I have had this city called Winter Field in my world since I was fourteen (you know back in the day when we had to walk up hill in the snow bare foot 
) and a lot of it is parts of Dunnville and a splattering of Niagara Falls with the crazy streets of St. Kitts -- even though it's like in the States in basically a valley. *lol*
Question is, how much - if any - of the sites, sounds, people, buildings do you take into your stories, your world? Is your neighbour the crazy landlord of your MC, is the creepy man at the corner store in your story in some form? Do you keep it very close to real life or do you cut and past neighbourhoods and streets?
How much of your familiar grounds are in your words??
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~ W r i t i n g B l o g ~
http://venexeaswritings.blogspot.com/
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Okt 27, 2007 - 09 24
ohhh, I love this topic!
I have travelled a lot in my life. Mostly to England, France, within Germany and the Benelux States, but I have been to a lot of other interesting places and the ones I have not been to, I have come to know through the travels and stories of my grandparents (they were globetrotters and in a sense cosmopolitans if you think Diogenes and Stoics). The world, and universe, is a fantastic playground and up until this year, I have always incorporated places I have come to love in my novels.
Last year, my main characters lived in a house on a road between St. Jacobs and St. Clements out by K-W (where my parents have lived in various houses since 1998). Another character in the story went to U of Waterloo, which has an extensive tunnel system across the grounds. Various incarnations of Kitchener-Waterloo have come into may of my stories, but also Teotihuacan, Hawaii, Southampton, London (London how it was in the 80s and 90s. I used to be able to find my way around that city blindfolded but in the last 10 years... it transformed so much that I don't even know it anymore. It's not my London, sadly), Bali and so many more places.
This year, it is a bit different as I am working within another universe. There will still be places and people that are familiar to me, but less so. I will be more confined by the rules and previous characters of sucha universe.
----------I'm gonna eat your socks!
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Okt 28, 2007 - 23 54
It depends on what I'm writing. The one I got published was heavily inspired by my move to St. Catharines and featured my apartment (not that anyone would recognize it, but I know, so it's all good). The 'verse I tend to default to is the area I grew up, and there's lots of details from around there that have been worked in, pulled out, spliced back, and such over the years. But I've written a fair bit set in places I've never been, too, about things I couldn't possibly know anything about personally, so it depends on what's needed for the story.
What tends to happen more to me is the collection of stories and anecdotes from others weaving their way in. My cousin, say, might tell me about this crazy kid who sits next to her in math class, and when I'm writing in a high school, I might take what made her stories about him so entertaining, twist them a bit, and use that general idea as the kid-one-desk-over-in-Chem. If that makes sense?
They say write what you know. One of my profs said once, "I don't care what happened, I care what's on your page." It's not so much how things are that makes fiction work, it's how we portray them. Your reader might not know which parts of Winter Field is NF, which parts are Dunnville, and which parts are St. Catharines, but you will, and you'll get a private kick out of it. All they need to know is that it's Winter Field, it's real in your world, and here's how things are there.
Clear as mud? *g*