Making Real-Life Settings Seem Real
The round robin this month is a wonderful subject... making real-life settings seem real! Using real-life settings for books is a fascinating mixture of joy and consternation. As with writing fantasy and science fiction, using a real setting appears to offer a lifeline. In fantasy and science fiction we can make anything happen—right? Don’t have a gadget to repel gravity? Invent one and hand it to our characters. Can’t think of a blood-pounding challenge for our weedy hero? Introduce a dragon into the playground. Yeah. That’ll do it. Yet of course, it’s not that simple. For every greasing of the wheels switching to a speculative fiction genre offers, it tosses at least as many spokes into the same wheels. It’s the same with real-life settings. On the face of it, using a real place means we don’t have to invent stuff, right? Maybe, but we still have to solve some thorny problems. For one thing, we have to be familiar with that setting because failing to research is going to me...