March 2025 Round Robin – Real Places

This month for the Round Robin conversation we are discussing how we plant real life settings into our work and make them feel authentic.

I am going to preface this by saying there is no substitute for sitting in a place and letting it settle into your bones. Yes, you can research a setting. You can look at pictures and read through interesting bits about a particular area, and you should.

History makes a place come to life. It’s why going back to your childhood home after several years feels weird, because memories haunt you. There’s the street corner where you fell off your bike and chipped a tooth, but it’s overgrown with weeds now or the city widened the sidewalk. Or there’s the shop where you used to buy ice cream and sit with your friends that was replaced by an automotive store.

Layering your setting with history connects that setting to the character, which in turn connects it to the reader. And yes, this is a trick you can do for world building as well, but that’s for next month. For now, understanding the history of the neighborhood/town/city your character is sitting in will help increase authenticity.

But, and this is a HUGE BUT, it also needs to be relevant.

People care more about the chipped tooth incident than they do the about the building in the background and the fact that it was built in 1918 as the original town hall. Unless you’re telling a ghost story and ghosts from 1918 are out haunting people. Then the information is relevant.

Now, back to my original comment.

There is no substitute for sitting in a place and letting it settle in your bones.

There just isn’t.

You can research a lot and get away with looking like you’ve been to a place, but at the end of the day you miss the stuff that natives to that area will look for. Things like the smell of the repair garage as you pass it on the street, or the difference in the air from the valley to the mountaintop. The sounds that travel.

All of these things you can try to fake if you ask someone who lives there to tell you, but you won’t quite get it. These are things you can only truly understand if you sit down and observe with your whole self. Then record what you’ve observed after.

That’s where the art of writing truly comes into play.

Does this mean I’m suggesting you go everywhere you intend to make a setting in your books?

Yes and no.

You can visit a region and get a fairly good sense of the setting without going to a specific road/house/whatever. A beach in New England will be different from a beach in California, however, and noting those differences firsthand will be a giant boon to the writing process. So I do recommend travelling.

Travel. Experience. Observe. Let the world sink into your bones.

Trust me, those bones will remember when you start to write.

See what my fellow authors have to say about writing Settings and making them authentic!

Bob Rich   https://wp.me/p3Xihq-3r1

A.J. Maguire https://ajmaguire.wordpress.com/ (YOU ARE HERE)

Belinda Edwards https://booksbybelinda.com/blog/

Helena Fairfax http://www.helenafairfax.com/blog

Connie Vines http://mizging.blogspot.com/

Sally Odgers https://behindsallysbooks.blogspot.com/2025/02/romance.html

Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea

Anne Stenhouse https://annestenhousenovelist.wordpress.com/