Travel vs Research

If you've read TRUMPED, you know that the mystery is set in Bruges, Belgium. We picked that place because it is a) outstandingly beautiful, b) loaded with places to visit, places to eat, and places to hide, and c) at least one of us (me) had been there. A long time (almost 10 years!) ago. So, following up on an idea in my last post, traveling does enlarge your world and, for a writer, stores great locations for stories. And, since location, location, location works for writing as well as real estate, location is generally considered another character in the book.

For Bruges, however, memories and pictures of my one-day excursion weren't enough. And that's where research came in.

In order to get the tone of the place right, I dug around in my badly organized library for all the books I'd bought while I was in Belgium so I could review where I'd been and see if the Langley Chase 4 should also go there. I discovered that I hadn't seen nearly enough of Bruges and was tempted (ha!) to book a flight so I could visit all the places that we put into the book.

However, day job and pocketbook realities made that plan dissolve. (Yes, I have a day job that supports my writing habit. More on that later.)

So, I headed to the internet where I found too much information. Somebody really needs to invent a better search engine so you don't get 4,872,989 sites to search. Not all of them related to Bruges, either!

What I found very helpful were visitor comments on travel sites, reviews of restaurants, or comments on various sights, observations about the people. Since these are from real people who have been there, such reviews provided insight that added to my own and helped make the writing - particularly the descriptions of the city - more real.

For descriptions of Frances' house, I went to various Belgian Real estate sites and walked through a ton of houses for sale - virtually, of course. The back yard of Frances' house was inspired by a gorgeous home, on a canal, for sale for a mere 1.8 million euros. The front of Frances' house, with all the windows and window boxes, came from combining a couple of house-fronts. What did writers do before the internet? Libraries?

Maps were another extremely helpful writing aid - they kept us from sending our characters to a location that they could never reach in the time allotted. Plus, the streets in Bruges are a delight - lots of interconnecting lanes and tucked-away alleys.

I guess where I'm going with this is you don't have to have traveled to the location of your book to make the location a vibrant, real character in your book. Helpful to establish a base of reference, but not entirely necessary.

But, it's a lot of fun!