Real or imagined landscapes

Most of my novels are set in my fictional towns of Easthope and Strand, the coastline between them, Camel Wood, and various smaller towns and villages in the area.  Easthope is very loosely based on a real place, but the more I write about it the more it changes. The original real town was a mile from the sea, Easthope is right by the sea where the River Hope runs into it. There’s a High Street, a couple of schools, a museum in what was an old factory, and nearby there’s a big council estate built round the small village of Hope.

The story I’m writing now is set in the 1950’s, and I’ve had to imagine what Easthope, my imaginary town would have been like then:

Mike’s head was full of thoughts as he strolled down Station Road. He crossed over almost without looking and took the short cut through Byrham, once a small village now just an area of Easthope between the Station and the High Street. Many of the dilapidated cottages here had housed the workers for the couple of factories, the umbrella factory and the felt factory, both long closed and their ghostly forms loured over this side of town. It was a tatty part of town and groups of lads hung around as usual

In present day Easthope there is no longer a station, the felt factory has been pulled down, but the umbrella factory has survived and is now the museum.

Why do I have a fictional setting? To be honest, I’m not sure… I live by the sea, but the sea in my stories is a rough exciting sea along an interesting and rocky coastline with little bays and harbours… the sea where I live is St George’s Channel which is between England and Wales with the Rivers Severn and Avon running into it. Although we have very high tides, the beach is long and flat, there are no rock pools or interesting features, and really it is quite dull… The beach that I base my imagined beach is in a different country, which would make the stories very different – and some of them not possible.

A real landscape would need to be a truer landscape – I wrote Flipside which was set in the real town of Oldham and I had to be so careful that distances between places were correct, that buildings and houses were properly described, that geographical features would support the action in my fiction… I was living in Oldham when I wrote my novel, so I was able to make sure things were correct.

It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while, and have discussed here before… could I write a story set here in my little village? Could my characters drop into the Dolphin or the Ship, buy a newspaper from the village shop, send their children to Uphill Primary School, go for walks along the new cycle path and over to Brean? I think I would find it challenging, I’d have to have a different writing mind-set. Would my descriptions be more vivid? Would I feel restricted because a person couldn’t really take a certain time to get somewhere, or live in a medieval monastery where there isn’t one?

An author I like very much, Damien Boyd, sets his novels very near here, in different places in Somerset, real places. It’s fun to be driving somewhere and know that this was where the criminal raced along to escape the police, here was where he took the corner too fast, and here was where he ended up and ended in a ditch. I call this Boyd-spotting…

Here’s a link to Flipside; the town in my novel has changed greatly since I wrote it:

http://amzn.eu/d/hbAKFO7

… and here is a link to Damien’s latest novel, Dead Lock:

http://amzn.eu/d/eeMAqQ3