Fictional cities?

*raises hand*

My Dreg City series is a completely fictional setting. The city is an amalgamation of places I've visited and/or lived in. I wanted specific neighborhoods, and I wanted to have intersecting rivers.

Like you, I have a map of the city that I drew. It has the neighborhoods divided up, specific landmarks, railroad lines, important bridges over the rivers, etc... I reference is constantly when I'm writing so I don't have someone driving north when they should be going west.

In my case it's a rustic community. (Other dimensions are just as vital as the physical. I refer to Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities for inspiration.)

Also, the physical mapping most useful to me is viewed not from the bird's eye, but from the eye of a character on the ground.

Not UF but I did create a fictional city (and surrounding suburban areas) for my cyberpunk serial KAT AND MOUSE: GUNS FOR HIRE. Drew up a map with street names, neighborhoods, landmarks, etc. plus a map of the greater metro area so I know neighboring cities and towns and such.

Like CT, I refer to it a lot while writing because I've had characters going in the wrong direction a few times--once in the same episode.

Me too. I didn't draw out a map, since most of my references to places were very vague. However, it served my purpose well. I wanted a very generic setting, an "anycity" feeling. I probably will need to do a map though if I sell to a publisher and they want to do more than the one book (which is likely). It will help with keeping track. I didn't get elaborate with street names, just 10th, 11th, etc. and I had an Interstate, but left it at that.

I prefer made up cities sometimes, it's more fun to imagine it as superimposed on where you are at. It's easier for me as a reader to envision a story in a hole new world than a place i have been.

I haven't created one yet but I plan to when I reach that part of my story. I'm using real cities also and I'm going to try to stay away from some of the details you mentioned to keep it realistic. The fictional city I'm going to make is a part of the story I haven't reached yet, but it's going to be great.

I'm using a fictional town, but it's small and landmarks, river, and other things like that are unimportant to my story...at least for right now.

I made up a town (Donnetown, North Carolina). I've used it for one (unused) tv script; not sure what I'll do with it beyond that.

I haven't done the street map yet, but I'm gradually working out the town history.

I love fictional cities. I have several. It eases the need for research. And I do like to make maps...

I feel I have to point to Charles de Lint's 'Newford,' which is a fictional New England town that serves as the setting for roughly two-thirds of his stories.

I've done this for an old WIP, in which I'd created a city from top to bottom. It was made of towers, so I had multiple levels of maps, and I'd spent hours developping the political system and... well, about everything. ^^ I loved experimenting around in it, and it felt like I had my little parcel of a bigger world.

I have an undeveloped fictional city with a rough blue print in my head. (harbor is east of downtown, which is north of the financial district; residential district is largely west of all this, swanky places being along the coast north of the harbor). Oh, and some old abandoned places (including a bunker) are still farther south.

I've done this also. Not for urban fantasy, but for a sci-fi/fantasy novel I started and never finished 5+ years ago. It's more of a land area map rather than just the map of one city, but helpful in the same ways. I can't imagine having an imaginary setting and not having something like that for reference.

ETA: I'd say one of the most popular fictional cities would be Castle Rock, Maine (can't forget Derry, Maine either) - lots of great authors have fictional cities and return to them for multiple books, even if they're not "series" books.

Yep definitely. IN UF I was originally going to set it in Cambridge, UK, but rapidly found it a lot easier to make just up a place. Setting it in a real world place can add a lot of depth but can also make things more difficult. Especially if you make a mistake with the geography, someone will spot it

Plus of course I just love making up a world.

Oh, yes. Current WIP is in a fictional city. I like inventing my own cities - makes me feel special.

I created a fictional country, using Hawaii as the basis, including the culture. I didn't do any pre-development though--I'm better at dealing with details like world building after I can see the entire story. Otherwise the wrong kind of details get into the story, and I do a lot of research I'm never going to use.

I recently created a very elaborate city for a story idea. It didn't really get further than just the city. The story idea was pretty lame. But the city I think is a great character in itself.

Gor in the John Normans books is pretty much the main character. The stories mostly feel like an excuse to info-dump the world. When I'm reading them I'd wish he'd write less about the (lame) stories, and more about the world

DrZoidberg said:

Gor in the John Normans books is pretty much the main character. The stories mostly feel like an excuse to info-dump the world. When I'm reading them I'd wish he'd write less about the (lame) stories, and more about the world

Click to expand...

Oh lordy, John Norman...

