When you have to research locations, when you can get away with fudging it

When I was just a fledgling baby writer, still all naked and stubby and vile, I had a creative writing teacher who said, ‘I never trust a writer whose first work isn’t autobiographical’. He was a big believer in write what you know, and to that I mostly say ‘balls’. I’ll write what I want, and if it’s not what I know that’s what wikipedia is for*. I also refused to agree that ‘every writer starts with poetry’, because my mum still has the story about the orphaned pig witch-ballerina I wrote when I was 8.

However, there is one area where I’ll admit that knowing what you’re writing about is a real advantage**. Locations.

You can look things up on wikipedia, hunt through Lonely Planet for local colour, and even scan the neighbourhood using Google’s street view (also fun for finding people caught out in the middle of scratching bits), but there’s a visceral element that’s hard to find online.

I mean, there’s a street in Belfast that – on a sunny day – just reeks of rotting corn. I mean, absolutely, driving past makes you gag, reeks. Or there’s two restaurants on staggered streets that look almost identical, as I found out to my cost when I reported my car stolen and then had to call the police back and shame-facedly admit that actually I’d been on the wrong street.

It’s the sort of local colour that you can only really  pick up when you’ve been somewhere. So, I hear to you say, does that mean you’re only going to write about Belfast in future? To which I say, balls – I’ll write what I want when I want. There’s way to get the visceral without having drunk in every hole or sicked up in every gutter. Or nicer things, that just sounded dramatic.

To start with, don’t worry about this when you start writing. All that will happen is that you wall yourself up behind a great big pile of maps, routes, and pictures of corners and never, ever actually get around to writing anything. This sort of research is for the edit!

Right, so how to pin down your location when you don’t live there.

Visit the area

Even if you don’t live there, a visit with all the different places you’ve used can be helpful to give you an idea for the area. You can work out that the street you had your hero running up is actually a mile long hill and he’d have been dead by the top, or find out that there’s NOWHERE to park outside that house on Sunday’s because of the nearby church.

It doesn’t have to be a dedicated week-long research trip either. Plan out what you need to do, check the routes, and just grab a day or half-day to run around. I have been fretting out how to sort out a long weekend in Durham to do some research for a novel. Then I was working on another article, and realised I could actually pull it off in a day. OK, it’ll be a day done at a gallop, but still.

Or course, that’s not always possible. So that takes us to the next option.

Ask a Friend

It’s not just for on Who Wants to be a Millionaire you know! If you have a friend who’s been to the area or, even better, lived there (best of all is if they hated it, nothing gives a description of an area the local colour of old resentment!) then ask them if they’d mind looking over what you’ve written about it. It might not be quite as good as being there yourself – someone else is more likely to point out something you get wrong than something subtle you missed – but it’s a great resource.

I once put the Severn Bridge in Cornwall because I was on a roll, didn’t want to stop and check, and it was the first bridge name that popped into my mind. It was only my friend who lived in Cornwall who pointed out I got it wrong – and thought I would be too embarrassed to admit it here! Shows what she knows, I’ve never had any dignity.

What if it is somewhere none of your friends have reached?

Obfuscate

I mean, of course, try your best to get the geography and atmosphere right, but you can just fudge in elements inspired by your own environment. I mean, you do in London and there’s a pretty good chance someone will object that there’s never ever been a tiny ice cream shop on Convent Street. Throw one in in Belfast? Less people will notice. If the majority of the setting is solid, pasting some of our own local colour over it won’t throw too many people out of the story.

I mean, hey, if it’s good enough for Sons of Anarchy… Not that I’m still bitter about the Belfast season (I mean, a: it was so inaccurate and b: I didn’t get to meet any of them).

Finally, of course…

The Brigadoon Move

‘This town? Oh, this town was always here!’ As long as you don’t get too over excited and try and add a new city, most people are happy to accept a fictional town or village. Particularly if you’re writing in America, which is frankly huge enough that it’s believable you could lose possibly lose a town. I mean, there’s a lot of acreage! Of course, if you do this then you have to build yourself a nice solid town – which can take even more time than doing your research.

What option works best depends on the author, and the book. In my experience, if the location is a big part of the story then the first or last option works best. It gives you the most control and the most options.

In the end though, balls to it all – write what you want!

*wikipedia should not be your last port of call, it is a useful first port of call

**obviously this is in relation to writing fiction, if you are writing non-fiction or medical dictionaries then knowing what you’re doing is practically a requirement. I would go as far as saying you shouldn’t write medical textbooks unless you’re pretty confident in the subject matter.