# real locations



## brokethepoint (Jun 14, 2013)

I often find places that give inspiration to locations that I write into my works.  I like to let nature take me to my world.

Do any of you do that?


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## C Hollis (Jun 14, 2013)

I take pictures of places/environments that I would like to recall later for my stories.

My wife and I like to take day hikes, whether in the flat lands or the Rockies, and I have photo's of a lot of inspiring landscapes that I fall back on.

I also find it a great exercise to describe a photograph as you would describe a scene in a story.


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## Scribble (Jun 14, 2013)

Absolutely. I take photos, or just take moments to eyeball the architecture of buildings. Living in Montreal, I get to see buildings 350 years old. It's nothing on folks living in Europe, but for North America, that's about as old as it gets. There is beautiful stonework, stone walls, pillars, and old churches all to be found within a 20 block area of Old Montreal. On the island where I live there is a 250 year old functioning windmill and houses. I try to take advantage of this inspiration when visualizing my fictional locations.

If you can't get away everywhere you want to go, Google Earth can take you there virtually. That, with documentaries is a good fill in for actually going places. 

Something else I take note of is while driving in between cities is how the landscape changes, how the trees and bushes change from one dominant species to another. Adding little details like that can give the reader a sense of that change when traveling by horse or ship.

One project I am working on takes place in a cities inspired by Byzantium and Persepolis. I've watched several documentaries and browsed art collections to get a feel of what it would have been like to live there.


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## Asura Levi (Jun 15, 2013)

I do all the time. And I actually see the action happening while looking to the environment. But then I got home and the photo is just not enough to bring back the same feeling.


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## Svrtnsse (Jun 15, 2013)

I don't take photos myself, but I do like looking at pictures and I also like to go out in nature.
However, rather than how a place actually looks I try to remember how it feels. I have this idea that if I get the mood of the place right, the reader fills in the gaps in the description on their own.


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## adampjr (Jun 15, 2013)

Wikimedia commons is a good resource for finding decent pictures of places or things that you might not be able to go see yourself.


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## Svrtnsse (Jun 15, 2013)

Good points made about both google earth and wikimedia. I will be checking those out when I get home.
I also enjoy browsing wallpapers and similar on deviantart, just to get inspiration for scenes and settings.


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## Asura Levi (Jun 15, 2013)

Just remember, one of the character I like most, his last outfit is completely based on an image from a youtube video.
Let me see if I can find it again... ..ok, here we go..
Future world music - Life goes on - YouTube
The image shows at 1:59. By the way, he is a wizard. I just found it, perfect.

I would love to get the full image.


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## Weaver (Jun 17, 2013)

Oh, the number of photos on Pinterest that I saw and thought, _I need to remember this because it will be great inspiration for [insert fictional location here]_... I don't plan to ever use those places as they are, but the visuals are good for idea generation:  _Who would live in a house like this?  What's over there past where the path curves?  What kind of culture would have this as their dominant style of architecture?_

I also have a few photos that I took myself, but those are for locations that I'd already decided would figure into my stories.  (The profile photo on my Facebook page is of Anglin Falls, because that place is important in the backstory for a WiP.)


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## Rinzei (Jun 17, 2013)

I've taken a few photos of a particular place in Llanberis, Wales that inspired some of my romance-attempt fantasy story, but they don't really do the spot justice. I don't tend to base settings off real world locations, but I did in that particular story because I felt a lot of the feel of North Wales fit the mood I wanted.

The little village was inspired by Llangollen, Llanberis and the Snowdon Mountains, the fae home was inspired by (oddly enough) the scuba diving school in Llanberis - which is small cove lake surrounded by trees and tall cliffs of slate (the Vivian Quarry, part of the Dinorwic Quarry), and the main kingdom stronghold is inspired by Caernarfon, but moved to a valley rather than on the coast.


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## Lohengrin (Jun 18, 2013)

I usually know what I have in mind, so I start to search for places that fit this image. Hard work though, you can type "mountains" and search for 4hrs without finding anything, sometimes I get lucky though. This place for example called Vardzia in Georgia. How many times have you seen a dwarf city just like that, but never seen it in real life before? This place is amazing and inspired me a lot in my WIP.

http://www.discoverthetrip.com/uploads/images/4392-Vardzia_Georgia_Europa_10.01.2012_2.jpg


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## skip.knox (Jun 18, 2013)

One trick I have learned is to use certain modifiers in the search string. Here are some that I have found useful

'your search string' + [any of the following]
old photo
old postcard
cityscape
[the name of the place in another language, preferably the native one]

any one of the above combos is good. I also like
'your search string' but in Search Tools, Color choose Black and White


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## Weaver (Jun 20, 2013)

Speaking of real locations inspiring stories...

There's a place up in northern Ohio (Euclid) where some boulders sit in a park.  Once upon a time, a pair of young boys, good friends, used to hang out at that park and play on those boulders and make up stories together.  One of those boys grew up to become an award-winning fantasy author.  I have no actual proof (his biographer didn't say), but I suspect that those boulders in that park are the direct inspiration for a scene in one of his novels, where a character is chased through a strange place with floating rocks moving all around.

The point is, the real location doesn't have to be exotic/strange/magical to inspire a story that_ is _those things.


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## brokethepoint (Jun 21, 2013)

It is interesting seeing how people utilize real world place to find inspiration.  The one thing that I like best about being at the location is that you can take it in with all of your senses.

Ok, so what author is from Euclid?


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## skip.knox (Jun 21, 2013)

That'd be Roger Zelazny, right?


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## topazfire (Jun 27, 2013)

I actually use Pinterest quite a bit. I find it a great way to collect pictures of scenery for builidig different regions of my world in my head. The board system allows me to organize everything (I have separate boards for landscape, weapons, clothing, etc) so I can take a quick look through for inspiration before sitting down to write. 

Photography is also really helpful for me. I am fortunate to be able to travel quite often and have been able to come home with pictures that have turned into the basis for particular regions, or cultures in my WIP. One particular valley in Switzerland is home to my MC. 

And to Scribbles: I never thought of Montreal as a place to inspire fantasy... I'm from 2 hours down the road... and always think of it as a place to run up my credit card bill


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