How Google Maps Set the Scene

I've never been to the UK.

While I have a vivid imagination, it takes more than strong descriptive language to accurately capture the streets of Belfast, the rural roads of Downpatrick, and the unique paint color of a corner pub. A trip across the pond to the many locations David experienced, lived, and worked was pretty much out of the question and I needed a way to actually see the world I was attempting to write about.

Then, I remembered finding my old apartment complex on Google Maps and zooming to street view as a way to kill time back when I was a call center worker. (Sorry, old bosses!) During a productive meeting with David in which I was collecting sensory memories for the opening chapter, I decided to type "Mt. Crescent, Downpatrick, UK" into a Google Maps search. One click later, I was taking a tour of one of the most important backdrops of One Way to Grace.

Thanks to the Google Maps technology, I've been able to explore the streets David walked as a child, "stand" in front of the pub where he met the mother of his son, witness the landmarks in Israel that changed David's life forever, and take a tour of the English city he calls home today.

Here is an example of the prose assisted by Google Maps Street Views:

"Red brick buildings were adorned with full color murals declaring neighborhood allegiances. Haunting images of fallen heroes, hated figure heads or gun wielding gang members let those passing through know whether the inhabitants were loyal to the Union Jack or the Green White and Gold, to the Catholic or Protestant interests." 

 -Chapter One, One Way to Grace

Those murals are still there. Archive photos of Belfast in the 1960's and 70's paint a vivid picture of the city and how the visual representations of the civil and religious unrest affected its residents. Yet, looking at street view images of the actual murals that, though faded, still tell those stories really drives home how intense growing in that time, in that place was for David and everyone else really was.

"My mother and stepfather Larry took over The Railway public house on Wells Road, right down the road from where Davina and I had shared a home. The yellowish building hugged the corner of Wells Road in Radstock where I had considered ending my life in a car crash. The Railway itself had been the scene of many drunken nights."

 -Chapter 10, One Way to Grace

It wasn't until David and I opened the street view of The Railway during a meeting that it really sunk in how close the pub was to so many important places in his life. This small bit of technology has entirely transformed the way I interact with my writing.

So, thanks Google, for allowing me to describe places I've never been.