I’ve recently decided to try to lift up the pen again, but this particular thread worries me. I’d thought of writing a short-story based in Liverpool. I immediately realized I’d never been there, and reading Wikipedia would still probably land me in the doghouse with those that -had- been there, as I’d get street-names wrong, or locations, or travel-times, or ethnicities, or some-such. I’d like to be an accurate and readable writer, but I’d also like not to be stuck writing about the particular suburb I live in, as I’m not well-travelled.
So, how does one go about dealing with the knowledge that their writing isn’t going to be spot-on accurate? Or how does one get to -be- spot-on accurate?
Ignore the thread. You don’t have to be 100% accurate, especially in minor details irrelevant to the plot. People who complain about the wrong street names aren’t interested the the story, anyway.
Your job is not to be accurate, but to create verisimilitude. The setting has to feel real and the characters need to be acting on understandable motives. If you set in a story in a Liverpool pub, it should deal with the concerns of people who drink in a Liverpool pub, and the characters should speak and sound like Liverpudlians. If you can do that, those who nitpick that the street goes east-west and you have it going north-south don’t matter in the slightest.
The second problem with being spot-on accurate is that there’s always someone who thinks he knows more than he does and criticizes the work due to his own ignorance of the situation; there are examples of that in the thread, too.
Your bigger issue is not the street names or locations. If you’ve never been to Liverpool, you probably won’t realistically capture the thinking of the characters. It runs the risk of creating a French character who says “sacre bleu!” a lot.
The rule is “write what you know,” and if you know your suburb, you’re better off writing about that. Unless there’s some reason why Liverpool is a better location, stick with what you know – an be prepared for someone to nitpick that.
I’m not a writer, but I am a reader, and most books and stories set in particular real-life places don’t spend a lot of time on street names and such. You’re not writing a guidebook, so for the most part you can just avoid saying things like “He took the #1 Bus down Street X from Point A to Point B.” Unless the particular route taken is important to the story, it would be better to just say something like “When he arrived at Point B that night…” or “He’d been at Point B about an hour when…”
Many locations in your story can be fictional even if it’s set in a real city. You can invent your hero’s place of employment, favorite pub, etc., and have it be however you like. You probably want to avoid things like sticking a mansion in a slum or a dive bar in the middle of an upper crust neighborhood, but that kind of thing is pretty easy to research. If for instance you want your hero to visit a Chinese restaurant you should feel free to just make one up, but if you want him to visit Chinatown you should check to make sure that Liverpool actually has one (it does).
Another consideration is that a place like Liverpool has an overwhelmingly strong cultural identity, at least in the UK. Research will be easy, as a result, but you’ll be challenged by cliche and stereotype. When central casting require a ‘Liverpudlian’ they’re looking for aggressive / sentimental / criminal / confrontational etc. Cutting through this bullshit and finding a real voice for the story might be hard, particularly at a distance.
Setting a story in a city like Bristol, to name a similar sized port in the UK that has limited cultural identity, will be easier from this POV as you’ve got a blank slate to work with. There is no such thing as ‘Bristolian’ at central casting. Flipside of that is who wants to situate a story in a location that can’t pull it’s weight?
A good travel book or two might also help you get some of the details right - at least when it comes to factual stuff like maps, bus routes, descriptions of neighbourhoods and such.
The other thing to keep in mind is that most authors use an expert or two as part of their research, especially if they’re writing about something/someplace they’ve never experienced firsthand. Most of the errors people are bringing up in the linked thread would easily have been spotted by someone who is actually familiar with the subject matter, if only the author had asked their opinion.
Now, one thing I’ve noticed that we seem to have several very knowledgeable members who are experts in a variety of fields/subjects, and most Dopers are Olympic-quality nitpickers who love to pick out silly mistakes in books/film/art/whatever. Given that combination, I’m sure there ought to be someone around here who knows Liverpool fairly well and who’d be willing to nitpick their way through your story to spot obvious mistakes in the setting.
(I’ve never been, unfortunately, but I’d be happy to provide feedback if you ever decide to set a story in Toronto or surrounding area… though I have no idea why anyone would ever want to do that)
I asked a similar question and the above posters gave simlar responses.
Bascially you don’t have to be accurate just don’t give the readers things that are unbelieveable. For instance don’t have the hero being saved by a snow storm it your story is set in the Sahara Desert.
I am a fan of using real streets and such, simply because it provides powerful imagery. I recall stories by Betty Smith (A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, Maggie Now and Tomorrow Will Be Better.") where she describes the street and when I went to Brooklyn it was fun to see the streets she mentioned and visualize them. But that is an extreme example.
This is exactly what I would advise. Write the story based on what you do know, and then hand it over to a Liverpudlian who can point out any errors. Usually fixing these sorts of mistakes won’t force you to change your plot drastically, as long as you have done some very basic research before you begin (read an encyclopedia article, look at a map).
That. You can obtain general information about a place through google maps, tourist info, even places that offer apartments for rent. For more specific stuff, there’s got to be Dopers who can answer your questions. But the Liverpool you write about doesn’t have to be the real Liverpool: you’re working on a tale, not the evening news. And of course keep track of the stuff you invent: if someone lives above a pub in chapter one, they’re unlikely to be living in a mansion by chapter 4 and squatting by chapter ten (they can be doing it, but if they are, there should be a reason that happens).
Oh, and don’t forget that there are trained professionals available in your community to help you with your research – librarians!
Your local public library should have a reference librarian who can help you find both general information on Liverpool and also answers to specific factual questions you might have. If there’s a college or university in your area then you could also ask for help from their reference librarians, although I’d recommend that you be aware of the academic calendar and not come in asking for help right at the end of the semester when they’ll be swamped with students.
I’m a university librarian myself, and although I have yet to be asked to help with a work of fiction I have on several occasions helped people from the local community with their research. I once had a tattoo artist come in asking for help finding depictions of demons in Japanese art. I spent quite some time with him looking at image databases and Asian art books, and sent him away with four or five pictures to use as references for his tattoo design.
You can also do a fair amount of on-line research about the layout of Liverpool via Google Maps. You can even get some idea of what a particular part of town is like using the street-level view tool.