In a recent First Draft Friday, I was joined by bestselling author Robin James to discuss crafting captivating small-town settings. With a focus on legal thrillers, Robin has mastered the art of making settings come alive as characters themselves.
Here are some key takeaways from my conversation with Robin:
1. Setting as a vibe: For Robin, setting is more than just the physical geography; it’s about creating a vibe that permeates the entire story. Whether it’s a cozy romance or a gripping mystery, the setting sets the tone and draws readers into the world of the narrative.
2. Start with the setting: When planning a new series or novel, setting is the first thing Robin considers. By establishing the where and the environment in which the story unfolds, she lays the foundation for the entire story.
3. Fictional vs. real settings: While some authors opt for real locations, Robin prefers to create fictionalized versions of real towns. This allows her the creative freedom to blend factual aspects with imagined characteristics, giving her stories a unique flavor while maintaining authenticity.
4. Incorporating real elements: Despite using fictional settings, Robin often references real cities, landmarks, and businesses to base her stories in reality. This mix of fictional and real elements adds depth and encourages readers to explore further.
5. Small-town dynamics: Robin uses the essence of small-town dynamics, where everyone knows everyone and secrets are hard to keep. This close-knit community atmosphere adds intrigue and complexity to her stories, making them resonate with readers.
6. Climate and geography: Climate and geography play crucial roles in shaping the small-town setting. Robin incorporates seasonal changes and geographical features to enhance the atmosphere and create a vivid backdrop.
7. Balancing description: While setting descriptions are essential, Robin advises against overwhelming readers with excessive detail. She opts for a balanced approach, sprinkling in just enough description to paint a vivid picture without bogging down the narrative.
8. Setting as a character: Perhaps the most significant takeaway from Robin’s insights is her view of setting as a character in its own right. By treating the small-town environment with the same attention to detail as her human characters, she creates a richer story.
It was a great discussion, one you won’t want to miss! Click below to watch our 30-minute recording and hear the questions we answered from the live audience. Keep scrolling if you’d prefer to read the transcript.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Alessandra: Hello everyone and welcome to First Draft Friday. I am your host Alessandra Torre with Authors.AI, and today we are joined by the incredible Robin James. And we’re going to be talking all about using settings in your fiction and specifically small-town settings. So welcome, Robin. It’s fantastic to have you here. Do you want to do just a quick introduction to the audience?
Robin: Sure. I’m Robin James. My main bread-and-butter claim to fame, such as it is, is I write legal thrillers with small-town settings. I have two series. One follows a prosecutor. The other follows a defense attorney. They’re in different states, but all of my fiction is in that small-town type setting.
Alessandra: Fantastic. And so when we’re talking about setting. How would you describe setting? It seems like a very basic question, but is is setting all five senses? Is setting just a place? What do you think of when you think of setting?
Robin: For me, setting, and particularly when I’m talking about a small town setting, is a vibe. It’s the vibe of the book. And it doesn’t matter if you’re writing romance or if you’re writing a mystery or really any type of genre or niche; setting is on the most basic level, it’s the geography. You know, the where. Where is your story set? But when you do it correctly, or at least when you really get in a groove with it, it can draw in character as well. In fact, I always try to think of setting as a character in and of itself and try to put the personality and flavor just like I would when I’m creating the people that live in it.
Alessandra: Okay. When you’re plotting out that series or you’re thinking about starting a new series, is setting one of the first things you think about before you ever write any scene?
Robin: It is. It absolutely is. It is the first – every time I approach a new series and I’ll give you a little scoop. I’ve kind of hinted at this in my newsletter, but I am in the middle of planning a brand-new series of legal thrillers. And it is the very first thing I knew that I wanted to do was that I wanted it to be set in a northern Michigan fictional town where my character actually lives on an island in Lake Superior. It absolutely starts with “where is this going to take place?” What kind of environment are they going to be playing around in? I build the Barbie house, if you will, before I put the Barbies in it. So, it is absolutely the number one first thing that I do.
Alessandra: And are yours mostly northern small towns?
Robin: The two series that I have out right now, yes, but Midwest. The Cass Leary series, which is probably my most popular, is set in southern Michigan, so that would technically be considered the Midwest. My second series takes place in northwest Ohio. So, actually geographically they’re only about an hour away from each other, so they do kind of crossover from time to time. But I think that a lot of the principles that you would use to create wherever it is are universal.
