I've always set my stories in places I know well. It frees me up to spend more imaginative time on the characters if I'm not worrying about the logistics.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Sometimes you have to go places with characters and emotions within yourself you don't want to do, but you have a duty to the story and as a storyteller to do it.
I think that one of the things you have to do to become a storyteller is spend a lot of time reading stories.
It's just so much fun to make up characters, situations, and everything else about a story. I have so much freedom and flexibility to do whatever I want.
I'm a storyteller; that's what exploration really is all about. Going to places where others haven't been and returning to tell a story they haven't heard before.
Getting to share the stories in my head with other people and have them enjoy those stories, and having them come to see my characters as real. That's so cool.
I always try to make the setting fit the story I have in mind.
I always look for good stories and good characters, and if they're placed in a whodunit, then I'm interested.
If my characters travel somewhere, I generally write about a place I know to give the scenes more authenticity.
I don't always set stories in villages, more often in towns. But always in smallish communities because the characters' actions are more visible there, and the dramatic tension is heightened.
I find my characters and stories in many varied places; sometimes they pop out of newspaper articles, obscure historical texts, lively dinner party conversations and some even crawl out of the dusty remote recesses of my imagination.