Writing Home: Using One's Home Town for Setting

Creating fiction requires many essentials. One needs characters, a plot, setting, time period, and other factors which narrow the concept down to a point where the author may begin to write. Setting is key; and, as it often is with literature, characters are based on the writer’s persona, and very often, the characters live in where the writer does. How many authors can you name whose works place their protagonist in the very town where they grew up or where they currently live? I’ll give you one: Nelson DeMille has written books set on Long Island where he currently resides, and in New York City where he was born. This is a practice which I have only recently embraced.

My first novel, “The Tin Age,” is set in suburbia, and the main character, Martin Spratt, is a county police officer. I imagined the county based on the one where I reside and added many of the qualities which made this setting attractive to me: Hamlets full of quiet, tree lined streets, wooded areas on the outskirts of towns, and a government structure which allows for a full service, county-wide police department were the factors I needed to make the story work. In retrospect, instead of concocting a name, I should have simply utilized the actual region where I live as it would have been familiar to any potential local audience.

That is an attractive aspect to applying this technique as the residents of the municipality depicted in your story would be more likely to read your work and create buzz for you and your novel. This is a factor not lost on literary agents and publishers; in addition, this type of ingredient in a story works when employed the moment the task of writing the manuscript is begun. In my case with my fictional county, it would take a little effort to change village and street names to match existing locations; but, none of these roads and communities is described accurately in this story and a major re-write would then be in order to achieve authenticity. It is best to plot your location as well as your storyline at the outset as the two are intertwined.

With fiction, writing about genuine locations is useful if one wishes to add color, depth, and breadth to the story. Each locale has a unique and rich history. Customs are inbuilt, and reasonable expectations can be placed on climate, local customs, geography, and the speech of its inhabitants. Using one’s own native state, town, or actual place of birth allows a writer to draw upon their own individual experiences and include them in the narrative, albeit an imagined one.

For example, a writer may draft a scene where two brothers are walking to school. In an imaginary town, more elements may have to be explained to the audience by the author because the reader may not have a clue as the where these school boys are. The reader sees a blank, nondescript boulevard the boys are traveling on, and illustrative gaps need to be filled in by an author with different ideas than his or her audience. Experiences of the reading audience dictate how they perceive your imagined community. The more closely the reader connects with your characters' surroundings, then the more the reader gets from reading your book. If you write about a genuine place, then existing structures and sites can enrich your writing.

You can save yourself some time and set the story in San Francisco, for example, and mostly everyone knows that the roads there are all hilly, and the reader envisions streetcars as well. Write about real cities and towns and you draw the reader in. Use the environs of a region where you reside, and you’re an authority. The knowledge you have of the locale and the facts you provide enhance what you put down on paper.

With my latest novel, “The Daddy Rock,” I used my native Long Island as the backdrop. This allowed me to celebrate the beauty and diversity of the landscape as my protagonist, Roger Price, migrated from the low lying, seaside marinas along south shore to the rocky and elevated north shore. My childhood was spent growing up in a small hamlet by the Great South Bay. My south shore sensibilities are apparent in Roger as he is transplanted to the more affluent north shore hugging the Long Island Sound where I’ve settled and decided to raise my family. Familiarity with my place of birth allows me to effectively guide my characters and blend them seamlessly into a world with a readily available supply of buildings, landmarks, customs, and people where they can interact and play out the drama. Also, it is always easier to write about a place you are passionate about. Frequent readers of this blog are aware of my deep affection for my home, Long Island. That made writing my latest novel more natural.

In summary, when writing fiction, a valuable shortcut to creating a story’s setting may be to place your characters in the very town where you live in order to draw upon your own knowledge of the area, take advantage of a local audience, and to rely on local history, customs, geography, and landmarks to help you tell your tale. On a side note, I am writing a novel about a young man who joins the Russian Army and I may have to relocate to Moscow for a few years. Do they have the internet in Russia?





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My Characters And Me

It's that instant when you get a great idea for a story; you're in the shower, in a meeting at work, or waiting for someone to quit talking to you so you can nod and walk away. Yes, we writers are always writing, even when we're not in front of our computers. For me, when that moment of inspiration hits, and I'm able to ditch my responsibilities and scurry off to find a pen and a scrap of paper to jot my ideas on, my characters begin to come to life.

