When to Use Real Cities and Towns, and When to Make One Up

Spy_on_the_Inside

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I've been on a bit of a short story kick lately. I'm a horror writing, and my writing group has tasked me with trying to get at least three short stories published, so I'll be able to do readings by next Halloween. On of their biggest pieces of advice, though, is to make sure all the stories take place in Minnesota (where I currently live), because that will encourage more bookstores to have me come in and read.

But this whole exercise has gotten me thinking. I have seen stories that take place in actual cities, and stories that only exist in the author's imagination. As writer, how do you know when to have a story take place in a real city, and how do you when to create you own. I've noticed that very rarely are real small towns the settings of stories. Does this have anything to do with it?
 

Maryn

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My decision is usually based on
  • What serves the story best?
  • What serves me best, like setting it where I live to line up readings?
  • Do I know a place that fits, and if so, how well?
  • Do the facts of the real place align with the facts I need?
  • Do I know the real place well enough not to screw up? Nothing enrages the locals like making parallel streets intersect.
  • Do I know the real place well enough to make it seem real to people who haven't been there?
 

Denevius

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It probably just has to do with what the writer is aiming to do in the story. I don’t think it has much to do with the size of the location in question.

Best of luck on getting your stories published for next Halloween!
 

LJD

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I write romance novels, not short stories, but... Personally, for me, it does have a lot to do with the size of the location. I either set my stories in Toronto (occasionally Ottawa), or a fictional small town.

The reason I don't write real small towns is that I want the flexibility to create fictional businesses, etc. And a town the size of say, my husband's home town (population: ~1500, no stoplights, and certainly not a tourist destination) only has a handful of businesses. I invent a restaurant and a bakery, have more than one Asian family...it starts to feel like I'm changing the very nature of the town. Also, I'd feel as if I was picking on that town if I put it in a book. So my small towns are never real places, and I'm a little vague on their locations.

But you put another sushi restaurant in Toronto? It still feels like the Toronto I know. Plus creating a fake city the size of Toronto, in the same province? It would totally change so many things in Ontario, whereas a fake town of 1500 changes very little.
 
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Treehouseman

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As a non-American, I found when novels talk about places like "Delaware" or "New Jersey" or "Baltimore" they might as well be talking about another planet. The Moon, even.

Until I really started looking it up I had a vague idea of Atlanta, Los Angeles and New York. Maybe New Orleans (as one giant French Quarter).

I still couldn't actually point out Minnesota on a map though!
 

BrumBall

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I've got both in my WIP. The MC is from a small fictional town, but he travels to London and Birmingham in the course of his adventures.
 

JustWriteMike

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An imaginary location certainly gives you more freedom. If the actual location is not an integral part of the story, that is the way I would go. However I do agree with LJD that size matters and that making up a large metropolis of several million people can be jarring in it’s own right. In a New York or a London you can also find a degree of anonymity while still using familiar settings to evoke images in the reader’s mind that he or she may know from personal experience.
It also depends on the genre. If I was writing historical fiction instead of horror then I would be very much inclined to use real locations since those are, for me, a part of the genre. One of the reasons we read historical fiction is to time travel backwards to known locations.
 

KBooks

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When you use a real big city and aren't too specific, you can put in those cool real-life details. Like you could set something in NYC and say what neighborhood it was in and talk about restaurants and culture and subways and other cool details, but as long as you didn't like put it down to the actual apartment building and the cross streets, you wouldn't be in danger of someone (however unlikely this is) reading and being like "Hey, that's wrong!"

When you do that with a small town there's often not as much information readily available on the internet to research and the small town may not have exactly the setting you need. Plus, if I decide I want this really cool Christmas Festival to take place every year so my hero and heroine can kiss under the mistletoe, I can totally invent that in imaginary small town. If I throw that into real town, a local may read my book, thinking it's cool that a book was set in their town and be annoyed that I got so much wrong.

What I kind of like to do when possible is a hybrid... set it in a small town, but mention what it's close to and put in lots of true fact about the real cities and towns nearby. So it still has local color, but then I can play around with the main setting as needed.
 

Outofcontext

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Whether I'm reading a novel or a short story, unless it's speculative or science fiction, a fictitious city name pulls me out of the story.
 

Lone Wolf

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Whether I'm reading a novel or a short story, unless it's speculative or science fiction, a fictitious city name pulls me out of the story.

But like someone else said, if you're not from that country, unless it's a famous city, we don't really know whether it's a real place or not. What annoys me is when a writer uses a real place and seems to expect readers to have some knowledge of things in that city.