Rainbow Snippets–Tokyo Nights

As fiction writers we are often asked questions about the level of realism in our writing, especially regarding the use of places in a contemporary setting. Normally it doesn’t worry me too much with smaller places in my story being completely fictional and larger named cities, the geography is dealt with in rather vague ways – might mention certain locations or name particular streets but everything else is very hand-wavey. I mean it is fictional after all, you aren’t going to run into my characters in the street and there has to be room for a certain amount of creative license, otherwise we may as will be writing Nonfiction and travel guides. But sometimes as a writer you do have to stop and wonder how far that level of creative license stretches regarding the setting of your story… And I had one of those freak outs today when I realised – as I cruised around streetview on Google maps, as you do – that the distance between two locations in the real world setting was rather close, like the character could almost have walked from one place to another… but then my story isn’t the real world, so surely I can get away with moving one of them or altering the location a little…

…..or I can just write the story and worry about the little details later.

Todays snippet comes from Tokyo Nights: Episode Ten, the final episode for Season One and releasing this week. Not that it will mean sitting back and relaxing for a few weeks…ah days… pish not even a few minutes. Still have my uni assignment to finish editing that’s due in on Friday. I also already have drafted a Tokyo Nights novella featuring Sagaki; an historical novel that just needs formatting and final edits done, and another novel that I’ve finally finished drafting as well.

He’d seen them once, his scars. Red raw lines dotted with the black of sutures. Ugly reminders of his foolishness. His stupidity. But it wasn’t his turning up at Ogawa’s and begging, goading the Yakuza boss into killing him that Hisato saw as foolish. No, it was admitting he found Ogawa attractive, desirable. For allowing the man to dominate his every thought and direct his every action simply because Hisato wanted to see Ogawa smile. Wanted that hungry praising look to shine on him. It had him questioning his role as a cop and blurting out stupid things like, I love you.

Foolish. Pointless. Impossible.

Tokyo Nights: Season One