Homepage
Login
New Post
Profile
I'm reminded of an article I read once by Isaac Asimov, a well-known science fiction writer. He said that the first fiction story he wrote was set in a small town. Friends told them that this was a bad idea, because he had lived his whole life in New York City and knew nothing about small towns. But, he said, he never learned that lesson, because he went on to write many stories set on other planets, and he had never been to another planet, either.
It's more difficult to write about things outside your own experience. If you wrote a story set in your home town, presumably you know all sorts of things about your home town off the top of your head, from the climate to the geography to the social customs, etc. But if you write a story set in another country, you would have to do research to learn these things, or you could put in something totally out of place.
Like, I saw a TV show once about a murder that happened in a town where some of my family live, so I've visited it many times. They had "recreations" of many incidents from the crime and the investigation. One was a scene in the parking lot of the high school. In their recreation, the high school is surrounded by a thick forest. Which is kind of odd, because the town is in the middle of the desert and the high school has only a few scraggly trees around. As someone who has been to the town, this immediately struck me as totally out of place.
Maybe in that case you get away with it because the forest wasn't relevant to the story, it was just visible in the background. It would be far worse if someone said that the killer fled into the forest and climbed a tree to hide from the police.
Etc. Of course this doesn't mean that you can't do it, just that you have to do a little extra work. And pray that you don't casually make a false assumption.
(0)More posts by @Heady158
Terms of Use Privacy policy Contact About Cancellation policy © selfpublishingguru.com2024 All Rights reserved.