Story Like a Journalist - When and Where Relate to Setting

By Amber Royer

Want to write novels that feel real enough to the reader to have been ripped from the headlines, whatever your genre? Think like a journalist. You want to evoke a feeling of WHEN and WHERE that will make readers feel like they have just taken a walk through your story world. Take a few cues from how journalists do this. For nov

• Language: English
• Publisher: Amber Royer
• Release date: Jun 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9781952854057

Amber Royer

Amber Royer is the author of the high-energy comedic space opera Chocoverse series (Free Chocolate, Pure Chocolate available now. Fake Chocolate coming April 2020). She teaches creative writing classes for teens and adults through both the University of Texas at Arlington Continuing Education Department and Writing Workshops Dallas. She is the discussion leader for the Saturday Night Write writing craft group. She spent five years as a youth librarian, where she organized teen writers' groups and teen writing contests. In addition to two cookbooks co-authored with her husband, Amber has published a number of articles on gardening, crafting and cooking for print and on-line publications. They are currently documenting a project growing Cacao trees indoors.

Book preview

Story Like a Journalist:

A Workbook for Novelists

Volume 4:

WHEN and WHERE Relate to Setting

Amber Royer

Golden Tip Press

A Golden Tip Press Instructional Series original 2020

Copyright ©2020 by Amber Royer

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any for or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Cover art and editorial design: Amber Royer

Printing: IngramSpark

Published by Golden Tip Press

1520 Ridhardson Dr

#1311

Richardson, TX 75080

ISBN 978-1-9528540-5-7

Other books by the author:

The Chocoverse Trilogy:

Free Chocolate

Pure Chocolate

Fake Chocolate

Cookbook:

There are Herbs in My Chocolate

Introduction

Story Like a Journalist Vol 4 - WHEN and WHERE Relate to Setting

Get ready to take dig into the concept of setting.  WHEN and WHERE the heck are your characters?  They have to be somewhere, waiting for the story to start.

They could be out there, somewhere in a version of the real world.  There is a great deal of appeal to writing realistic settings, creating stories that are as close to real life as possible, allowing us to believe that these characters live just a few cities or a couple of states away.  These are stories that could really have happened — could even have a true story as a core.  We want to keep coming back for new books set in a realistic series world because we want to feel like we are visiting our neighbor.

Or your characters could be hanging out in a spaceport or a tavern, in a world only tangentially connected to our own.  The attraction here is to the ability to tell stories that are larger than life, and provide a true escape for readers. These are stories on the scale of myth, built on surprise and excitement.  Sure, your characters don’t live where we do — but we’d like to be able to visit where they live.  (Or not, if you’re writing a truly dangerous world.  We’re good, really.)

Or they could be stuck in the past, waiting for you to look back and find them.  The appeal could be the element of nostalgia that comes from writing about a theoretically simpler time.  Or the challenge of researching deeply enough to truly understand what was life was like at a certain point in history — sanitation issues, crime rate and all.  These stories have a kind of gravitas to them, and can accommodate a perspective that lends itself to reflection and re-evaluation.

Or they could be on the other side of the world, or . . .  anywhere, really.

Approach exploring aspects of your setting the same way a journalist approaches making a documentary.  Journalists research first, to find out what is important about a place’s history and why people choose to visit it.  Then they visit the place themselves, to take initial shots of the landscape and to do video interviews with people who live there to discover what life is like for