When Amityville Is Your Hometown

Now that I have decided to forgo a formal outline for Blind Sighted, I’m diving into writing and thinking about settings. Should I use a fictional New England town, or an actual, real-life village? I was faced with the same question when I wrote my other novels. In Uncharted, I went with fictional, just so I could contrive the quintessential coastal-Maine community. With Portrait of a Protégé, sequel to Portrait of a Girl Running, I chose a true-to-life setting—the Sunapee Lake Region in New Hampshire, even naming some establishments in the community—but with Girl Running, I had a dilemma. I wrote with the geography of a particular town in mind—the village I grew up in—Amityville. So much easier than plotting out the ‘floor plan’ of an entirely new imaginary setting.

Since it has been a few years since the debacle, The Amityville Horror, was produced—thirty-four years to be exact—I don’t know … perhaps many people don’t remember the movie. I never saw it, and not just because I have an aversion to horror flicks. There are quite a few of us who still remember the horrible night that spawned the movie. I was an impressionable fourteen years old. I did not personally know the DeFeo family, but their tragedy rocked my safe, predictable, middle-class, ordinary life. Their tragedy was incomprehensible and it still reminds me of how precarious life can be.

Nevertheless, I have many fond memories of growing up in Amityville. It was a unique setting amongst the suburban towns that surrounded it, with its quaint village and mixed racial community. It was not only picturesque (and I believe it remains that way), but it felt safe. For me and my siblings, life happened in a three-mile radius. Aside from occasional trips upstate or to Florida, and out to Iowa to visit grandparents, Amityville, with its nearby beaches—Robert Moses State Park and Gilgo Beach—was all I knew for the first eighteen years of my life. It was only natural for me to write from memory when I constructed Girl Running. Even though at the time I had no plans for publication (that’s what new writers say when they set out to write their first real-live novel!), I was saddened to know that I could never use the actual name Amityville in a fictional setting. So sad, because it even sounds like the perfect fictional setting—Amityville! Doesn’t it conjure images of a happy, safe, amiable place? I mean, the word amity itself means friendly! Alas, I had to alter the name to Millville. Yeah, it’s pretty generic and it still works for fiction, but I would like to have held true to my hometown.

Time Setting

How much thought do you put into choosing the year your novel is set in? If you write contemporary fiction, perhaps that is a foregone conclusion—your storyline begins now, or in the recent past! And if you write historical fiction, you likely have a specific time in history in which to frame your plot. Sci-Fi is often set in some distant time in the future. Sometimes, though, time setting is far more subjective.

For instance, I would have set Story for a Shipwright in the year I began writing it—2008. However, because of an important plot point, I had to take into consideration the significantly more stringent security measures of international travel—with emphasis on provable ID since 9/11. I could not pull off a major plot point unless it was set prior to that event, thus, I chose to open the story in the spring of 2001.

As for Portrait of a Girl Running, I picked the year 1978 because it was the year I graduated high school; I could write about it with authenticity. Also, with the increasing awareness of privacy issues and boundaries in ‘fiduciary’ relationships over the past 30 years, it would have been trickier to establish credibility in my plot and character development, had I set it in present day. Sometimes, even in few decades make a big difference in the attitudes of society in general.

With my WIP, Whispering Narrows, I chose the pivotal year 1969 for two reasons: 1) I remember 1969 as a child, and so does my husband who is a couple years older and whose experience I draw from. 2) The Woodstock Festival of 1969 is a plot feature (at least I think it might be at this point—I want to leave my options open).

What factors do you take into consideration when you choose the specific year or time frame of your stories?  

Real and Imaginary Settings

Setting development is nearly as important to me as character development. I love adding the nuances of a place—the smells and sights, the overall feel. Even if my reader has never been to the specific place or one like it, I want to evoke a familiar feeling or memory they can draw on. It doesn’t matter to me if they see it exactly the way I do, but I want their own interpretation to be vivid.

My stories are set in the ‘real’ world and I make use of actual places, but also the stereotypical—based on real places. Sometimes I use a combination. I usually draw from places I have personally been. For instance, I set Portrait of a Girl RUNNING in an actual place on Long Island—I used my hometown because I could write about it believably. Problem is, my hometown happens to be Amityville. Will anyone be able to use that village in a work of fiction after the debacle Amityville Horror? Alas, I renamed it, Millville. Probably just as well. Yet in the sequel, Portrait of a Protégé, I use real places in New Hampshire’s Sunapee Lakes Region. However, in Story for a Shipwright, I use a composite of stereotypical coastal villages that easily conjure a sense of place in the mind of anyone even remotely acquainted with Maine—I call the fictitious place Wesleyville, named for the protagonist's family.

I think probably the important thing in choosing a name for a fictitious town in an otherwise real setting is to be sure no actual town by that name exists. What other considerations do you give to naming a place?

I wonder how many of you set your stories in places where you grew up—and even for those who write fantasy, do the places you fabricate originate in some place you’ve been in real life? When you’re reading, how much detail is necessary for you to visualize the setting?