We were talking about this - settings - at writing group on Friday. I write cosy crime, so perhaps it doesn't matter as much, but when I'm writing about somewhere I don't live, I want to get the little things right eg the birds that visit at that time of the year, the plants that are out etc. I've had people say they felt transported to those places. As I said, though, I write cosy crime. The one time, though, I wrote about Sydney which was where I lived at the time, someone wrote in a review that I'd obviously never been there. I was writing about my experience of those places, they were expecting to see theirs.
The Sydney story is perfect — you were writing from the inside, and the reader wanted a mirror, not a window. I think that's actually the same phenomenon. The birds and the plants matter precisely because they're the things that signal to a reader 'this person has really been here' — and when you get them right, it creates trust. When you get them wrong, or when you get them right but differently from how the reader remembers them, that trust collapses entirely. It's a funny old game.
Oh, and for the record, I know some women who have loved breastfeeding for that reason. Sadly, I wasn't that lucky lol.
I know - as if I would make that shit up!
Exactly!
We were talking about this - settings - at writing group on Friday. I write cosy crime, so perhaps it doesn't matter as much, but when I'm writing about somewhere I don't live, I want to get the little things right eg the birds that visit at that time of the year, the plants that are out etc. I've had people say they felt transported to those places. As I said, though, I write cosy crime. The one time, though, I wrote about Sydney which was where I lived at the time, someone wrote in a review that I'd obviously never been there. I was writing about my experience of those places, they were expecting to see theirs.
The Sydney story is perfect — you were writing from the inside, and the reader wanted a mirror, not a window. I think that's actually the same phenomenon. The birds and the plants matter precisely because they're the things that signal to a reader 'this person has really been here' — and when you get them right, it creates trust. When you get them wrong, or when you get them right but differently from how the reader remembers them, that trust collapses entirely. It's a funny old game.