When creating, the advice is to use what you know. This can be disconcerting when you are trying to create about events you do not have any experience with. Recently I was reading the author’s commentary in the back of a book and this author was commended by the publisher for conveying the feel of a foreign city to which he had never been. He responded by talking about the research he had done. There was protest due to the details he had used in the story. In defense he talked about “superpowers”. I began thinking about this.
Of course he has superpowers! He is a creationeer! Did he really not use what he knew? I don’t think so. I believe he worked his art of detail into the facts of research to support the story he created. What does that all mean?!
STOP. Close your eyes and just remember how a cool breeze felt on the skin of your bare arm. Focus on that feeling. Put that feeling into your character. Move outward with that meaning for that character in that setting for your story. I do not know about you but my mind is making those memory links all the time. There is a certain type of wind and temperature where I am automatically hearing the clanking of stays on boats in a harbor. There is another and I am hearing the sounds of blades on ice. You get the idea. The “superpower” is to link those details into the researched setting in a natural way of the character’s experiences.
This author was so successful at doing this that people who lived in the location could not believe he had not been there. Using these details is just as important when creating pretend places. In order to create believability and bring your audience into your world usually there needs to be some resonance. It can be so subtle that it is not even acknowledged. Maybe that is where remembering the very essence of the tiniest detail, implied or explicit, has a place in creation.