Feo Takahari
Auror
Truth be told, this isn't entirely a concept I understand--I vaguely know that some people say that an author has "captured the personality of New York", or "conveyed the personality of San Francisco", but I don't really know how to tell an author who's given those cities a personality from one who's just written about them. Still, I've been having some trouble writing a story that's set in a specific (fictional) town, and I've been thinking that this "personality" idea might be a way around this. How does an author convey a city's personality? What techniques can be used to draw it out?
(To explain my specific case, it takes place in a relatively small town--"Small enough to have only one church, but big enough to have two Starbucks", as one character puts it. It's surrounded by farmland, and many of its inhabitants are low-income, but it has its share of non-subsistence services, including a psychologist, a veterinarian, and even a watch repairman. As currently written, its disparate elements feel like a bit of a mishmash.)
(To explain my specific case, it takes place in a relatively small town--"Small enough to have only one church, but big enough to have two Starbucks", as one character puts it. It's surrounded by farmland, and many of its inhabitants are low-income, but it has its share of non-subsistence services, including a psychologist, a veterinarian, and even a watch repairman. As currently written, its disparate elements feel like a bit of a mishmash.)