Researching Story Locations

I love writing stories, but I find researching story locations finding background information on places I have never visited difficult. Any suggestions?

Writing stories based in locations you’ve never visited is always tough, unless you have excellent research and an impressive ability to visualise yourself in different settings.

While there are some great travel sites online, from my experience they tend to focus more on places rather than the atmosphere, which can be an essential part of fiction writing. Besides some travel sites come with so much hype it’s difficult to know if the trendy corner bistro on a specific crossroads is really trendy or just looking for extra custom to cover the cost of repainting their peeling ceiling.

However, these sites do provide, in most cases, the vital factual information required for researching story locations. From them you will learn things like: how far one place is from another and the best way to get there, what the traditional food is, some interesting locations and annual festivals.

Big glossy travel books and the less glossy travel guides will also provide the same kind of information. But usually from a slightly different perspective, and it’s the different perspective that makes them important because it widens your view.

My favourite way for researching story locations, though, is done through DVDs and movies set in the chosen area. There is nothing like seeing people actually going about their life to give a true impression of what it’s like to live in a different country or town. That way you can hear what it sounds like to walk through a swaying field of poppies or feel the energy of a weekly market set in a cobblestone square.

I usually start by nipping down to my local library and hiring out recent copies of travel shows. While these programmes tend to only cover one aspect of a location, it is usually in detail and you have the added bonus of watching the presenter’s genuine reactions to the place.

Sadly though, there is a risk of this or any other kind of research leading simply to a desk full of facts, figures and promotional junk for holiday attractions, and to be honest there is rarely any better way to know a place than to visit it. But with sufficient info behind you and a creative mind it can be possible to sound, if not like a local, than at least like a recent day tripper.

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