Story Settings Where You Wanted to Be

[RetroFan]

Story settings are important to me as an author, the location, the landmarks, cultural references and the time period where it takes place. I know not all authors feel the same way, and there are many stories on the site where there is no mention of the setting at all.

Have you ever written a story where you really wanted to be there, in the same setting and time as your story is taking place, and not just for the erotic aspects of the story? I had this experience last year when I wrote 'Banging Cousin Becky In Blackpool', which is set in Blackpool, England in the summer 1955 and features two cousins from Liverpool enjoying their holiday a little more than cousins should.

I don't live in England and have never been to Blackpool and the story is set a long time before I was born, but the whole time I was writing it I was wishing I was there enjoying a summer holiday in Blackpool when it was in its heyday all those years ago. It was like I was experiencing nostalgia, but for a place where I had never been, in a time I never lived in and which is long past.

Do you have any similar experiences with your stories?

 

[gunhilltrain]

Often my stories are set in places where I was in at a certain time. Like I have some now that are set in a New Jersey office building similar to two I worked in during the 1980s and '90s. I believe both still exist. Do I want to go back to that time and place? Not really, they were rather unexciting. The only good thing about it was that I was in jobs where I made more money than I do now in retirement.

 

[HeyAll]

Honestly, I don't have the skills to effectively create setting. So I largely ignore it.

 

[SamScribble]

I do normally set stories in a specific location. And, so far, I don't think I have set a story in a location that I have not at least visited, albeit for just a few days. I guess I'm too lazy to make things up.

 

[NotWise]

I use common settings, settings where I've been, or I set things where I am. I don't recall writing anything set where I wanted to be. It seems like a lot of work, and for the most part I am where I want to be.

I have written historical settings. That has nothing to do with wanting to be there, and it's a lot of work.

 

[SimonDoom]

Usually, no. Most of my stories take place in generic settings. American suburbia.

But my latest story, which I hope to publish in a few days, is set at a mountain lake similar to one to which I have been backpacking, and about which I have fond memories. I've wanted to publish a story set in the wilderness for a while, because mountain wilderness is stirring and romantic to me.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I do normally set stories in a specific location. And, so far, I don't think I have set a story in a location that I have not at least visited, albeit for just a few days. I guess I'm too lazy to make things up.

Likewise. Every location in any of my stories (except the one set on Titan) is based on somewhere real: a street, a building, a place. Even my Arthurian legend novel - every setting was somewhere I'd been.

 

[CyranoJ]

For me, the most interesting stories (even erotic ones) happen in places I wouldn't want to visit.

 

[RejectReality]

It depends upon the story for me in this name. A lot of the time, it's the barest of descriptions. If the location ties into the theme of the story, I'll go into more detail like I did in Old Man Winter or Pickin' an' Grinnin'.

The two I've got open now are polar opposites. Curl & Figure goes deep into the setting, while Starr Search barely touches on it.

I tend to flesh out the settings a lot more in my other two names, because those are typically stories with more meat on the bones.

I usually use someplace I've been and know intimately, like the woods out behind my grandparents' house when I was a kid, the cabin we had access to down by the river, the town I grew up in, etc.

 

[PennameWombat]

Story settings are important to me as an author, the location, the landmarks, cultural references and the time period where it takes place. I know not all authors feel the same way, and there are many stories on the site where there is no mention of the setting at all.

Have you ever written a story where you really wanted to be there, in the same setting and time as your story is taking place, and not just for the erotic aspects of the story?<snip>

Do you have any similar experiences with your stories?

Most, but certainly not all, of my stories are set on an Earth that’s very recognisable. A few I’ve tried to almost allow an interested reader to follow along on a map, modulo the story may be set in the past or the future. Even those not that detailed drop references that would allow readers to recognise at least some of the locations.

But the second part, no. Locations in which I’ve lived I chose because they offered something about geography or place that offered a ‘hook’ to use. Although my post-apocalyptic Las Vegas from One Night In Las Vegas come close.

Most of the settings themselves aren’t supposed to drive the eroticism and sex. That’s meant to build from the characters and their actions.

 

[YDB95]

True of almost all my stories. It's a big part of why I write, to imagine a more pleasant alternate universe.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Many of my fables are set in a vaguely North American city. A few are set in specific locations. Some are set in entirely fictional and in many ways implausible settings.

It's complicated, so to speak.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

I've written many stories set in locations where I never visited, and google maps came to be a very good tool for getting the description of the place and if when you are there and stay at one of the big hotel chains, then you have it made as they are all pretty much picture perfect and all look like the pictures on there sites.

As for other places, they are usually set in places I have been too or live in. I do describe them, yet sometimes I know them so well, that I may be lax in the description.

Then I have stories where the location really doesn't matter.

And others that I just make up. Those are mostly Sci-Fi stories.

Basically, if the sex takes place in a bedroom, most bedrooms are laid out the same no matter where. The same for bathrooms. Well, except maybe Japan. Living rooms are living room, in a house or an apartment.

During the summer months, outside is green. During the winter in the northern latitudes the outside is cold, grey, and sometime white. I guess they are the same in the southern latitudes during their winter.

I collaborated on a story for one of lits contests and had a couple traveling from New York to San Francisco. Google maps was my friend for all those places I had never been as the author I was working with lived in Germany.

Personally, I think we did a great job. He wrote the sex I wrote the scenery.

It's online here. The Big Catch.