Being there–Visiting your setting

Do you need to visit a place to be able to set a story there?

I’m thinking about this as I begin a short story that’s to be based in Switzerland. It’s been ages since I was there (I visited when I did my “grand tour” after graduating from college). And even when I was there, I didn’t go to Basel, where my story will be set.

I’ve got pictures from the internet and descriptions of Basel, but I haven’t been there. I don’t know what the place feels like.

On the other hand, my story is set over two hundred years ago, so the city would have felt very differently then than it does now. There are, no doubt, many additions to the city since then—trams and other forms of public transportation, many more buildings and so on.

So would visiting now give me a feel for what the place was like two hundred years ago?

Actually, it might in that I would be able to wander the older streets and see what it might have looked like at the time.

But once again, the internet comes to my rescue. I can search for pictures from the time period of my story. I don’t get too many, but enough to get an idea of what it might have looked like.

Is it enough? Well, it will have to be since I can’t easily hop over to Switzerland for a visit.

This is where my writer’s imagination will have to take over and my readers will have to be happy with my scant descriptions. Hopefully, they’ll be too involved in the characters and they story to worry too much about where it is taking place.

So what do you do when you can’t get to the setting of your story? Rely on the internet? Or do you prefer to try to get to the place itself?

As you might have guessed from the fact that I’m starting a new story, I’ve finished writing Falling. I’ve gotten the most amazing cover from Kim Killion (whose work I just love) and am waiting for my editor and beta readers to give me comments on the book (if you offered to beta read, please email me, I’m missing people I know offered to read for me!). So stay tuned for a great cover reveal and more info to come!