Hello To Berlin
December 8th, 2009
Writing about a place you have never been to is a challenge. If you write fantasy or science fiction it all comes from your own head – and it’s impossible for anyone to check your account for accuracy- consistency and atmosphere, maybe, but not accuracy.
Historical fiction writers rely on first hand accounts of the era they are interested in. But if your stories are set in contemporary times then you may have some problems. I don’t like reading books set in the cities I’ve lived in unless the writer obviously knows the places well. Everybody experiences a place differently, of course, but if you know a city very well, it’s easy to be distracted and disappointed if the writer doesn’t seem to and yet has set a story there.
A couple of years ago I set myself the challenge of writing about a city I had never been to – Berlin. I’d been to other German cities, but not Berlin. I was writing a sequel to a manuscript I’d finished in which one of the main characters is from Berlin. I loved those characters and couldn’t let go of them, so I decided to write the next chapter in their lives. I didn’t have a publisher and I hadn’t ever submitted the first manuscript to an agent or publisher, so writing a sequel was either an act of supreme confidence or simply because I needed to.
I bought maps of Berlin and used Google Earth, read guidebooks and fiction, looked at photos, both current and old. I picked the area the characters would live in, I could describe the view from their flat, I found their nearest cafés and shops, their bus routes into the city and wrote at least fifty thousand words. But I had to stop eventually. I knew I couldn’t evoke the place to my satisfaction without ever having been there. I worried that if the manuscript were ever published it would be obvious I had never been there. To evoke atmosphere or a place you need more than a guidebook and photos, you need the smells, the temperature, the faces of the people, the food in the shops, the dirt on the road, the feel of the air, the light and the sky and the everyday sounds. I couldn’t do it.
A few days ago I bought an airline ticket to Germany and I’m experiencing waves of excitement whenever I think about it - even though there’s well over two hundred sleeps to go. There are other reasons for going, of course, but going to Berlin after trying for months to capture the place will be and very interesting experience. I’ll go to the areas I wrote about, not fact checking, because I can do that anywhere, but to get the feel of the place, and to check on my characters and see if they are still happy living there. If I don’t find the house I imagined for them I suspect I’ll be very disoriented, but then again, I may just see them walking through the Tiergarten hand in hand.
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Categories: on reading, on writing | Tags: creativity, culture, imagination, writing
7 Comments
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Now that’s what I call research. Hope you have a great time and I do hope your characters love their home.
Martin Cruz-Smith, who wrote Gorky Park, had never been to Moscow. But everyone thought he had and praised him for the authentic atmosphere in the book.
Why not? Some good research, and a lot of imagination…..and there you have it!
I’m afraid details are necessary. I agree with Greta. Google Earth is a great help but also you should be able to research interesting facts about Berlin off the net, from blogs, look at pictures at picassa or similar sites and look in the backgounds. is there an interesting shop/bar/café - what strasse? etc.
Alternatively you could just book a weekend? It’s a big town after all.
Garalt, mate, I’m in AUSTRALIA! Booking a weekend in Berlin is a small matter of several thousand dollars and two 26 hour flights and a head that dwells in the previous three time zones for a number of weeks on return to Oz. I will be in Germany next year but for a wee bit longer than a weekend.
@Susanne, I can’t believe that ! I love that book, it’s so atmospheric. Well, if he can do such a good job then it’s worth striving to emulate him. I just feel on more solid ground if I’ve actually been there.
I just read your blog post on this and the challenges of writing about somewhere you’ve never been is very eloquently explained. Friends & Pho is set in Vietnam - I lived there before ten months and once I started writing I went back three times. I went to places mentioned in the book and took photographs to get the extra details and read travel … memoirs, bought gorgeous photography books and watched movies, immersing myself in the culture. This all helped, but the essence of the place came from being there. By the time the book was finished I was so sick of Vietnam so I may have overdosed!
My second book is set in India and is based on a cover story in Time Magazine about a group of kids stolen from the streets of India and sent to Australia, the US and Denmark via an orphanage. I’ve never been to India, but want to keep it true to the original story so the locations are mapped out for me. One of the narrators is the stolen child going back to India as a teenager, so she’s an outsider looking in - essentially as I’m learning about India, so is she. I’m having an Indian festival at the moment with books, maps, travel guides, movies and food. But I know the book won’t be finished until I go to India to get that level of authenticity required.
Good excuse to travel there, yes? I know Martin Cruz Smith did it, but I’m of the school of thought that you have to go or have been there. There are so many little unexpected details in a place that give it colour. i couldn’t write about Italy without having been there.
I went to India when I was ten - with my parents and sister. We had a driver … and travelled around for two months. I don’t want to go back in a way because I don’t want to see how it’s changed in thirty odd years. The second book sounds intriguing..