Settings In The Real World

Now that you have in mind where your story will be set, you need to think about that setting as your character sees it and how they will show it to your reader. One huge thing to remember if you choose to set your story in a real place where people actually live now a day is that readers can tell if you get things wrong. Some readers will notice if you say the third house on the street is blue when really it’s yellow or if your character thinks a town is sweet and peaceful when really the town is dingy and filled with gang wars. If you decide to put your story in a real place, you probably want to take an extended vacation there or, preferably, have lived there for a time to understand the mode and habits of the area. (Putting a Georgia accent on a group of people all living in Florida could cause you to lose readers as well.) If your readers find too many discrepancies between the real world they live in and the “real world” your characters live in without there being some explanation, the reading won’t be as smooth and they may merely put the book down and never read it again so be careful how accurate your setting is to the real world.