Unless the plot of your romance absolutely
demands a real-life locale, you’ll do yourself a favor by inventing your
setting—but not out of whole cloth. For authenticity, it’s best to thoroughly
research factual models for the fictional elements that you create.
For
example, most of the action in my first novel, Ember from the Sun, takes place in the Pacific Northwest among a contemporary
Native American tribe. I used as my model the Haida tribe who live on Haida
Gwaii (the Queen Charlotte Islands, Canada). I studied the Haida Indians in
depth, learning about their history, language, customs, religion, art, clothing,
housing, and methods of fishing and whaling. I also researched the Queen Charlotte
Islands’ flowers and trees, birds and mammals, topography and climate. Then, after
two months of research, I named my fictitious tribe the Quanoot, and its imaginary
homeland, Whaler Bay Island.
Studying
the real tribe and its actual territory enabled me to enhance the novel with authentic
particulars. For instance, the story included a scene in which modern Quanoot
men build a war canoe by the ancient, traditional method of the Haida.
On the
other hand, creating an imaginary tribe gave me the wiggle room to focus on the
needs of my narrative without stressing about getting facts wrong, and I was
free to invent a Quanoot legend that was central to my plot without feeling
that I was appropriating a real people’s culture.
At
first glance, it may seem that this advice mostly pertains for authors of
historical romances, but it is at least as relevant for authors of
contemporaries. Consider that while there are many readers who are experts on various
historical periods, there are probably far more who know about whatever
contemporary reality you plan to describe. They’ll be swift to notice errors of
fact. Therefore, unless your story utterly requires an actual place, set it an
apocryphal locale.
Let
us say that your love story involves a hero who was once a logging crew
foreman, but now he’s seeking employment because the logging industry has
collapsed. For authenticity, find a real town that fits your story’s needs and
use it as the pattern for your research. Read everything you can find about the
town and the logging industry; study maps and nature guides; visit the area and
interview loggers and the mayor, and so forth. But when your research is done,
don’t write about the actual town; make up your own.
I’m
currently researching a YA novel whose heroine is the Eastern Surfing
Association Junior Women’s Champion. This is a case of writing what I know: I
grew up in the surfer subculture in Melbourne Beach, Florida, and I once dated
the then-current ESA Junior Women’s champion (back in the Pleistocene Era). I’m
going to return to my favorite surf spots and interview surfers there and at
the local surf shops. Nonetheless, I’m not going to set the novel in my real
hometown. There are thousands of people living there now and some readers will balk
at any detail I change or simply get wrong. But no one ever gets upset and
slings a book across the room just because she suspects that such-and-such a
town can’t be found on any map; so I’ll set my story in “Satellite Shores”—population
zero, because the place does not exist.
The
beauty of this research-and-switch method of creating fiction is that you can convey
the genuine ambience of a real setting—Florida’s east coast, or an economically
depressed logging town in Oregon—without trapping your plot in specifics. Remember
the motto of tabloid journalists: “Never let the facts get in the way of a good
story!”