Alessandra: Do you think it’s important that you have lived or are very familiar with, like if you compare a southern small town to a Midwest small town, there are a lot of ways that they are similar, but there are so many cultural differences between the two. Do you think it’s important that you have a history kind of in the area or the region where you’re placing your small town?
Robin: I think it helps for sure. I think it helps for sure. You know, there’s a lot of colloquialisms or customs that are unique to whatever geographic area that you’re in. You see these things on Facebook all the time. You know you’re a Michigander if, or you know, you’re a New Orleans if…It has to do with how words are pronounced or the difference… Right, right, right. So I definitely feel like things like that, and here’s just one small example. Here in Michigan, if you order a Diet Coke or a Dr. Pepper or a pop. And we do not call it soda. We do not call it a Coke like these places where for whatever reason you can order a Sprite and they call it a Coke. I don’t understand that. But if I were to call that soft drink the wrong term, if I called a soda, I’m telling you I would get called out like you wouldn’t believe from readers, and they’re very indignant about it. And so, I mean, that’s just one example, but there are a lot of things like that where I think it does help a lot for it to become more authentic to the reader if you can get those details right.
Alessandra: A hundred percent. Yeah. One of my early books, I based it in Los Angeles and I had it snowing, and oh the reviews, and I looked up and it has snowed in Los Angeles, but it’s like one of these like one in a hundred years type thing.
Robin: I saw that episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer where it snows, so don’t tell me.
Alessandra: Oh, good, see. I knew it was coming from somewhere. Okay. So when you are building a setting, and if you are, what about real versus a fictional town? So like with your new series, is it going to be set in a real town or is it a fictional town? What are the pros and cons of each?
Robin: For me, I really feel like I can boil down the pros and cons to “Do you choose a real small town versus a fictional small town?” is that they’re the same. The pros are that you know it and people know it. The cons are that you know it and people know it. Personally, I prefer to create a fictionalized version of a town that I’m familiar with. This is another kind of cool thing that my readers enjoy because they always, especially the ones that are from the region, literally try to figure out where it is I’m talking about. In the Cass Leary series, she’s in Woodbridge County. There is no Woodbridge County in Michigan. There are a lot of reasons why I do it that way. One of the main ones is I was a practicing attorney in the county where I lived for 20 some years. I don’t want people trying to guess, Oh, that sounds like Judge…There’s the lawyer in me that is reticent to try to make it so that someone could say, Oh, that sounds like this person or that lawyer, or that whatever. And I will say right now as a disclaimer, none of my characters are specifically based on real people, so there’s that. I mean, you can avoid that thorny issue of maybe someone thinking…
Alessandra: Potential association with a real person.
Robin: The other thing that I think is just flat-out fun is you can take your hometown. We’re all either from a small town or that small-town feel is something that a lot of people can really resonate with. But what I love is I can take this small town and I can kind of tweak it a little, fictionalize it. I can put a university there that doesn’t exist or I can make it so there’s a state park over here that becomes central to one of the murder plots or whatever it is. So what I will actually do is I’ll take a map, a county map, and what I did in the Cass Leary series is, I took three counties that were all sort of connected and I just carved out a triangle right at every corner and created a fake county that was right there. And you don’t have to be that specific, but it was kind of nice because it helped me visualize, okay, well there’s an interstate that comes in here that may come into play, and it does. Or just different geography. Like there’s a lake here, I could put a lake there if I wanted it to be. So I have had a lot of fun. In one of my series, it’s in a county that I grew up in but fictionalized and expanded. In another, this is the series that I’m planning, it’s northern Michigan. Again, a county that doesn’t exist. And I’m putting an island, you know, a private island in the middle of the great lake that I want to use and creating, okay, there needs to be a bridge system. How are they getting there? Like, do they have… all things like that just kind of springboard. And my favorite, favorite, favorite, favorite thing to do of all time is deep dive into the history of whatever fictional county or area.
And you can talk about plot bunnies and ideas that can springboard from– whether it’s ghost stories or how that county was founded–can lead to all kinds of interesting potential areas where your story can go. And a lot of the time, it’s like that iceberg analogy where the reader of the book sees the tip of the iceberg, but what’s going on underneath is what I need to know as a writer so that when I populate this area. It feels more authentic. I know where I see it in my head or I can actually go, if it’s someplace close to where I actually live, I can go drive there and get ideas. Especially when you’re plotting murder mysteries, that helps you figure out where the bodies are buried and things like that.
