Writing about where you live

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Inside AA ROAD BOOK of ENGLAND and WALESImage by EraPhernalia Vintage via Flickr
This links back to 'drawing from your life experience'. The block of flats you walk by on the way to the bus stop or the railway station you use on a morning can all provide locations in your writing.

I've lived in various areas of England and Wales, and beyond that family connections have leant further familiarity to places in Yorkshire and Scotland. I can picture my home town with great detail, even though I don't live there anymore and have used that city for one of my novels (as yet unpublished).

The first few murder mystery plays written for Murdering The Text were based in and around an imaginary market town called Dedleigh. Dedleigh is based on several similar towns in Yorkshire.

A children's novel that I wrote a few years ago (again, unpublished) used a house and area where I lived near Croydon, Surrey.

In the novel I'm currently writing, the future set, modern city is completely imagined but the old town where the magic users live is based on suburban areas I have lived in, using not only the setting but also the feeling of community.

Look around you. Take photographs even. Remember how it felt to live in an area. These experiences, like the rest of your life experience, can lend a reality to base your imagined worlds in.

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