I would like to begin every writing day by walking through the city I am writing about.
This would be useful.
It would also require an unreasonable travel budget and a deeply understanding airport security department.
So I use other methods.
Maps.
Photographs.
Street views.
Train routes.
Weather records.
Restaurant menus.
Videos filmed by people who had no idea someone might pause the background twenty-seven times to examine a doorway.
Research becomes strange when you are trying to understand a place rather than simply describe it.
Facts are easy.
A bridge has a length.
A station opened in a particular year.
A street runs from one place to another.
Useful information.
But facts do not tell me how long someone waits before crossing the street.
They do not tell me whether people carry coffee while walking.
They do not tell me which exit from a station feels obvious and which one sends you three blocks in the wrong direction before you admit defeat.
These are smaller things.
They are also the things I miss when I cannot be there.
The temptation is to compensate with description.
More architecture.
More history.
More carefully researched details placed into paragraphs until the city begins to resemble a very nervous travel guide.
I try not to do this.
A city does not become real because I can name every building.
It becomes real when the people inside the story have learned how to move through it.
One character knows which train to take without checking.
Another still looks at the map.
Someone avoids a street.
Someone else insists the coffee was better before the place changed owners.
The city enters through behaviour.
This is reassuring.
It is also more work.
When I cannot visit a place every morning, I have to listen more carefully to people who can.
I read.
I watch.
I compare.
I look for disagreement.
Especially disagreement.
If ten people describe a city in exactly the same way, I suspect I have found a brochure.
Cities are not consistent enough for consensus.
Eventually, I have to stop researching.
This is the uncomfortable part.
There will always be another street I have not seen.
Another café.
Another person who would tell me I have misunderstood the entire neighbourhood.
At some point, the city on the page has to begin living.
It will not be the real city.
No book contains a real city.
The real one is too large.
Too contradictory.
Too busy continuing without the writer.
All I can do is build a place where the characters seem to know where they are.
And occasionally let them take the wrong exit.
That part, at least, requires very little research.
— D. Vaen