101 TIWIK #38: 40 Hours In Provo: Researching Place With Rob Slater

While I often draw details from the real world to feed my fantasy world building, I have never had to portray a current, real world place in my writing. Robert L. Slater is here today to share his experiences researching place for his forthcoming near-future novel Straight Into Darkness, sequel to the amazing All Is Silence. If you haven’t read All Is Silence, you need to read it and I’m not just saying that because Rob is my buddy! I couldn’t put it down.

Take it away, Rob!

40 Hours in Provo

My good friend and fellow writer, Selah, thanks for offering me this opportunity to share and consider my process of worldbuilding. I am in the middle of the S.N.O.B. (Second Novel Omnipresent Blues. {Thanks to Mindy McGinnis for the SNOB acronym}) For my debut novel, third written, first published, I had the advantage of setting in the near future in a part of the country that I know very well, Western Washington. Now when I got to the place where I had characters in Texas, well, that was the opposite issue. I have flown into Fort Worth and San Antonio, but other than that… I know nothing about Texas.

So, what did I do? I drove across West Texas along the route my POV character was traveling. Wow, you’re saying, how can you afford that on a teacher’s salary? The wonders of the internet and Google Earth allowed me to drive the roads. Finding landmarks, strange store names and tiny, out of the way, hamlets. Was it slow? Yes. Did we end up cutting most of this description? Yes. (Thank you, Amanda J. Hagarty, my content editor).  But it enabled me to get at least a visual sense of the land I’m traveling through.

The other sensory stuff, smell, etc. Well, everyone who knows me, knows I don’t smell so good. Either way. Often. So, olfactory senses in my writing? Limited to extremes: B.S., baby poo, other extreme scents.

I wanted All Is Silence to be as realistic as possible. Set 5 years in the future, an “End of the world as we Know it” pandemic has killed off most of humanity.

Since the second novel, Straight Into Darkness, is set almost completely in Utah, I decided that I needed more than Google Earth and 38 year old memories. When the opportunity came up to have All Is Silence displayed at the American Library Association conference in Las Vegas, I thought, “Road Trip.” After A.L.A. we packed up our gutless rental mini-SUV Chevy Captiva and headed north on I-15, The Veteran’s Memorial Highway.

We spent about 40 hours in and around Provo, saw a dam I might blow, was inspired to start a revolution at Sammy’s burger joint, and got a few ideas for cover art. In addition, we drove the route I have Lizzie taking on foot at the beginning of Straight Into Darkness. We also got to see Camp Williams and the NSA Data center, both key settings in the book.

There is no replacement for being in a place and getting to know it. When we were in Provo, we drove up to a lookout that I was hoping might be perfect for watching a battle going on down below. Nope. Can’t see hardly anything from there.

At some point one does have to let go of reality and stretch the leaf spring of disbelief. As I used to say as a theatrical director, if the audience is noticing costuming errors like the wrong era shoes, the actors are not doing their job. If I’m not doing my job as an author some of the liberties I take with reality might jump out, but if I am doing my job of pulling people into my universe, they will forgive me those minor adjustments to the way things really are. And who knows, maybe the movie theater in All Is Silence that closed down as soon as the book was released might reopen. If not the fiction is in an alternate reality, just as it should be.

Write on. Read on.

Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, Robert L. Slater wanted to be an astronaut or a rock star. At 42, he gave up those dreams to become a writer of science fiction and fantasy, where he can pretend to be both. 

Like some of his characters, he has a propensity for speaking in lines from 80s movies, drinking Mountain Dew and eating pizza. He loves music as a listener, a zealous fan, a guitar player, and a singer/songwriter. 

After nearly 20 years as a schoolteacher, and 35 as a teenager, he is beginning to have a hint of insight into young-adulthood. He has been in that hood a long time!

Visit his site here: http://desertedlands.com/

Buy his book here: http://www.amazon.com/All-Is-Silence-Deserted-Volume/dp/0989568776/ref=tmm_pap_title_0

This post is part of a series of 101 Things I Wish I’d Known Before I Wrote My First Book. Start reading the series at the beginning. 

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