Places you know, places you don't

 

Write about what you know! Which would-be novelist never came across this piece of advice, given by established authors, in writing magazines, and such? A wise piece of advice. But is it one that should be followed, especially when writing about different places?

 

If you were to write only about what you know, you would not be able to write about places where you had never been. And actually, you could not write about the past either, since, except if you are the lucky owner of a time-travelling machine, none of us have experienced it first-hand (or only through reading books, and visiting museums and old houses). Should that stop you? I don’t think so. At least, I didn’t let this piece of advice stop me from writing about a time that is not mine and places I have never visited. 

Yet, I do understand, that what this advice truly means, is that if you write about what you do not know yourself, there are more risks of using clichés, of being boring, of being to descriptive, as if we tried to make up for our ignorance. How to avoid that? 

In my soon to be published historical fiction novel As Winter Came and Went, I wrote about two types of places. Places I knew and places I didn’t:

• One place I know very well worked itself into the novel. Though the plot is set in the 19th century, the landscape of this place I wrote about changed very little, allowing me to describe it as I know it. It was easy and very agreeable to be able to set a good part of my novel in this place, which I really love, and I hope that this enable me to make my descriptions more authentic, effective, attractive.

 

• Then, a chapter of the novel is set in a place I never visited. I know about this place, I saw many pictures of this place, I’ve got a good idea of what this place looks like. This could have been enough to make it a credible enough setting. But I chose a different course: instead of describing the place I had heard of, I described another place, where I’d actually been. I sort of swapped the place I didn’t know for one I did, giving the second the name of the first. Why did I do that? Because the atmosphere of the second place and the impressions on my sense of sight, touch, smell, were both strong and interesting, I thought they could be worked into my novel and attributed to some of the characters. This resolved the problem of authenticity.

 

• But not every place can be exchanged for another. Another location of As Winter… was difficult to write about: though I had been to a place nearby, I had no direct experience of this specific location. So what did I do? Did I look at touristic brochures? Did I watch films set in that location? Actually, I did a bit of both, but this is not what made me able to describe this place. What I did to achieve that was very simple: I took the liberty of completely imagining the place I was describing, using but vague geographical references. In fact, I decided I did not so much want to describe a place as its effect on the main character’s mind. And I took the decision to wrap it all in magical realism and symbolism. So in that case, I exchanged a specific location for an atmosphere.

 

I’ll give more details about those different places (and give their names!) once I have published my novel.

 

I’ll conclude this post with my advice relating to writing about places you know and places you don’t:

 

• Writing about places you know well is easier and can help you be more authentic. You can also lend your characters your own feelings about this place and thus give depth to their personality.

 

• Being able to use those personal feelings about a place can help you steer clear of clichés and stereotypes, even if that place has already inspired many authors over the centuries.

 

• Yet not knowing a place should not stop you from writing about it. You can “exchange” it for a similar place you do know. For instance, if you want to set your novel in the Himalayan range, where you have never been, but know the French Alps very well, why not use that knowledge? The Mount Blanc cannot be substituted for Mount Everest but the feelings the mountain arouse, the cold, the rugged landscape, the hostile beauty of the mountain-range are so many elements that you can use in those descriptions.

 

• Another solution is to read touristic brochures, watch films, read books, find as many pictures and maps as you can of the place you want to describe, while trying to find an original angle for your description.

 

• And the last solution is to use the symbolism of a place instead of its geography, and be imaginative. After all, imagination is a writer’s most precious tool!