On another group blog I belong to Fangs, Fur & Fey the question came up about why authors chose the setting that they do.
My answer was:
Why did I pick Madison, Wisconsin?
Sunny cornfields, quaint touristy shops in a medium-sized capitol city, cows lowing in pastures... it all just SCREAMS vampires, doesn't it?
No?
No, and that was kind of the idea. I'm from Wisconsin (LaCrosse, not Madison) and growing up there I always *wished* a faerie or a werewolf or a vampire would come stalking out of the woods, but they never did. So, righting that wrong was part of my motivation for chosing Madison. Madison, also, is just big enough to hide a vampire or two, and it has an occult bookstore for my heroine to work in. Garnet (my heroine) fled a much larger Minnesota city (the one I'm currently living next to -- Minneapolis) and Madison seems like worlds away from there, though it has a similar flavor -- very artsy, vaguely hippy, and very "shade-grown, organic, bicycle-delivered." I thought my heroine would feel very much at home there (as I do, when I visit.)
Madison is just one of those towns that you couldn't make up if you tried -- or, if you did, no one would believe you. It's not unlike the fictional "Stars Hallow" from Gilmore Girls, except larger and with more politicans (it's Wisconsin's capitol.)
I like having a real place to draw on, though I don't let that limit me. I freely use the Madison of my memory, which is to say that some of the places that I have my hero and heroine visit used to be there, but are no longer. I also happily make up things, like a Goth nightclub, when the spirit (or the plot) move me.
My question is:
What about you? Where did you set your novels and why? Is it a real place? Fictional?
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2 comments:
Interesting question. Among other places I've used Minneapolis/St. Paul, Edinburgh, Belgium, parts of Hawaii, Harvard, The University of Minnesota, rural Minnesota, several completely fictional alternate worlds, Hades, Mount Olympus, and Glacier National park in my books so far. I've done it for a variety of reasons, but at root it's all about what setting I think will serve the story. That's the short answer. The longer one will have to wait for me to finish my revisions, which will hopefully happen today.
Funny you should ask, since my wife asked me to sort out where my short stories are set.
Minneapolis / St. Paul is where the bulk of my "real-word" short pieces are set and is where both of my novels are set as well.
When I want a "real-word" rural setting, I fall back on Oklahoma, where I grew up living in various farm communities.
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