For writers who want to craft richly detailed settings for their characters, they can either spend lots of time and money researching dozens of travel guides, or they can get all the facts they need right here. The Writer's Guide to Places provides information on more than 100 cities in the U.S. and Canada, including facts writers need to develop convincing characters and compelling narratives. Writers will find information on; basic ethnic, religious and economic facts; regional history and facts a character might know; a character's favourite food and drink; things a character may be proud or ashamed of concerning his or her birthplace; interesting places to set a scene; myths about the state; and resources for further research. Designed specifically to be fast and accurate, this guide opens with a chapter on how to research real places for settings in fiction including shortcut ideas and guidelines for researching information quickly. Dozens of US cities are profiled and organised by state for easy referencing-from major cities and their satellite cities, to smaller towns of interest, including Atlantic City, Raleigh, Aspen and Tampa.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 2.5 / 5.0
Before It gets any lower:
I had thought this book would be helpful however, in starting off the read, when I got to Arizona I discovered listed at the top of "What Arizonans are ashamed of" our beloved Sheriff Joe! Conceding that the book may have been written by someone that does not live in AZ and therefore may not understand that Sheriff Joe is an elected official and not necessarily a police officer and may not understand that his job is not to hunt down criminals but to raise money and law enforcement awareness and therefore... more info
Ugh!:
What a complete waste of time. If you just have to see what this volume has to offer, save your hard earned money and get it from the library. As other reviewers have noted, it only has info on the 50 states and a few Canadian provinces. Not only that, but after reviewing cities listed that I have lived in or spent much time in, there was incorrect and misleading info. I wouldn't dare trust this as reference. Do yourself a favor and just get a guidebook to the location and check out the local... more info
Don't waste your time or money:
Writer's Guide to Places by Don Prues & Jack Heffron I bought this book for obvious reasons suggested by the title. I should have read the previous buyers' reviews first! The first thing I did when I received it was to compare the cities covered with places I've lived. For Honolulu and Oahu, for instance, no mention is made of the palaces, the Bishop Museum, the Pali, Diamond Head Park, the North Shore, Haleiwa, Sunset Beach, Sandy Beach, the Blow Hole, Mokuleiea, Valley of the Temples, Fort... more info
Bad book:
Don't bother. It's not a great resource at all. You'd be much better off deciding on which city you'd like to set your novel in, then pick up a dedicated travel guide for that location. You will never have the need, nor desire, to use 99% of the filler in this book.
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