Hey Grinders, how did your work on "hooks" turn out? Did you find strong hooks in your story? Or did you find yourself rewriting your opening sentences? Share in the comments how this exercise helped you or what could be done to make it better for the next person?
Now I want to take a couple of minutes and teach you how Google Earth can make a huge positive impact in your writing. I bet you are probably scratching your head unless you have already learned this trick. I call it a trick because I have yet to ever get a whiff of this idea from anywhere I have read advice on writing. So for the time being I am going to pretend it is a new concept. Let's set up the barrier that we call face, which is accurately describing places that we have never been. This is a huge challenge for all writers, especially younger writers who are trying to get themselves published, but soon realize their shallow knowledge pool. So what can you do about it? It's simple. I am going to take a real example and then give you the challenge.
I have been working on a story that takes place in Washington D.C., a place I visited for a weekend when I was about 10. I distinctly remembering going to the Air and Space Museum with my father and grandmother, and I remember having a great time, and maybe vaguely remember some of the details of the place, but there is no doubt the place has changed a lot over the decades. But yet I find myself wanting to include this place in my story. It is easy enough to Google facts about the Museum and the Smithsonian in general. You can see pictures of the insides of the exhibits and take virtual tours. That's all well and good, but for most writers the story doesn't end there. How can one hope to capture all of the things that won't be on a business website or virtual tour. Such as what the scenery is like, what would one of your characters see on their drive from one place to another, for example what would it be like for my two main characters to be driving from Quantico in Virginia to the Smithsonian in D.C., what would they expect to see? and how would that impact their conversation and their perspective of the trip?
Here is where Google Earth comes into play. You can look it up online or download the mobile application and you can type in any address in the USA and quickly find a detailed satellite image, and many times get a street view taken from one of the Google vans so you can get a better idea of what a place looks like. When I looked at the Air and Space Museum I realized quickly that my mental image of the place was not even close. Which of course is exceedingly important because it is a well known place and many of my readers would quickly recognize a mistake if they read it.
But within a couple of minutes of searching, I could see what the structure looked like, what streets it was on which is important of course because the characters would know and would readily refer to the streets by their name. I learned what the area around it would look like, what the parking situation was, if a bus ran by it or if you could simply walk up to the front door, and what you might see along the way. I also quickly learned which highways my characters would take and that most of the drive would be three lane highways with a lot of dense wooded areas along the way.
Here is the challenge for the day. Take a mental image of a place you remember from many years ago, if you are younger it may be a place on a family vacation or what your grandparents neighborhood looked like. If you are older it could be a vacation from a years to a few decades ago, or where you grew up. Take 5-10 minutes and write a page or two about how you would describe the place, and use as much detail as you can. After you finish search the location in Google Maps and look at it from different angles, and don't forget the street view.
After you finish a few minutes of glancing at the area and using the neat feature where you can basically walk the sidewalk virtually. I want you to take the same place and now write a separate page or two of prose that describes what you saw in the pictures. Again use as much detail as possible, and if need be look at the the picture again to recapture the image.
Once you have finished compare the two pieces. What did you include accurately in both pieces? Was it completely different than you thought? What tiny nuances did you include in the second piece that you would never have remember on your own in the first? It is these details in which you can set your story apart and have the confidence of getting the facts right and add depth to your settings.
Let me know how you ended up. I would love to hear from you.
Now go, and grind on.
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