The tourist appeal of stories

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Laer Carroll

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Much of the appeal of some stories is the places where they happen. Fiction writers who ignore this may miss a great opportunity to make our stories stand out from the crowd.

One book with extraordinary tourist appeal is Anne of Green Gables and its sequels. I was reminded of this recently by an article in The New York Times by Ann Moh. Many millions of copies of the books have been sold and they are still modest but constant best sellers today. Every year 150,000 visitors from all over the world visit the books' locations in the Canadian province of Prince Edward Island.

Sci-fi and fantasy are especially rich in places with tourist appeal. These include the books of J. R. R. Tolkien, J. K. Rowling, L. Frank Baum, C. S. Lewis, and J. M. Barrie. The sci-fi movie and TV franchises of Star Wars and Star Trek show us entire universes in which some people want to live for a while.

It's not just fantastic stories which have tourist appeal.

Westerns present an appealing mythic location of vast spaces and wildernesses. Much of the appeal of noir detective stories are the mean streets of big cities and the rich facades of the mansions of the ultra-wealthy which can hide the meanest of motives. "Cozy" detective stories appeal to our images of friendly small towns where everyone knows everyone, but which can also hide people who are as cruel and greedy as in any other place. The books of Jane Austen portray a picturesque society of the genteel and the rich, and move people yearly to visit the partly-opened stately homes of English upper-crust, and Derbyshire and the Peak District of the English Midlands.

I was thinking about all this while writing my latest work in progress, a YA sci-fi/urban-fantasy hybrid. It takes place in the locale I've long called my home and know well, Los Angeles and the smaller cities in and around the L. A. area. At one point I've written a scene which takes place in a movie studio where parts of a would-be blockbuster movie are being shot, a situation I know from personal experience. I don't see any way to make any of this picturesque rather than pedestrian, but I'm keeping it in mind in case inspiration strikes.

What about you? Are you writing or planning to write something in which you might punch up the tourist appeal of the settings in some way?
 

Brightdreamer

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Visting other worlds and places - and thereby escaping my own - is one of my primary motivators for reading. And writing.

I don't know that you have to go out of your way to punch up a setting, though - if you slap on too much glitz and glitter, you risk overshadowing the story and the characters, which are kind of important, too. You also risk a story that reads like one of those "field trip" episodes of a long-in-the-tooth sitcom, where they pay to ship the whole cast and crew to an Exotic Location and fill roughly 1/3 of the airtime with footage of Scenic Sights and Colorful Locals, almost invariably at the expense of the plot. Everything suffers as too much attention goes to showing off the location.

Besides, if the setting is the home town of the characters, they probably aren't going to see it as exciting and exotic; it's just all part of the landscape they live in, threads in the fabric of their lives. The trick would be to show the reader the setting as the characters see it. A visitor to Madeupland may stare in awe at cities carved into giant crystals; a native will curse at the expense of chiseling out another bedroom for the new kid.
 

juniper

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I've picked up books based on their setting. I used to read a mystery series set in a small fictional Washington state mountain town, until the writing got so bad that I had to quit. I liked reading about the locale.

Another mystery I bought a couple of years ago said on the cover it was set in a quilt shop on the Oregon coast. What a joke. There was one mention of it being a coastal town but the descriptions were so scant and vague it could have been set anywhere. The author lived in North Carolina or someplace like that - I don't think she'd ever even Googled 'Oregon coast town' to see what it might be like. No local color in the book.

I like reading novels set in different places - I'm not one to point out that "the street he said runs east-west is wrong! It's curved and there it's more north-south - I was on it last week" but I do hope the author has the main stuff correct.
 

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I just sold a small town romance novel, and during the editing/submission process I was told over and over that one of the defining characteristics of small town romances is that the town itself must be a character. Kind of hard to wrap my head around, but I think it goes a bit beyond 'setting', somehow... I'm not sure.

Now, lots of small town romances are set in fictional towns, so I'm not sure they're actually increasing tourist appeal. But if you're counting outer-space and Middle Earth as tourist destinations, I guess fictional small towns count, too.
 

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Sometimes I like the location being a character, almost. Janet Evanovich did it well to start with. Trenton became part of the story. I have no idea if her version is right but it felt right to me as a reader.
 

