Fictional Locations Hiding in the Real World
Although all of the characters in my books and a good many of the locations are made up by moi, I do sometimes get inspiration from real life. With individuals it can sometimes be a particular habit someone has, such as the way they fiddle with their hair when they are nervous, or maybe a physical characteristic, such as their way of walking or speaking. With locations it might be as simple as a particular setting in a place that I've been to that I happen to especially like or feel is right for a scene in a story.
The latter is true with my book A Legacy of Death, a murder mystery story that is set primarily in the village of Brayfield. Although the village was my creation, I did very loosely base it on an actual village that I know well.
There is a road that runs downhill into the real-life village from off the top of a ridge-way and, largely hidden by trees and hedgerows, there are a couple of old houses and a farm to one side on the high ground just before the road drops away. There was something about this setting I found appealing and so used it in my novel, though with some alterations to the specifics. It's also worth adding that the layout of the fictional village was entirely made up by me.
I did have to chuckle, therefore, when a friend who had read the book approached me a bit hesitantly one day to ask if Brayfield might happen to be based on said real-life village. She had spotted the similarity with the road layout and the houses and farm at the top of the hill.
What could I say? She’d got me bang to rights. So I admitted the real village had been the inspiration for Brayfield, though I stressed they very definitely aren’t one and the same. This might not have mattered, except my friend did, of course, have a second question already in mind. Are any of the characters in the book based on real people in the real village, she asked, with a distinct air of expectation? Rest assured, the answer to that one was a very definite no.
What about you, have you ever read a book and thought you might have recognised the real world place that acted as inspiration for a fictional location in the story?
All the best,
Ben
Find somewhere quiet and cozy to curl up and enjoy The Hide and Seek Murders, a tempting murder-mystery set in the beautiful Oxfordshire countryside of 1960s England.
