Many years ago I was a research and design engineer for a home appliances manufacturer. At that time our company ran an advertisement on TV that supposedly showed our facility and how we communicated with each other. The distance between the two was so large that the advertisement wasn't just funny. It was hilarious. We laughed for months!
Where as far-fetched characters and plot are practically expected in a novel, an unauthentic setting is totally unacceptable. Why? Because people and events have to be extraordinary to hold our attention. We don't want to read about John taking the garbage out and Mary cooking—we can see them doing that next door. So to offset the extremities in character and plot, and to make the story believable, we need the authentic setting to assure us that this is all true, that it's actually happening in the real world.
Internet and library research can provide information, but to establish a setting you need more than information. Remember that literature accommodates the transfer of experience from the author to the reader by the use of language. It's not enough for an author to say that the sand was golden, he must describe what the sand feels like in-between his toes and how it stings when the wind blows it into his eyes. One can't obtain this experience from other literary works. Other authors have already coloured the environment to their own tastes or needs. If you take their work, change it to your taste, don't expect the result to look anything like the original. What you will have is a poor photocopy of a poor photocopy. Can it ever be an accurate photograph?
A writer must visit his setting and ask himself: Do my chief characters live in that environment, or are they just passing through? For example, if your setting is a police station, is your chief character a visitor in a police station or a person who works in it? If he is a visitor, things are much simpler. In my first novel, my protagonist was an engineer who went to the all male monastic kingdom of Mt Athos. Since he was only a visitor, all I needed was a visitor's experiences. I obtained them by staying there for a couple of weeks. Likewise, in my second novel Fantasy Land, I had a travel agent on the Greek island of Ios. And again a few visits were quite enough to establish the setting.
But when your protagonist is actually a member of the setting, if he works in it for example, things get complicated. If my protagonist was a monk in Mt Athos, a shopkeeper in Ios, or a fisherman in his native village in NewFoundland I would need to enter his special human environment. Unfortunately special environments are not easily accessible to those outside it. Penetration needs time.
In my latest novel Bird of Prey, for example, my primary characters were archaeologists who operated within the international archaeological community in Athens, as well as their university in Canada. I could handle the university angle. I was an engineering student for six years and an academic for two. I knew quite a bit about university life. But on the life of a numismatist operating within an archaeological community environment I didn't have a clue. How could an engineer enter, understand, and describe a specialist in an environment like this?
Well, there were no shortcuts. If I wanted to describe the real thing, I had to immerse myself in the real thing. For a start, I had to meet the appropriate people and visit them at their place of work. So I found my way to the doorstep of one archaeological organization that more or less engulfed what I desired. My main character was a Canadian numismatist, and the appropriate organization was the Canadian Institute in Greece. My first steps were careful. I started attending some of the specialized lectures offered to other archaeologists and especially the buffet get-togethers afterwards. It was awkward at first. But I found myself listening to archaeologists and talking with archaeologists. I noticed how they dressed and how they behaved. I began to understand what they were like. This depth of study was probably enough for an actor, but certainly insufficient for a writer. A writer must proceed even further. He must convince his readers that he is an archaeologist himself.
All this took a lot of work. At the beginning people thought I was curious but after a while they quite naturally became more inquisitive. Why was I that much interested? I was, after all, an engineer. I could only be honest and say that I was writing a novel with archaeologists. I showed them my previous novels to convince them. I thought this small confession would make my life more difficult but on the contrary things moved more quickly. People were excited by what I was about to do and offered me any information I asked for. They took me to the most relevant places in their environment and suggested settings. I had coffees and lunches with pertinent people who quickly filled me in on their environment. Quite naturally, some of these people became my friends.
When I thought I had grasped the environment, I started writing my novel. And the people I had met in their professional capacities soon stood in as my characters. I gave them fictional private lives, but at the end, fiction and reality had intermingled. And when I was done, they were the first to read the proof copy and point out to me what I had done wrong. I think at the end everyone was happy. They had helped me tremendously, and because I write mystery thrillers, I had taken their humdrum professional environment and elevated it to a place of excitement and international intrigue.
My greatest moment of satisfaction did not come with the book's publication. One day, I was looking at some old books in Monastiraki, right next to an ancient Athens excavation site. I was startled to notice my novel, Bird of Prey, sitting on one of the benches, right next to a dig. A while later I heard some noise and when I looked up I noticed that the team of archaeologists had taken a short break. Some were eating, some talked, and one was reading my book. It was a long quiet moment and I simply stood there and looked at her as she read on. I had spent four whole years to enter her human environment, but still, I was an engineer pretending to be a numismatist. A story-maker is a fake by definition. But was I a convincing fake? Did I convince her that her world and the one in the book were close enough. My tension mounted but after she had turned a few pages I was relieved.
No, she wasn't laughing!
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