Alessandra: It’s interesting because when we talk about small towns, there’s a big range, right? I am from a small town that is really tiny. I mean, it’s a one-stoplight town, right? But we had a big town that was seven miles away that had like Walmart, but it was still considered by many people, especially in urban areas, it would be considered a tiddly wink town. So do you need to, I guess, especially if you’re in a series, you need to have a town where you can have multiple murders happen or multiple situations that…
Robin: Well, yes and no. I mean, yes and no because like – I also collaborate on a series with my husband who writes as Declan James, and we created this small town in southern Ohio. And as the series goes on, the joke we’re always telling is like, please never go there because of the murder per capita in this tiny town that we’re creating…. Longmire is another one. Like, never go there because — like every visitor…So I think on the one hand, yes, but on the other hand, especially if you’re writing a small-town type mystery, it’s just kind of almost a trope.
Alessandra: It’s expected that there’s a much higher body count.
Robin: Right, right.
Alessandra: And on this note we did have a question from YouTube. John says do you combine factual aspects of an existing town with created characteristics? And it sounded like that is kind of what you do, right? You take the best of it — you add what you need, and you borrow what you have.
Robin: Absolutely. I do. Like for example, in my legal thrillers – I was an attorney for a number of years. I technically still am; just paid my bar dues last week. But the court system in Michigan is, I don’t care what county you’re in, you’re going to have a lower court called a district court. The higher court is called the circuit court. And you know, so those details are going to cross over. I’m going to create this fake county that has the same judicial system as any other county in Michigan. And Ohio’s different. That’s another thing. In Ohio, the court systems are different. You have your lower court, it’s the municipal courts. The higher court is the court of common plea, no matter what county in Ohio you’re in. So yes, I’ll take the real structure and just superimpose it on the fictional county that I do. It’s great, too, because it can help you stay out of those plot corners that you paint yourself into sometimes. if you have this, well, this is just how we do it here, or this is… like, I know that there isn’t a woods here off this section of I-94, but in my fictional county, well, darn it, there is.
Alessandra: Let me ask you, if you are using a real place, what is your understanding of what you can use in terms of, can I use Bob’s Diner if Bob’s Diner is a real place? Like can you use real businesses or is that breaking some sort of a legal rule? Are you familiar with that?
Robin: Well, with the caveat that I obviously can’t give legal advice. Personally, I would be uncomfortable with that, particularly if you are going to use that particular diner or whatever in a disparaging way or in a way that could be construed as disparaging. And the other thing is, you can also just ask. Go into Bob’s Diner and say, “Hey, I’m, you know,” but I…
Alessandra: I want a place for a dead body. Can I put it in your freezer?
Robin: Right. So I mean, it really does depend on what you’re writing, you know. I probably personally wouldn’t do that, just because I’m always going to be overly cautious and like it’s going to be made up. My disclaimer at the beginning is it’s fictitious and any similarity to people living or dead is totally coincidental. And it is. I think you probably can do it, but I just feel like it’s fraught.
Alessandra: Yeah. And I can see both sides. I recently ran into a fishing captain here in Key West, and some person had written a book and named him as a character and made him a fishing captain. And he had copies of the book in his truck and he gave me one. I mean, he was like a walking billboard for this book. But I could easily see it also not going well, especially if you don’t ask permission. Mel said, and this is a little bit about your iceberg, how much of your setting research actually winds up in your novels?
Robin: I’m going to just take a number out of thin air and say it’s probably 20 to 25%. And with this in mind, though, when I’m creating a series, there may be details that just do not show up in book number one, but that will bleed through or come up in another book down the road. In fact, a lot of the time when I’m writing one book I created a lake and I knew later on there was going to be a body that washed up in this lake. So it’s kind of like you can…
Alessandra: You can’t have a lake without a dead body.
Robin: Right. So you don’t have to be super detailed. I have ideas for books that are going to come down the pike, but you know, I know some authors are so completely detailed and they have a map of what they’re going to do for the next 17 years or whatever. And I do tend to keep a bit of a series bible, although I’m not as good at it as I should be. I’m constantly going back and saying, “Wait, well, where did I put that intersection?” And it may not be something a reader would pick up on, but again, it helps me to just.. I have that place in my head. It exists as a real place in my head so that when I sit down to write whatever scene or book, I don’t have to think about it. It’s just there.
Alessandra: That makes sense. Another question is why small towns? If I’m an author and I’m thinking about a setting, and I could put it in a big city or a small town, why do you choose to write in small towns? And why would an author go that way versus not?
