Is anyone else setting their novel locally?

I really had no idea what I was going to be trying to write this year until a few days before the start. Then I was uploading some pics I had taken along the Mississippi in MPLS (where I jog) and the idea hit. SO, my story is set around that area and when I get stuck I flip through the pictures, start describing one in detail and then jump into a plot point of some sort or another. I think it's working!

LOVE the War of the Roses idea, ps!

I don't think I've ever written anything that ISN'T set in the Twin Cities! I know Minneapolis so well, I don't know how to write another city.

Embrace the Crap!

Mine's in the Twin Cities too! My main character is actually from Cambridge, Mass. and has only been in Minneapolis for a few weeks, which makes describing her new experiences in our motherland quite fun and interesting. It makes it SO much easier to describe in detail too, man.

I'm also writing something set locally, but that's just because I don't have to think too hard about the backdrop of the story. I can just pull what I want from real life and tweak what I need to. Ah, artistic license...

http://matthew.kilanowski.us

Me, too. (Sorry, I can't add anything to that post. All my other words are spoken for.)

I started out with my setting being Chicago. I just got back from a trip there so I had it on the brain in the beginning of the month.

But then I realized the restaurant I was describing was the Old Spaghetti Factory and I had described the graveyard by my house, so I decided to just rolled with it and changed the setting to the Twin Cities.

Bonus is that Twin Cities is twice as many words as Chicago.

-double posted. ek. sorry.-

My setting's back in London, which I'd used for 2004, 2005, and 2008 (well, a little of 2006, too). 2007 was set in the Twin Cities.

2009 - Black Mirror Broken - ?

Haha this is the first year Im using a real city rather than my own made up one, but instead of picking my hometown, the Twin Cities, I went with the current location, Tokyo. After all, so many random and embarrassing things happen to me here and to my friends that it makes for a perfect word count bonus to write about them. XD

Working Title: Untitled
Stress Level: 10% (Why did I think this was going to be so hard?)

I'd never used an actual, existing location before, but this year, I've set my novel (for the most part, anywho) on the campus of St Olaf College. Because, um, I'm here. And it's gorgeous. At least it is right now. Everyone tells me it'll get nastier as we actually get on into winter.

But for now? Daaaang, it's nice!

Every word written is a victory against death. (Edward Gibbons)

I'm setting my NaNo in present-day Minneapolis, including locations where I've lived and worked. The other settings are the Government General (German-occupied Poland) in the early 1940s; somewhere in the northernmost slave states (probably Maryland) in the 1850s; 1920s Boston (anyway I think it's 1920s); and Utopia. The Minneapolis part will give me a standard against which to compare how well I've realized the other settings.

It's magical realism, of course...

Tell all the truth, but tell it slant. (Emily Dickinson)

2009: The Reincarnations of Miss Anne
2008: The Scottish Play, or Fire and Ice

I made up a city that is in the upper midwest. Does that count? =)
To me it seems easier to just make up a new city than use a real one for several reasons--1 you can make it anyway you want and 2 you don't come off as an insider that knows the ins and outs of the city from first hand experience which can be off putting to a reader that has never been there.

My novel started out in Minneapolis - 1200 block of Queen ave and traveled up to Broadway and Girard ave area where that park is up there. Then, I moved the story onto a Yacht and to France, and then England. England is the location of many of my stories.

I don't always name the city I'm in, but sometimes do. Usually, I just pretend that such and such restaurant exists in the city of London, knowing very well, that the street changed with the times, and wouldn't fit such a place their. :D My coffee house with the garden in front and waterfall on Sicillian Ave. in London comes to mind.

The Infamous Four series I placed in California, but you wouldn't really know that unless you read my mind. lol That series had the children going to summer camp in the Swiss Alps area too.

I really love the War of the Roses idea, haha.

My novel does not and probably will not explicitly state the city it's in, but I am watching as it unfolds into a description of East St. Paul. There have been several scenes in a high school whose structure has become eerily similar to Harding High School, and there are a few scenes at a bus stop much like the stops on Suburban. I've written several works that take place on the opposite end of the world, but whenever I try to be nondescript my cities turn into my home town.

☆twinkle・starlight・magic・imagine☆

http://megumiwasframed.wordpress.com/

I have to say - starting with War of the Roses, this is HILARIOUS!
The opposite happend to me though, I started my novel thinking about rural Mass around Boston, and nowthe small downtown in it is starting to sound a lot like the town I grew up in, Stillwater. I kind of like that Minnesota snuck in instead of Massachussettes. Now I'm all concerned about how Find and Replace is going to go during editing. Ha!

Ooh, St. Olaf is pretty in the fall. (BTW, there are a LOT of Oles around here). I miss it sometimes. And it'll get cold in the winter. And gross. And be prepared for a lot of mud in the spring. :)

Embrace the Crap!

yah, you betcha!

I started out wanting to set it in Boston, but then kept finding myself editing it and spending time doing research to be true to it... and decided that that was going to hamper me getting my words in, so I decided to reset it in Minneapolis. Much, much faster writing since then.

My two chick lit romances have been set here (2005 and this year's). My historicals were set in Charleston and London, and last year's spy novel was in all sorts of places. My attempt in 2002 was set in generic Midwest town, I believe, until she went to Athens.

I find it easiest to set the modern novels here, since it's what I know. I never get explicit about where exactly they live or what restaurants they frequent or that. Emily worked for a generic company downtown and lived in the southern part of the city. Megan works for Target, but the location of her apartment building is even less specific than Emily's, and Emily's was pretty darned generic. I don't feel I know enough about other cities to accruately represent what it's like to live and work there, much less know that I'm at not getting things horribly wrong. I have enough problems with that when I write something historical.

"You can get away with stuff in real life that you can’t get away with in fiction." -Robin McKinley

My first try, two years ago, was set here. And by here I mean in my neighborhood, in my house; and staring kids who were a lot like my kids.

This year I didn't give it much thought at first. But now it looks like my MCs might live in northern Kentucky or southern Indiana. I spent some of my childhood there and can conjure it up pretty well.

Of course, they could all end up moving here. Lord knows I did.

May your snark never be a boojum,
Jay

Mine takes place in the Twin Cities, but with alternate locations / ones that don't exist anymore (like St. Paul's Miller Hospital, which was demolished in the '80s to make way for the History Center).

My MC's apartment is a hybrid of all the apartments I've lived in, and the neighborhood she lives in seems to be right off of Grand Ave.

I could probably blow away some words describing her setting, huh.

*gets to it

http://www.bymaggie.com/

"All good writing is swimming underwater and holding your breath."
- F. Scott Fitzgerald

"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read."
- Mitch Hedberg

I always set everything I write in MN. I have lived here just about my whole life, so I like to honor MN by including it in all of my writing. I didn't want to get blocked at all this month by switching that up.

Mine's set here, but in 1890-something (haven't quite pinned that down yet), and since it's all part of my overarching greenpunk alt. history, it's called Iminijaska instead of St. Paul.

When the Bees Have Chosen. I'm covered in bee stings, and you keep calling me by your dead girlfriend's name. Do you think we could, maybe, save the philosophy for later?

http://backbooth.thesane.net

Very cool! Mine is set here in current time.

By the time I hit 50K+ words, I expect the majority of the action to have occurred in present day MSP metro area, and possibly Rochester.