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Does it count as tourist appeal if the world is pretty much like our own, except dragons or such are commonplace? Because I like to pretend I live somewhere like that.
 

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I don't get that, personally. Unless the time and setting are explicitely instrumental to the story, I really don't care about where and when a story takes place. I think the best place for a story to happen is where and when it was written, unless, again, there's an explicit story requirement of otherwise.
 

Jamesaritchie

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The book makes the tourist appeal, not the location the book is set in. As long as you bring the setting to vibrant life, and with the right detail, it will become a toursit attraction, if you also write a book that has a wonderful story, that has characters readers love to spend time with, and that everyone talks about.

If no one much liked Anne of Green Gables, no one would have cared about the setting.
 

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I have a lot of problem with that, actually. I'd like to write rich, deep environments, but my world experience is very narrow. I've never spent time in a deciduous forest, a city's downtown area, a coastal town, or even involved in the community of the small towns and suburbs where I've lived, so I'm really only qualified to set stories in the inside of my apartment. I try to focus on my characters and hope people don't notice the deficit.
 

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I have a lot of problem with that, actually. I'd like to write rich, deep environments, but my world experience is very narrow. I've never spent time in a deciduous forest, a city's downtown area, a coastal town, or even involved in the community of the small towns and suburbs where I've lived, so I'm really only qualified to set stories in the inside of my apartment. I try to focus on my characters and hope people don't notice the deficit.

This is where it can help to do a bit of research, if only to find tiny details to include. Google maps for a feel of layout. Research images (both google and Flickr) to try to get a sense of how things look. Find out what sort of cultural things are common in the area, and play off those. And of course, reading other novels can give you an idea where to start.

I did this a lot for the stories I've been working on. I may not have been there, but I want to the reader to feel at least some sense that the place is real.

Granted, I also take a few liberties with my description, since it's set in an alternative future.

However, not everyone reads for the settings, so if you have compelling characters, you might not have to worry about it as much.

Anyway, back on topic... I definitely consider the tourism appeal of the stories I'm writing, though I hadn't thought of it as such. I want to be immersed in the world, and I've realized that there's a lot of books I simply haven't picked up lately because they don't pull me into the world.

Then there's other stories that get this right off the bat, and I read them primarily because of the world (I'm reading Scott Westerfield's Leviathan right now, and I'm mostly interested in it because I want to see the world he's created. Similarly, I've been fascinated by the world that Brandon Sanderson creates, especially in Mistborn and Steelheart. Warbreaker was good for that, too. Of course, those also play on strong characterization, too, but the appeal of their worlds really stand out.).
 
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MarkEsq

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I set my books in Paris and, the new one, London. Next up is Barcelona. I do it because I love those places and want to share parts of them with my readers.

One friend gave my first book to his wife and she insisted afterwards they go to Paris. He was joking-mad at me, but afterwards told me they were planning to move there! How cool is that?

But note that one of the reasons I set the books there is for ME. I want to take trips to Paris to explore and write about it. So yeah, selfish but with benefits for my readers (hopefully).
 

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I set my books in Paris and, the new one, London. Next up is Barcelona. I do it because I love those places and want to share parts of them with my readers.

One friend gave my first book to his wife and she insisted afterwards they go to Paris. He was joking-mad at me, but afterwards told me they were planning to move there! How cool is that?

But note that one of the reasons I set the books there is for ME. I want to take trips to Paris to explore and write about it. So yeah, selfish but with benefits for my readers (hopefully).

I think this approach can work, but it can also backfire. I've often read novels with so MUCH detail about the location that it seems to me that the author wanted to go there on vacation and is using the book as an excuse. I remember one where the characters took a trip to Iceland - no real reason for the plot, no real USE of the new setting - just a bunch of characters who'd been doing something in New York and then upped and went to Iceland and did all the same stuff there. It was weird, and definitely left me with the impression that the author had been looking for a tax write-off!
 

ishtar'sgate

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What about you? Are you writing or planning to write something in which you might punch up the tourist appeal of the settings in some way?

I am but I don't think I'll need to punch it up much more than it already is. My setting is ancient Babylon. Fascinating place which I hope will be just as fascinating to readers.
 