In my head, their personalities are formed first. I'll imagine someone with the fortitude to rescue an entire nation, or merely reach for a ball in a sewer, or whatever the plot calls for. I’ll then see that person's human shape assemble itself in that section of the brain reserved for a writer's special talents. For me, it's the character’s behavior and traits which dictate their physical characteristics.

In my latest story, my protagonist, Roger, is a former police officer in the process of grieving. He's not very active because he finds it difficult to get out of bed everyday because he does not have a whole lot to live for. He does not work and lives off his police pension. He becomes overweight because of his sedentary lifestyle and the fact that he does not take care of himself. Later, he takes a job as his life and spirits improve. After a few months he begins to lose weight and gain some muscle tone. Roger's emotions dictate his physical appearance in this example. As the writer, I had to be true to Roger and describe him as was necessary based on his emotional state of being; heavy at first, but then slim and in shape, only because he changed as a person and became active again.

That is just one example of how my characters form. There are, however, shortcuts to my characterizations. In my first novel, Sergeant Fukes is based on a sergeant I had in the police department, physically, and psychologically only by half. His personality is an amalgam of both my squad sergeant’s and another sergeant I knew at one time in my career. The two were dissimilar in looks and persona, and I thought is would be ideal to combine their mannerisms into one person because they both would have handled certain situations in the story very differently. I thought their dissimilar habits would make for an interesting character. One sergeant was a brown nose who never would question a superior, and the other was a stickler for department regulations which very often were obscure and rarely used. The man I created was a rigid, rule worshipping nebbish who also could not say no to anyone who outranked him or was senior to him. This created friction as there were policies to be obeyed, but he did not have the fortitude to enforce them with anyone who wasn’t below him in rank. As a result, he was ineffective as a supervisor.

Finally, instead of shaping characters from my imagination, or basing them on other people, more than once I based a protagonist on myself. Writing is indeed therapy, and using the space of entire novel to reconcile my religious faith or my misspent youth does have a healing effect. Also, I hope it may be enticing material for someone to read. Another benefit of using me as inspiration for a character is that it is less likely that someone would think I wrote about them.

These are just a few examples of how I create characters. Once my central character is born, he needs family, friends, co-workers, etc, and they seem to spring up around him and fill in the spaces in the story neatly along the way through each chapter as I write them. Notice how I said “they spring up around him.” That’s because I have yet to write a story completely around a woman. Maybe it’s because I’m still writing about myself, or maybe it’s because the only story I want to tell about a woman will be based entirely on someone I’m very close to and I don’t think I want her to read it yet. It’ll be tough to keep that manuscript from her because my wife reads every one of my stories. Oh great, she’s going to read this post too.

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Write Whatever You %$#@*%$! Want

My former career as a police officer seemed like an alluring one to many. All the way back to the old 1951 TV series "Dragnet" with Jack Webb, and later on with 1968 to "Adam-12" with Martin Milner and Kent McCord, these shows planted an image of police officers as curt professionals in the minds of the public. Their language was official, and they were all business. Jack Webb's character, Sgt. Joe Friday, made "Just the facts, Ma'am" part of the American lexicon. The awful truth however, is that cops have filthy mouths. Also, the criminals that police interact with tend to spew obscenities as a second language. Together, police and "suspects" become a cursing, swearing, and profane, mega-force whose power doesn’t always switch off in polite company. I’ve been to many an occasion where I had to suddenly remember "where I was" and not drop the "F-Bomb" at my wife's, Grandmother's 83rd birthday party.

Since I left the police department in 1999, I switched careers and now work in the information technology field. Still, I am a writer as much as I was a cop or a computer geek. Much of my writing revolves around the world of crime, patrol officers, and the occasional shootout. But, to balance my credibility with the reader and the dialogue between my characters, I am very selective with my use of profanity. It is said that a good novel is not what you put into it, but what you take out of it. So, in order to allow my characters to converse with each other without my story reading like a wall in a public restroom, I save the vulgarities for moments where it would have the most impact.

For example, in my most recent story, my protagonist is a retired cop who lost his wife and daughter to a drunk driver. His best friend is a retired detective whose lover died of cancer. They bond because of their loneliness, but have to defend themselves from the organized crime figures who wish to take revenge against the detective for arresting them decades earlier and landing them in prison. My original draft had the two of them cursing, swearing, and expressing themselves with incredible vulgarity to the point where it became tedious, boring, and ultimately ineffective. In the end, I deleted all of the four letter words and discovered that in some scenes they really weren’t saying much of anything each other, let alone the reader, and that much of the dialogue was worthless. After scrapping much of the unnecessary bad language, I began to write more dramatic discourse without the F-word and the like, and I told the story with a fresh voice.