Robin: In my case, it was definitely – in one sense it was a “write what you know,” for sure. But additionally, I always think of the setting, the geographic setting, as a type of character to the book too. And it is things like, okay, what are the tropes of a small town? Everybody knows everybody. It might be that it’s one of those towns where you feel safe leaving your doors unlocked at night. When you go into town, it’s kind of… or think of – I just thought of like Cheers, the TV show, Cheers. When you walk into the bar, everybody knows your name. You know, it’s “Hey Norm.” So that type of feel is what appeals to me. And it’s also a fantastic way to connect a series.
Like take Romance for a moment. You write a romance and you have a couple meet, have challenges with them getting together. If you’re writing a true romance, they do get together in the end and have their happily ever after, happily ever for now. So, okay, then where do you go from there? If you use a small town setting, then what can connect the next book is, okay, we’re going to take a different couple in this same town. So I’ll have some universal characters. You’ll go into Bob’s Diner, maybe they meet at Bob’s Diner in this episode, or maybe the sheriff that we met in Book One becomes the protagonist in Book Four of your romance series. So it’s another really great way to connect a series so that every time that reader comes into it again, they feel familiar. That’s like, I get to go back to Delphi, Michigan, which doesn’t exist. I get to see these people that I have grown to love in this 10 or 11 or however many books series.
And it’s like, you know, if you think of the television shows or books that you love that have really effectively used setting. One of my all time favorite series is Outlander. When I first read that book, I really wanted to be Scottish. It turns out I am a little bit.. Or shows like Fargo, obviously, it’s right in the title. Or even Buffy the Vampire Slayer; Sunnydale is very much a character in that series. Or if you want to look at, I mentioned Longmire, but another one I think that does a great television show that does a great use of setting is Justified, in Harland County in Kentucky. That is a real place. But again, that geography, that town becomes integral to the telling of the story.
Alessandra: So we have a couple of great questions. First question, do you think it’s easier to get away with murder in a small town versus a big city or harder?
Robin: Wow, I’m going to give you a lawyer’s answer. It depends. Are you planning something?
Alessandra: Yes. I’m planning my next book. That’s okay.
Robin: In my small towns, there’s a lot of places to hide.
Alessandra: There’s a lot of busybodies I was thinking also.
Robin: Right, that’s the other thing. Not as many witnesses, maybe, in the small town, but again, that’s the downside of everyone knowing everybody. So I think that one depends.
Alessandra: Someone on Facebook said a series bible is a great idea. Do you do general outlines for your entire series?
Robin: Yes. And emphasis on the word “general”. My outlines tend to be a Word document or an actually a Google document where I just list things as they come up and try to categorize them as setting, characters. And I’m not as good at that as I wish that I were. You know, I’ve seen all these different bells and whistles software that you can use that I’ve paid for and downloaded and never use. And for whatever reason, I’m just more of a jot-it-down-as-I-go kind of gal.
Alessandra: And I love this question from Rob on YouTube because it kind of goes into our next topic, which is how to incorporate setting in your writing. So Rob said, “What particular details do you include in setting in order to make it a character?”
Robin: For sure climate is part of it. You know, if I’m setting something in Michigan, it’s going to matter what season we’re in. You know, we all know here in Michigan what pothole season is. It’s the spring. That’s one of the downstroke things that you have to make sure that you establish if you want it to be authentic. For me, having the geography, at least in a general sense, set, where I will actually draw a crude map. What I’ve done is I’ll actually print a map out of my county and in Michigan with counties and they have even smaller townships within those counties. So let’s say I’ll just take Lenawee County in Michigan and all of the townships that are in it. What I’ll do is I’ll actually cross out all those township names and make new ones. And then I’ll drive around.
I’ve set a book in Hockey Hills, Ohio, but we turned it into Black Hand Hills because we did the research and found out there was a cliff face where a black hand, a Native American black-painted hand was on the side of a cliff face. So that’s how I came up with a title for it. I mean, I think it depends, I think for sure with small towns, it’s going to be close-knit community. Geographically it can be small, but sometimes it’s not. Sometimes you’ve got these counties where you’re driving through massive farmlands and wooded areas and all kinds. So it could be a geographically large place, but you just want to be real careful not to overdo it. It’s the iceberg. Your readers need the tip. You need what’s underneath.