All he really did was take various bits of Earth history and peoples (Romans, Vikings, Native Americans, Mongols, Arabs, Innuit & Amazonians all spring to mind) and stick them all next to each other in the same place and time under the rule of some aliens he forgot about after about book five (of twenty four).

I'm not sure info-dumping the world was what his stories were an excuse for...

PeteMC said:

Oh lordy, John Norman...

All he really did was take various bits of Earth history and peoples (Romans, Vikings, Native Americans, Mongols, Arabs, Innuit & Amazonians all spring to mind) and stick them all next to each other in the same place and time under the rule of some aliens he forgot about after about book five (of twenty four).

I'm not sure info-dumping the world was what his stories were an excuse for...

Click to expand...

How didn't you sum up all fantasy now? All fantasy is based on something in the real world, if only slightly. I never got beyond book two. I thought the aliens and how they controlled the world the most interesting (and innovative) part.

But I'm not going to defend him. I hear your pain. I only read them for educational reasons. He's seen as a kinky/BDSM author (as I am) and has been criticised of being misogynistic. So I thought I'd read him and make up my own mind. My conclusion was that they're not misogynistic as much as they are absurd sex fantasies. No women (or men) would act in such a way if placed in such a world or situations. It just rang fake to me. Since it has zero to say on "the real world" I think this exhonerates him from misogynism. Whether or not this constituates BDSM erotica I'll leave to others to judge. All I know is that it's not my cup of tea. I want it to feel real and engage me emotionally. I think Norman failed here. Since I was reading them to learn how his male/female dynamic was portrayed I was disapointed.

I think that his success stems to a large part from his place in time. He wrote in a time when well written full-on BDSM erotica was scarce, and when Lord of the Rings was extremely popular. So he's got a cult following. His portrayal of women has become some sort of mythic ideal for many inexperienced submissive girls... before they lose their virginity. In the kinky scene, when a woman writes on a forum she wants to be a Kajira (Gorean slave) it's an indicator that she's very young indeed. Once they've given it a go they all get over it really quick

But on topic. The world of Gor is well described and I found it fascinating in it's own right (no matter how derrivative it may have been). Which is why I brought it up here.

DrZoidberg said:

How didn't you sum up all fantasy now? All fantasy is based on something in the real world, if only slightly. I never got beyond book two. I thought the aliens and how they controlled the world the most interesting (and innovative) part.

Click to expand...

Ah right, that explains it. The first few aren't too bad, and the aliens controlling the world was indeed the most interesting bit. Shame he killed them all off in book four or five and parked the idea.

Sure all fantasy is founded in something from the real world, my point is that Norman seemed to want to use everything, whether it went together or not. In terms of the fantasy cultures, the later books felt like "Asterix in Spain / Belgium / Britian / whatever I fancy writing about this month".

As to whether the books are erotic, I'd say definitely not!

I've got two 'Urban Fantasy' novels. One has a completely fictional city in Montana called Revolution City. The other has a real city, but the whole 'real-time travel' is sort of moot for the character who's telling the story. (First Person) He has a natural 'hovering ability', and with the aid of a little bit of nano-tech, he can fly.
When it comes to fictional cities: unless you're describing a character's complete day (like if they take the bus to work and what happens) than it's not needed to focus on it. The main thing is what the dimensions are for the areas where your story actually takes place. (Rooms, Fields, Stadiums, Homes, etc.)
But that's just my way of doing things. I find that if I get too caught up in every little minute detail, I never get to the actual novel. So I write the novel first and, if it's a fictional city, decide on the dimensions then.

I do have a fictional city, but as of now it isn't very integral to the plot. City name doesn't even actually come up, most of the story so far has taken place in The Veil. My fleshed out version of purgatory, it's a lot cooler than it sounds .

I worked on a fictional city undergoing massive urban renewal, along with a Byzantine city bureaucracy and a horde of lawyers. I ended up being sued in fictional housing court by a dozen imaginary zoning attorneys.

You have been warned.

I love that people make maps! I have a fictional city, but it's sort of a send up of Metropolis - so, essentially, New York. I went the alternative history route, where names are similar - both Times Square and Central Park exist but go by earlier names, and I play around with what buildings exist and a bit with neighborhoods, too. It gives me structure, but it also lets me have my own playground.

In my story, Wake Up, I deliberately keep the city an amorphous mass of Californianish places that could fit anywhere on the west coast. It suits the narrative style and lets me be lazy as hell.