Feature: Geography: How to Get It Right When You've Never Been There

[bluewolf458]

Not many people have travelled really extensively, so when it comes to writing a story set in a specific area, especially in a country foreign to you, it's almost certain you've never visited it. Let's get a bit of help from our Sentinel friends.

Comments

Geography: How to Get It Right When You've Never Been There #writetip

[campylobacter]

//sobbing// OMG YES FINALLY THANK YOU

cat wearing popehat dot jpg

I just read a story where the author didn't know that Colorado Springs was in Colorado or that a character's cabin in Minnesota wasn't in Colorado... and I...

//still facepalming//

RE: Geography: How to Get It Right When You've Never Been There #writetip

[bluewolf458]

Yeah, you get some real crackers...

Re: Geography: How to Get It Right When You've Never Been There #writetip

[campylobacter]

Then there was a fic by another author who had a couple of characters make a quick round-trip by car to the Pacific Ocean for a day at the beach. FROM COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO.

Re: Geography: How to Get It Right When You've Never Been There #writetip

[bluewolf458]

I suspect a lot of us have found at least one such story... We even have it in RL here, businesses in England that haven't a clue how long it will take to deliver something to an address in Scotland. We usually assume delivery will take at least one day longer than the estimate.

[debirlfan]

And please, remember, people in the 1970's did not have cell phones and internet access!!!

[bluewolf458]

Ah, well, that's a different subject - one on anachronisms. But I agree, it's something people often forget!

[germankitty]

Adding a detail to traveling methods, specifically flying -- the procedures are different between domestic (= in-country) and international flights. (All this is OTOH, and to the best of my recollection; I've been flying internationally since the early 1970s.)

First off, to fly internationally, you need a passport and go through passport control. Not a big problem before takeoff, but on arrival there's usually a hold-up of some kind due to identity checks (longer, especially in the US, since 9/11), and you need to collect your luggage (involving yet another wait) before going through customs. So disembarking from a plane, depending on where you're coming from and/or going to can take anything between 30 minutes and two hours on average.

Customs ... check the destination country's regs for what you're allowed to have on your person; for example, some countries don't allow import of certain publications or anything they deem pornographic -- and yes, that may include something essentially harmless like Playboy or Cosmopolitan, or a

[bluewolf458]

I've got very little experience of flying, so this - left as your comment - makes a good addition to the feature.

[germankitty]

Thank you. :)

While flying has become affordable and quite common, there still is a little more to the whole process than boarding a train, say -- often, it's very much a case of "hurry up and wait", especially considering that most airlines require passengers to check in never less than one, but often up to three HOURS (on flights to the US) before departure! So a one-hour flight from Paris to London might well take a total of FOUR hours under normal circumstances, with check-in luggage, from check-in to passing customs; maybe an hour less if you only have carry-on luggage ...

(And yes, there are even more differences when we're talking first-class passengers, or VIPs.)

[annejack]

YES - all this! I know it takes sometimes a lot of time and work to research places/travel times/weather etc for a story, but it makes it so much more believeable when you 'know' the place or at least have an idea what it is like etc. I mean, there can still be mistakes or wrong descriptions when you do research, it just can't be helped sometimes. But there are errors in stories that just make me 'facepalm' and it throws me off.

[jael_lyn01]

My favorite personal giggle - a sentinel story set in Eastern Washington/Idaho, (my neck of the woods at the time) - that talked about flying in on Delta to a specific local airport that barely supported regional airlines with planes affectionately referred to as "flying culverts". For the uninitiated, that means the aisle, such as it was, had on seat on each side. To get a Delta airport, you needed to go about 150 miles away. Easy to check if you try to book the trip you're trying to describe.

Weather - again much easier with the internet. If you use Seattle as the general model for Cascade, you can generate a lot of reliable details.

[bluewolf458]

:-) I think a lot of us know at least one such story...