Writing Tips

Location

Kinda inspired by my trip atm to write this chapter.

Note: I'm a resident of the Michigan state in the United States. My parents and I just flew out to San Francisco, California today.

Right now we're on our way to my aunt's place, which is almost two hours north of San Francisco.

We've passed the golden bridge a while ago and also the rainbow tunnel. I'm now mostly looking at the beautiful and lush hills as we pass them.

This whole time I didn't think of this, but now I have.

Sometimes we use real life locations for our stories.

While this is great, it's also a struggle for authors.

When you pick a real life location that your story takes place in, you need to be ready to research the heck out of the place.

You want a story in New York City? Let's get the different areas of the city down and learn some of the major streets!

Your character is traveling to Tokyo, Japan? Look at what hotel costs there are, tourist areas, means of transportation, and where the police station is (usually have "KOBAN"/ 交番 / こばん written on the building).

Say you live in San Francisco, CA (doing this as a good example for major home variation). Most middle class families live in the "suburbs". These are homes that are legit touching one another and are brightly colored usually. Most of them have stairs to go up to the second floor to enter the home or the stairs are right inside the home going up.

^This is a major variation in the suburbs of my hometown. Mine have homes at least 20 feet away from one another. They're 40 feet or more away from the road. And most of the front doors are on a shallow porch. Homes in my suburb usually have a first floor and a second floor. Some are a bi-level where you enter the home and have two sets of stairs: one to the upper level and one to the lower level (finished basement that has access to backyard via door).

Definitely research into the housing in the location you pick. The weather is also very important. It doesn't snow in Mexico, correct?

You also may want to look into the animals in the region you pick and what else is important for daily life (like the grocery store chains, how many restaurants are family owned, etc).

For my area, grocery stores are Meijer, Walmart, Whole Foods, and Kroger.

Here in San Francisco, the grocery stores I've seen are Costco, Walmart, Whole Foods, and some family owned ones.

Just do some basic research if you want to do specifics of a certain thing like a grocery store.

It may be tedious in some areas, but it can really help improve your story's content. 😁