A reader asks: How many different locations can a story handle?

Alle takes a stab in answering to her weakest skill: structure.

A reader asks:

I’m editing my first draft. I’m worried that there are too many locations. My characters in total go to 10-ish different ones. Does that turn off a reader?

Counting the locations in As Far as You Can Go Before You Have to Come Back: Seattle, Hong Kong, The Philippines, Bali, a ferry between Bali and Java, Thailand, Japan; and we pass briefly through Malaysia, but it is a reference rather than fleshed-out scenes, so I’m not gonna count it as a full location.

So: seven-ish. Additionally, many, many readers will have no familiarity with most of the locations — especially not from the backpacker’s perspective.

That said, not one reader in over 80 reviews (click and scroll down) has commented that they were confused.

So, no: ten-ish is not too many if you somehow clarify each location in the first clause of the new location. Perhaps by:

• Use the character’s name to start the graph with the new location;
• establishing a clear environment and
• returning to it again and again (The phone in Bat Cave?); or
• a different object in the same location (Sorry, I don’t know; I don’t watch Batman movies).

Keep things really clear for the reader and I doubt you’ll have a problem