Alessandra: So when you’re actually creating a scene, like you sit down, you’re writing chapter one, how are you introducing your small town and your scene in your actual writing? And especially if this is like Book One of a series and they don’t know this small town, how are you delivering that setting actually in your scenes?
Robin: Gotcha. Well, in my Mara Brent series, if you open any one of the first three books, it always starts with where the body was found. For example, I had one where the body was found at a quarry. It was a quarry where all the kids in the summertime that’s where they’d go swim. So I always start those books with where the body was found, and it’s always a place that had a different connotation to the town and all of a sudden it becomes this site now that’s turned into that place where that horrible thing happened. So that’s the first way that I do that in that particular series. I take you exactly to where the body was found, give you a short, maybe no more than a paragraph, history of what that place meant to this town. And then now it’s become the jumping-off point for this horrible crime that now has to be solved.
Alessandra: That makes sense. I know a lot of new authors and experienced authors suffer kind of from word vomit with setting. So do you typically… are you sprinkling in, like, are they slowly becoming absorbed in your setting as you go? Or do you typically start scenes with kind of a description? How do you let the readers know the kind of each scene? And I don’t just mean the small town. I’m actually talking about like if they entered Bob’s Diner.
Robin: I don’t have a hard and fast rule with that, but generally speaking, you know, I’m going through an editing when I’m on my second and third pass of the book, I want to make sure that I’m not putting much more than a paragraph in an entire chapter that relates to descriptions. That’s one thing, I get that feedback a lot. My writing, I’m pretty to the point. I don’t use a lot of descriptive, you know, I’m not telling you what color people’s eyes are or their hair is; it’ll be just a sprinkling, I guess, so that you have the flavor of it. But if you’re spending…You really want to avoid that info dump. You know, I might have done the research on the black-hand sandstone that makes up my fictional town, but the reader doesn’t need to know that.
Alessandra: Yeah, that makes sense. We have a question from Andrea who it sounds like reads her books. She said, “I love the way you mix fictional settings with real places. I know Delphi feels so real when characters go down the road to Ann Arbor, I keep trying to figure out exactly where it is on the map.” So that’s interesting. So are you using real cities around your main city? Like you make references to real locations, real brands.
Robin: Yep. My Cass Leary series, she lives on a lake, which I live on a lake. You can’t see it. I’m actually surrounded by woods right now, but actually if I could turn my camera, I’m not going to, but if I turn my camera, there’s actually a swan right out here. Yeah, two of them. Yeah, they come out looking for breakfast.
Alessandra: Nosy things.
Robin: Yes, I will refer to. Like for example, Delphi, Michigan is in my fictional county, but we have – like the Irish Hills area of Michigan is where a bunch of inland lakes are. It’s kind of famous in the state, so I’ll refer to it, you know, or Ann Arbor is the closest large city to where fictional Delphi is. So yeah, I do talk, and occasionally, I will have my attorneys go into a courthouse in a real place, although the main story isn’t going to take place there. But yeah, I do sprinkle around, just to kind of give the readers a flavor of where this is. I want them to go look. My favorite thing is when they go on a map and try to figure out where it is. It doesn’t exist. It’s in my mind. But honestly, if you came down here and drove around the Irish Hills area of Michigan, you’re in Delphi – like this is it. This is where it is. So the topography, the little tiny one-stop sign towns. They’re all here and that’s what I’m writing about.
Alessandra: I love that. We are officially out of time. We do just have a quick comment from Linda. She just said that she’s writing a novel with a small fictional neighborhood in her own city. It’s like a village. Everyone knows each other, et cetera, but when they go to real recreational facilities – but they go to real facilities, support the local team, go to the restaurant. I love that.
Robin: That’s a great way to do it. Yep.
Alessandra: And I loved everyone’s comments. Thank you so much for participating and joining us live. And thank you Robin so much for joining us today. It was fantastic to have you. If this is their first time hearing from you or hearing about your books, where would you suggest they start if they’d like to read one of your novels?
Robin: I would start with Burden of Truth, which is the first book in the Cass Leary series; that is generally the entry point for most of my readers. But you can find out more information at robinjamesbooks.com,
Alessandra: Robinjamesbooks.com. Be sure to check that out. Also, you can read samples of most of Robin’s books at bingebooks.com. You can look her up there. And thank you again. We will be back in two weeks with another first draft Friday. Thank you so much, Robin. It was great to have you. And thank you so much to all of our live attendees. We will see you guys in two more weeks. Bye.