Jamesaritchie

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I have a lot of problem with that, actually. I'd like to write rich, deep environments, but my world experience is very narrow. I've never spent time in a deciduous forest, a city's downtown area, a coastal town, or even involved in the community of the small towns and suburbs where I've lived, so I'm really only qualified to set stories in the inside of my apartment. I try to focus on my characters and hope people don't notice the deficit.

Surely you've been outside your apartment. You know the area immediately around you, the area where you grew up? You have friends and family, don't you?

As Flannery O'Connor said, “Anyone who survived childhood has enough material to write for the rest of his or her life.”

You have enough, and even the inside of your apartment can become just as much a setting, just as detailed and important as any other place or setting.

I don't know what you mean by not being involved in the communities where you've lived, but this is not a requirement. Writers are often not involved. They don't participate, they merely observe.
 

gothicangel

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Well, my last book was set in Rome, and this one is in Roman Judaea. Not sure if Israel has much tourist appeal right now. I can however take a reader on a journey into a little know area of Palestinian history. :)

And don't think tourism isn't afraid of using the appeal of stories. I live near Hadrian's Wall, and they are making a huge thing of GRR Martin having used it as the inspiration for The Wall. There's already been a huge boost in visitors.
 

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I have a lot of problem with that, actually. I'd like to write rich, deep environments, but my world experience is very narrow. I've never spent time in a deciduous forest, a city's downtown area, a coastal town, or even involved in the community of the small towns and suburbs where I've lived, so I'm really only qualified to set stories in the inside of my apartment. I try to focus on my characters and hope people don't notice the deficit.
Not a book, but a movie: 'Rear Window' (apparently based on a short story by Cornell Woolrich)! The setting is one person's apartment, and whatever can be seen from the window!
But, yes, setting is nice, but characters are good, too. I'm willing to forgo setting and plot if the characters are interesting.
 

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I don't get that, personally. Unless the time and setting are explicitely instrumental to the story, I really don't care about where and when a story takes place. I think the best place for a story to happen is where and when it was written, unless, again, there's an explicit story requirement of otherwise.
Going back to the Tales of the City books again, the story began as a series of columns satirizing the singles scene in San Francisco. Maupin had to include many real locations around the city so the locals reading the columns could roll their eyes in recognition and say "Yup. He got THAT one right!" or "The idiot doesn't even know what the hell he's talking about!" Eventually, the columns moved away from that and continued the stories of the characters, most of whom did not originally come from San Francisco. However, he kept the description of the city in the chapters; because the stories span 1976 through present day, you get a feeling of how much the characters and the city have changed over the decades. In some of the more recent books, he even mentions places that have changed or closed since they were first mentioned in, say, the second or third books. So much description of the time and setting is an integral part of the series.
 
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I think place is instrumental in fiction, whether the story takes place inside a bathroom inside and apartment, or on Mars. Place gives a stage for a story to happen, gives objects, history, texture for the characters to interact with. Place gives us a chance to diversify our sentences, take the story someplace else outside of the usual mundane things we never notice into the good stuff that needs noticing. Take me someplace good, someplace that is somebody else's place. That's a big part of fiction regardless of genre in my opinion.
 

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I think I can safely say that when I'm writing, tourists are the last thing on my mind. Unless I'm writing about tourists.
 

Wilde_at_heart

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Tourism in PEI is heavily marketed for its ties to those novels as well - otherwise, why would people go? :D

I dunno, I might look at something that's been set where I've lived or travelled, but at the same time, if I spot something early on that doesn't 'feel right', I'm tossing it aside and would probably be reluctant to pick up anything else by that same author. One of my biggest peeves is when people choose settings they're not already familiar with to at least a degree to where they don't even realise why they are getting certain particular details completely wrong. I'd much rather at this point read a story set in a small town somewhere in Nebraska or even suburban Cleveland, provided it's done well, than yet another backdrop London or Prague, etc.
 

Laer Carroll

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The book makes the tourist appeal, not the location the book is set in. As long as you bring the setting to vibrant life, and with the right detail, it will become a toursit attraction, if you also write a book that has a wonderful story, that has characters readers love to spend time with, and that everyone talks about.

Right. All three parts of the story have to have appeal: the characters, the plot, and the settings. If a story lacks in any one of those departments, it's unlikely to stir the minds and hearts of many readers.
 
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