Can You Write Fiction in a Strange Setting?

"Hi. Is it ok to write fiction about a setting you have never visited. My own hometown is sooooo dull and I want my writing to be more exotic. Can you help."

- Jesse Bridges

It is your novel, Jesse, and it is up to you how you choose to write it. But you might want to bear the following in mind:

It's Okay to Write Fiction Set at Home

You didn't say what part of the world you come from or what your hometown is, but just because it is dull to you, it doesn't mean it will come across that way to everybody else.

I think everyone (not just novel writers, but everyone) has this sneaking suspicion that they have never done anything exciting with their lives and that the place they live somehow isn't worthy to act as a setting for a novel.

But just because something is ordinary and routine to you, it doesn't mean it will come across that way to me, the reader.

So long as you work hard at bringing the setting to life in the writing, even the most mundane of places can be made vibrant and exciting. You just have to find all those small, telling details which can truly bring a novel's setting to life.

Remember, too, that setting is a relatively minor part of a novel. What makes it interesting are the characters and the events, not the backdrop against which everything takes place.

Does the Novel's Setting Inspire You?

Now, if you dislike your own hometown as much as you say you do, it is a fair bet that it doesn't inspire your fiction writing (at least not in a positive way).

If you write a novel set in a more exotic location, it will provide you with plenty of inspiration but, because you haven't visited it, you won't know it and won't be able to portray it authentically.

So you have two choices. You've either got to get inspired by the place you do know (your home). Or you've got to get to know the place that inspires you (by visiting it and doing writing research).

Yes, it is possible to write fiction about a place you have never visited (people have done precisely that) but, particularly if you are a novel writing beginner, you are making life unnecessarily hard on yourself.

Harvey