WHAT TO DO IF YOU'VE NEVER BEEN THERE: A SUGGESTION.
I have FINALLY broken my "International Flight Curse" and am now 24,000+ words and on Chapter 16 of SOLITAIRE 2: THE AGENDA.
The manuscript is FAR from finished though because there is still a lot of adventure, intrigue, thrills and much more to go.
Sometimes the lack of experience can be a benefit and sometimes a problem.
Case in point: dealing with foreign locales when writing.
On one hand, if you're making everything up like on an alien world, you have to still acknowledge some scientific necessities like food, water, oxygen, gravity, etc. Otherwise the sky is literally the limit in regards to letting your imagination run free and it doesn't matter if you've never set foot off Planet Earth in your lifetime.
On the other, if you have never been there and are dealing with a specific place like say—Cancun, even in a work of fiction you still have to be as accurate as humanly possible when depicting local places or else you run the risk of ejecting your readers right out of the story if you write something that is obviously wrong, like being in error concerning which side of the road they drive on.
Granted, even the best of tourist websites don't cover everything and you will still need to create some fictional places for scenes to occur because you don't want to have something happen somewhere that it can't.
The most famous example of this would be Sherlock Holmes' 221B Baker Street.
In Victorian London, it's the humble abode of the famous Consulting Detective and while there really was a Baker Street in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's time, the addresses didn't even reach the 200s.
In Modern England, that address does exist but is a McDonalds Restaurant last I heard😲, which is why the TV series Elementary and Sherlock staged the locale in a more residential looking neighborhood.
In any event, I better get back to writing now.
Take care.
STAY SAFE! 😷
And I'll see you around the Internet.
Lee Houston, Junior
11 December, 2022