Towards the climax of the story, where my protagonist is confronted by the murderer of his wife and daughter, I finally allowed my character to unleash his rage, and he did it with every available tool on his belt, including the four-letter variety. The words became more vile, hurtful, and effective because the reader hadn’t seen them for most of the book and they come on as a bit of a surprise. At least that’s the feedback I’ve received from those who have read the manuscript already. So, I’m glad I held back, trusted my instincts, and washed my characters' mouths out with soap.

Am I saying that a writer shouldn’t allow his or her characters to curse? Of course not. As always, these articles reflect my method of writing. If anyone finds any of this useful, I am happy to have helped. If you think that I am being too careful and that you can have your characters curse early and often in your stories, then go ahead. Do whatever the fuck you want.

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Writing in a Vacuum

Writers write...always. That’s the old adage I've been unable to attribute to anyone in particular. However, it works for me as I am always writing about something. With that said, if it wasn't for this blog--which is in its infancy--no one would read anything I put down on paper, or on my hard drive for that matter.

Writers are an arrogant bunch, really. We think that just because we authored something which we think it is wonderful, the rest of the world should line up before us to rip the pages from our grasp and scurry off to a corner to read it. Unless you work for an established newspaper or magazine with a built in audience, you're out of luck when asking anyone to take a look at what you've poured your heart and soul into. I've written three novel length manuscripts, along with several short stories, and dozens of posts on this blog. Unless I cram a hard copy into someone's hands and bribe or threaten them to read it, no one cares.

My first two novels were rejected hundreds of times by agents and publishers alike. That's not an exaggeration as I have the letters to prove it. It's becoming abundantly clear to me why those first two manuscripts were rejected as the pacing in the first novel was practically nonexistent (the action didn't begin until chapter two), and the second story didn't have a likeable protagonist. Even Tony Soprano, a murderer who cheated on his wife and ran an organized crime family was an affable, gregarious person who cared about his family. It was hard to dismiss or even dislike him. Tony Soprano was the classic anti-hero and I obviously was asleep for the lesson in writing class as I failed miserably with that second novel. My protagonist was a chump, plain and simple. No one likes a chump.

This latest manuscript is the one which will break through. I am convinced of that. I managed to find one person to read the story and he absolutely loved it. After interrogating him about the plot, characters and other details for weeks afterward, I'm convinced he really took the time to read it and he isn't lying when he says he enjoyed it. That leaves me back to my main point in this post: getting others to read what you wrote.

Yes, one guy I know took the time to read the story before I send it out to agents for potential representation. I want maybe two more opinions to work with, and my wife is a natural candidate for the job. I printed out a copy for her to read three weeks ago and she is on page fifty. She claims that it is 'very good" and that she can't wait to finish the "whole thing" but she's too busy "taking care of our children," blah blah blah, to read it. Another friend has a copy of my story and will read it as "soon as she has time." A lot of time has passed since July, but I am sure the day will come when she finds some extra time to turn the first page.


The problem most writers have is the medium we choose to work in. A terrible artist can display his or her artwork on easels on a street corner and attract attention and opinions from those who walk by, whether they are good or bad. Musicians can stand on the next street corner and play as badly as they want to and still get a reaction from a crowd who has no choice but to hear awful guitar strumming, or whatever. A writer couldn't do any of that. Try standing up the block from the musician or artist with a megaphone and read your work aloud. You'll get hauled away in handcuffs.

Blogs have helped the unpublished writer. Instead of agents and publishers, the language of the blogger contains words such as "search engine optimization," "links," and pings." I'm working on all of that. Many folks have stopped here and left comments and it has me encouraged. Still, I haven't given up on my dream of being published by a traditional publishing house. I have to work hard to perfect my craft and to appeal to the arbitrary and capricious whims of agents and publishers. I'm hoping that this will happen soon, but will be just as happy if it doesn't. Why? Because I have this quaint little blog, which to me is like standing on a street corner with a bullhorn, but I'm not likely to get arrested here.

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