“Welcome to Pointer, West Virginia”
I’ve touched on settings for stories in the past, but “Pointer, West Virginia” is very different for me. You see, I’ve never been to West Virginia. I do not have any personal knowledge of what the place is like. I don’t know how people talk there, what kind of accents they have, etc.
Creating a fictional place doesn’t have to be super complicated, but whatever setting you build has to be believable. In my case, I like to blend a bit of reality into my settings. When I created New Swindon in Connecticut, for my first book “The Bridge”, I was familiar with the area where I placed it. My grandmother had lived in Salisbury Connecticut for years and I became familiar with some of the other nearby towns. I blended the characteristics of several of them to create New Swindon to make it seem more real and authentic. I would refer to certain landmarks, roads and the things that actually do exist in real life. This allowed me to make my town more believable and real.
In my second soon-to-be-released book, “The Ship”, I used an actual setting from real life that I was very familiar with. However, I also took steps to make sure only my characters were fictional and that they blended right in with their real-life setting. I had the knowledge of Santa Cruz and Seacliff to make this happen smoothly and very believable. (Remember the old saying: write what you know about).
So why am I using West Virginia, a place I’ve never been too, as the location for my third novel? History! West Virginia is steeped in it, especially when it comes to the Civil War, which is the time-frame my main character Nathaniel lived in. So how did I approach this situation to so
So what did I do? Simple, it was time for a little research on the internet and here is some of what I learned:
-West Virginia was created as a direct result of the Civil War. Most of Virginia sided with the south during that turbulent time, except for the section now known as West Virginia. They were not inclined to enforce slavery or returning runaway slaves, and decided to break off from the rest of Virginia. There was a lot of tension when this happened, and there were a number of famous battles that took place within the newly formed state.
So right there I had a rich source of background to play with for my new novel. However, I still had a number of obstacles to overcome for the story. Where in West Virginia should I place my fictional town? I checked over some county maps and saw where towns and cities were located and took notes. I wanted an area that didn’t already have an actual town, so I could refer to the real places as being nearby. Plus I wanted a location that was near the disputed Virginia/West Virginia border. There were some hostilities there, and I had planned for my town’s history to include a bunch of raiders (southern sympathizers) who crossed the border and nearly wiped out Pointer’s population in one terrible “Night Of Fire”. Could such a thing have happened? Absolutely, because I checked up on atrocities that took place during the Civil War. Both the North and South committed atrocities, some extremely barbaric. So right there, I had foundation to create such a background history for the town.
I also, checked to find out what are the more prominent religions in the area, so I could populate the the town with a churches and denominations. Plus I researched, what kinds of agriculture and commercial businesses are most prominent and where they are located in West Virginia.
I know a lot of my readers may have never stepped foot in West Virginia, but there will also be some how do live there and I want them to feel like I treated their state fairly. I try to make the settings enjoyable and fun to think about. Who knows, some people may even want to visit them one day to see what it’s like for themselves. It depends on the picture you paint, so to speak.