finding a good location for a story

how do you find a good location for your story?


should cold places be avoided? are hot and humid places the best?

YellowBarroned said:

how do you find a good location for your story?

should cold places be avoided? are hot and humid places the best?

Click to expand...

Depends on 1) what you write, 2) what you expect, and 3) your skin thickness. For many views, negative comments, and low votes, go with Loving Wives for your cheating stories. If you write Gay Male stories, don't put them in NonHuman. Et cetera.

Locations should be specified if it pertains to a story. If there's travelling involved, or a certain location is part of the setting, etc.
It can be real, or fictitious, depending on the category you put it in. I use Google Earth to get a feel for locations, but not necessarily mention that particular place. I might describe a house I see, or a building, or park.
Hope that helps.
RJ

Oh, you mean STORY location, not POSTING location. Duh. Well yeah, choose a place that fits the story, then go from there.

In cold places, people screw under heavy covers, or inside sleeping bags, or in heated rooms. In hot places, people screw more in the open, and sweat. I put characters in situations ranging from icy New York City in midwinter to hot Yucatan beaches in midsummer.

Hmmm, I should maybe write a piece following someone as they travel through climate zones, a DOOR INTO SUMMER scenario maybe. Hmmm...

Random details provide for extra realism supposedly, but good, tight writing doesn't spend time on wasted words. If a particular climate or weather type is important for the plot, that makes your decision for you. If the weather has no bearing on that plot at all, then you may not even need to specify a location.

Sometimes regional culture can be a factor, you can imply a certain culture by using a location. Suburbs are different from cities. The American midwest is different from down south, out west, and the New England area. Does your story work better in a densely populated area or is isolation better?

How about geography? Do you need a beach, a river, a lake, mountains, farms?

PervOtaku said:

Random details provide for extra realism supposedly, but good, tight writing doesn't spend time on wasted words. If a particular climate or weather type is important for the plot, that makes your decision for you. If the weather has no bearing on that plot at all, then you may not even need to specify a location.

Click to expand...

I have difficulty writing generic-location stories. Location IS critical in many of my pieces. But even total inventions need a sense of place. One way I write: I set-up characters within an environment and set them loose to act-out the story. If the setting is someplace I know, I can easily 'see' where the characters are, and thus paint a richer word-picture. That's my goal: to play the story like a movie in the reader's mind.

Example: JENNY BE FAIR (linked below) is set in a thinly-disguised Coos Bay, Oregon. Didn't have to be. Could have been a generic small-town-USA location. But the locale puts a face on the story -- and lets me slip in some salmon jokes, hinting that the story isn't to be taken seriously.

Or, rather different: I start BRIDE OF KONG in an anonymous squalid Latin American port city. I name some possible places, but the exact location isn't crucial -- I only use that setting to show how far a former hot-shot has fallen. Hopefully my brief description is enough for the reader to 'taste' the story.

Sometimes regional culture can be a factor, you can imply a certain culture by using a location. Suburbs are different from cities. The American midwest is different from down south, out west, and the New England area. Does your story work better in a densely populated area or is isolation better?

Click to expand...

Again, a generic urban or rural location can be rather sterile, storywise. When I set an episode in a Midwestern farming town, a Oaxacan village, a Mojave desert rock-pool, or a Los Angeles suburb, I visualize (but don't name) specific locales. I don't describe in detail -- only enough to give the reader a taste of the place. Generic locations are bland, tasteless, unsatisfying.

How about geography? Do you need a beach, a river, a lake, mountains, farms?

Click to expand...

Pick a place. Put characters in it. See what they do. Some of my pieces have beach settings. Events have different consequences if the beach is on the warm Pacific Coast of Southern California, or the colder coasts north of San Francisco, or the lower Colorado River in midsummer, or a mountain lake, or the Salton Sea -- not just for appropriate dress (or lack thereof) but because different populations (cultures) manifest in different places. Nudists strolling San Diego's Black's Beach, or surfers wave-riding off Santa Cruz, wouldn't be comfortable at a Redneck Rendezvous at Salton Sea or Lake Havasu. That sort of thing.

Think of place as a compelling character in the story, not just a background.

to me the location can depend on the storyline, if you already have one started. For example, a story of stranded lovers could easily be in a colD setting with them stranded by a snowstorm. If clubs and businesses are in the story then a big city might be the setting. I can go either way, develop characters in the environment or have the story idea dictate the best place to have it play out. Just my .02

I'm currently writing a piece where the couple drives across the U.S., so there are cities mention as stopping places for dinning and sleeping. The landscape is mentioned as they travel...fortunately I have taken that drive or at least driven in enough of the states to describe what you would see out the window as you travel along the interstate.

Pick a location you are familiar with. Most of my stories have taken place in cities I have lived in over the years...Chicago, Atlanta, Denver, Colorado Spring, Houston, Paducah and several others. Then there are the cities I have visited for one reason or other, visiting friends, work, etc.

Pick a place you have been, spent some time in...then use what you saw, how you felt and include it in the story.

Must say i love beach or nudist camp locations,either loving wives or incest when there is a lot of teasing and rubbing of sunscreen

NudieNomads said:

Must say i love beach or nudist camp locations,either loving wives or incest when there is a lot of teasing and rubbing of sunscreen

Click to expand...

I like to flip or subvert stereotypes and tropes. To me, the nude beach/camp is fairly trite and is thus worthy of reconstruction. Maybe a piece where a family of diehard nudists is forced to swim at a clothing-required beach. For fun, put that beach in a time+place where full coverups are mandatory like Coney Island 1910 or Persian Gulf 2010.