Troubles with unfamiliar locations and settings based in the real world

Question

I have a question: is it hard to write about a foreign country/place?

I know that Dostoevsky was Russian, his themes and settings were inspired or entirely based by Russia/the Russian culture.

But I also know Howard Philips Lovecraft who wrote in unfamiliar settings (foreign and imagined) and thus 'created' them. Because they were 'created', he wasn't as pressured to verifying details, unlike someone adopting a foreign setting, he invented them!

And here is the paradox: although Lovecraft was a great writer, his imagery and scene/feel/place/culture suggestion power wasn't enough, because he couldn't write about foreign countries (in features/troubles/traditions) in the real world. I suppose because of the amount of required research, or he didn't feel like it.

So, how should a beginner go about writing about unfamiliar places/settings in the real world? Min you the beginner doesn't yet know where to look because they haven't tried and got it wrong before. What's the first step to avoid that 'going wrong' from the get-go?

Answer 1

The first step is to hold back your urge to write. First do your homework, thoroughly.

Learn. Learn a whole lot about the place.

Start with Google StreetView and Panoramio. Proceed through Wikipedia to learn not just about the place but about landmarks, anything in the area. Find movies, amateur videos, anything to take place around there. Read blogs of people who live there. Maybe get in touch with them, ask them to tell you about their daily lives. Listen to their daily worries. Make sure to see the place in all seasons and weathers. Read a local newspaper (online) even if through Google Translate. Find historical maps of the area, learn how it changed alegiances through ages. Learn basics of the language. Get a feel of how it sounds. Watch any artwork created around there. Try something of the local cuisine. If a given activity, sport, hobby, leisure is typical to the area, go and try it locally, feel it on your own skin. Find little details of the country culture. Find little details that make given country what it is. It's not the towers of Kremlin that create the feel of Russia, it's a podstakannik on your tea glass.

If you can afford, go there. If you can't, live by proxy.

Eat your heart out, Lovecraft! World got much smaller since your times!

...I could find my way from Dityatki to Chernobyl blindfolded. And if I had to, I'd stop and sit to have a lunch on the brick fence of the communal farm in Cherevach without ever taking the blindfold off. And I wouldn't even step into the nettles.

Answer 2

What is your purpose in writing about a foreign country or place? Do you intend the setting to be integral to your story? If so, and you have never been there, then you are probably facing a considerable challenge. You simply do not have the background to inject the elements of authentic detail that will be required.

On the other hand, if your aim is simply to have an "exotic" backdrop to a tale that is driven by the characters and their interactions, then you may be able to blur the detail to a level that you can manage by drawing on guidebooks and the writing of others.

In either case, you should not be so determined about "going wrong". The only way to learn from your mistakes is to make some. Start writing and see what happens.

Answer 3

If you set a story in a real place that you have never been, I think it would be easy to get something wrong that anyone who has been there would know -- like what side of the street they drive on or the fact that no one there wears a hat or whatever. To those who do know the place it could be really jarring. Like casually mentioning that a character spent the evening watching television -- but you said he was Amish, and Amish people don't watch television. Or that he was in such financial trouble that he couldn't pay the mortgage -- but you said he was in Saudi Arabia, where the banking system is different and they don't have mortgages. A real example that occurs to me: I once saw a movie about King Arthur in which Arthur and his knights on several occasions talk about making sacrifices to "the gods". Except ... except the whole point of the old stories about Arthur and company was that they were Christians defending Britain against an invasion by pagans. I suppose a re-telling of the story in which they are pagans might be a clever twist, but it was tossed in so casually that I got the impression that the scriptwriters didn't realize what a bizarre twist this was. Now I'm thinking it would be fun to write a story set in Indonesia in which the people there are all Jewish, with no explanation of how that came about. :-)

I think an easy out is to set the story in an imaginary place. You can model it on a real place, but if you give it a different name, then you avoid having to research a bunch of detail. You can then freely take the things about the real place that made you want to set the story there, and just make up whatever else you need as you go along. Also, you can say negative things about the place without offending people who are from there. I suspect this is why lots of stories are set in "a small country in Europe" and the like. Oh, this wouldn't give you total free rein. If you set a story in "a small country in Europe" and then mention the characters going off into the jungle, readers might ask, "The jungle? just where in Europe is this supposed to be?" But you eliminate whole categories of possible problems. You can call the local law enforcement officer "the constable" without having to check on official titles, you can say the hero had to cross a raging river without consulting a map, you can say that the heroine was annoyed that the shoes cost 20 dropniks without having to worry about the actual currency or prevailing prices, etc.

That may not work for you, of course. It may be essential to set the story in France because the whole plot hinges on the legacy of Charlemagne or some such.