

 

[vanmyers86]

When I name a location in a story, I tend to know it pretty well by having lived there or otherwise spent a lot of time there. A couple of pieces are set in York, Pennsylvania, where I lived for a few years. Michelle Makes a Move is set in Toledo, another place I lived; the story became an unexpected valentine to that city besides a romance. I chose these places because I know them and it’s fun for me to include little details only a resident would know.

At my point in life, very little makes me cringe anymore, least of all a story setting!

 

[KittyOfSteele]

It is both a real place as well as an imagined place: it's my home city. And I hid it pretty bad on purpose too. Rest assured that every single street in my stories is a real street, and the more I go to the city, the more I realize they're putting more neon to it than I have.

If there's no neon or noir tone to it, or no place mentioned, then you can place the story wherever you want, as it is the case for the majority of my legacied stories. But my stuff for the writing exercises here in AH, The Stranger on the Phone, Silhouette, No Heroes In Love..., and The Woman at the Speakeasy, they all take place in my home city, and I'm not even shy enough to hide it pretty well. If making art is a crime, you better crucify me for all I care, and I'll still make it my greatest work! Be damned this dystopian tyranny trying to cut off our tongues!

 

[Cagivagurl]

My favourite stories to read, are ones that allow me to feel like it is a real place. The writing is so descriptive and full of detail it feels like a real world, or town or city...
It's simply my preference... I like dialogue that feels real... Natural not forced.
I like locations that carry me on a journey...
Stories I have posted are mostly from places I have visited, because it is so much easier to rely on memory for details...
It is much easier to explain the awe and wonder of a specific place...

 

[old_prof]

I run the gamut. Friendly Advice and It All Adds Up take place in very real places that I know well. The places go unnamed, but anyone from there should recognize it. I use a lot of real place names in it, notably notably restaurants and the like.

Some places are generalized places in a specific locale. All of my original series takes place in a canonical northern suburb of Boston. Nothing real is specific enough to tie it to anywhere more than that. Same for Simple Pleasures and a western suburb of Chicago.

Then there are the completely fictitious places. The Perfect Sunset and The Perfect Sunrise take place on a small island roughly thirty miles off the coast of New England. The climax of The Throne takes place on a completely invented Greek Island. Those can work too.

Each approach has its advantages. It depends what you want to do with your story.

 

[SyleusSnow]

My story settings are mostly based on places I'm familiar with and so can write about convincingly: medium-sized cities, probably somewhere in the US or maybe Canada, or campgrounds and vacation retreats. I try to keep them vague enough that readers can fill in their own blanks, hopefully making the settings more real and relatable. For the same reason I also try to avoid mentioning measurements (e.g. distances are "an X hour drive away") and currencies.

 

[shelleycat1]

I tried using a lot of detail about a place, Birmingham UK, in one story and the ratings weren’t as good as others. So I will not try that again for a while. But it may have been the plot which was very fanciful or even the title, which seemed clever at the time (In the cafe of the demon king).

I did it to anchor a fantasy story to a real-world place.

 

[anthrodisiac]

I tried using a lot of detail about a place, Birmingham UK, in one story and the ratings weren’t as good as others. So I will not try that again for a while. But it may have been the plot which was very fanciful or even the title, which seemed clever at the time (In the cafe of the demon king).

I did it to anchor a fantasy story to a real-world place.

I wouldn't let the ratings dictate what you do and don't write. If you want to incorporate real elements from a location, you should go for it. I've found some readers really appreciate it (as long as you don't screw it up). Lots of reasons a story does better or worse, and I seriously doubt that grounding a story in a location is one of them. SF&F can be hit or miss at the best of times.

 

[Stanfield2025]

My stories on this site all take place in a world that has existed in my mind for years before I put it to writing. This world is distant and has a few unreal elements. And one of the side characters in my series is a character I've had in my mind for years who happens to live in that distant world. She and her town have tons of backstory that isn't featured in my stories. Weird experience to write about this world in Lit.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

Two elements play into this when I am writing a story:

1. I have traveled to six of the seven continents, so I am familiar with a lot of places for a story to unfold.
2. I love researching for a story

My stories always involve a real location (or locations), and I remain as true and accurate to the details as if the location was another character in the story, which in many ways, they are. I don't use actual addresses, but readers frequently claim to be able to identify a place based upon the details provided. Real businesses, streets, attractions, cities... all are clearly identified.

Like some others have mentioned, I like when reader feedback reflects their appreciation for a story making them feel more engaged due to it including locations and places that they are familiar with.