Amazing, the incredibly high standards us Lit writers...

[Hypoxia]

Going back to the complaints about geography. Why not set you story in a mythical town. That way no one can say you got it wrong.

Oh, I do occasionally invent geography, or take some known locales and give them whatever names I want. That way, *I* know where I expect places to be, so I can visualize the scene for writing. But I most use real places because, well, they're real. Where would Sam Spade be, if not San Francisco? Although, for fun, we could put him in Suffragette City and watch what happens...

 

[laptopwriter]

I do that as well, but...

my locals are usually based on real towns. Arlington Heights, Il. becomes Arlington Hills. Barrington Hills becomes Barrington Heights. Wheeling becomes Welling.

Some of my regulars know the actual towns but others have no idea. Even the ones who know though, who's to say it doesn't take an hour to go from Barrington Heights to Arlington Hills. Most of the time though I keep time travel pretty close. When I'm dealing with flights I simply look at the flight schedules and use real time spans and zones.

 

[JaxRhapsody]

my locals are usually based on real towns. Arlington Heights, Il. becomes Arlington Hills. Barrington Hills becomes Barrington Heights. Wheeling becomes Welling.

Some of my regulars know the actual towns but others have no idea. Even the ones who know though, who's to say it doesn't take an hour to go from Barrington Heights to Arlington Hills. Most of the time though I keep time travel pretty close. When I'm dealing with flights I simply look at the flight schedules and use real time spans and zones.

That's what I do with Velocity, Ky, it's based on my real hometown; Louisville, ky. Some places in stories were, or are real places, such as the Galaria that was replaced by 4th Street Live- which I hate, so the Galaria still exist in my stories. I find renaming things, and keeping this the way they actually are, is a thin line, such as a anything named after Thomas Jefferson, such as Jefferson st, Jeffersontown, and the county itself; Jefferson county. Some of the streets are renamed what they used to be back in the early 1900s. Of course somethi gs are altered as the city is a bigger car mecha than what detroit was.

 

[Hypoxia]

Even with my invented or misdirected geographies, I assume I'm writing for a tough crowd; I try hard to keep it cohesive. Gooberville will always lie downhill from Geezerville just as Amalfi sits below Ravello. But if I'm, say, setting the scene in an unnamed Pacific Coast University Town, I'll let geofanatic readers guess whether it's Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Santa Cruz, Eureka, or where. (Clues: fog; surf; weed; costs.)

Hmmm, just to mess with some heads, how about a geo-fantasy? Something happens in New York City and the 5-boroughs' geography goes topsy-turvy. Brooklyn Bridge goes to Staten Island's Empire State Building. Harlem is next to JFK Airport; Central Park is in Jones Beach. Confused, enraged crowds fuck madly, of course. And everything keeps shifting...

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Why fudge around with the names of cities in a story...I just use the real name and if people don't like it, tough. Of course I do try to get the geography correct as well as the names of local establishments that I use. It makes the story more real, not only for my readers but for me, even thought it's all a pile of fiction.

 

[Hypoxia]

Why fudge around with the names of cities in a story...

Because I may include a level of reality sufficient to embarrass or infuriate some folks if actual locales or identities were specified. Thus I cover my tracks with vague misdirection. If the story is totally made up then sure, I name real places. But if there's any straight reporting, I obfuscate.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Because I may include a level of reality sufficient to embarrass or infuriate some folks if actual locales or identities were specified. Thus I cover my tracks with vague misdirection. If the story is totally made up then sure, I name real places. But if there's any straight reporting, I obfuscate.

If that is the case with my stories, I make up a place. It would be called some obscure name...like...Orchard Falls and have made up names of people...like...Sue and Mary and Jillian.

Now my made up stories all take place in real places and I use real names...like...Sue and Mary and Jillian.

 

[Hypoxia]

Oh, real place names are easy. Centerville / Middletown, Jefferson, St John / San Juan, West Haven, Leadville, Kingston -- no problem. But I have reasons for avoiding Coos Bay, Azusa, Minori, Tulum, etc. Personal reasons. Pragmatic reasons. (And those are all misdirections, too.)

 

[sr71plt]

I've never been able to see Coos Bay even when standing in it. Too much fog.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

And I don't dare go to Centerville...or was that Central City? Anyway, The Flash is not a friend of mine.

 

[robertreams]

I once had a job at which I had to edit and verify information in travel stories sent in from all over the country and some foreign countries. You would be amazed at the number of people who didn't even bother to make sure there locations and amenities were correct for publishing in a major magazine.

Of course my Jackass 22 year old Asst. Editor (I was associate) insisted on accepting such stories and assumed I would cover her ass by cleaning them up. I guess I should have been complimented. I wasn't.

 

[oggbashan]

Anonymous has struck on one of my contest entries asking why. For example:

An American woman in an English Youth Hostel wants to find someone speaking English... A couple of lines above I had stated that the Hostel was full of French Schoolchildren. Doh!

All the answers were in the story. Perhaps I ought to put some of my details in bold.

That anonymous comment irritated more than it should have done, perhaps because it was reasonably written. But it showed misunderstandings on setting, date and context. The story in set in Mid-1960s England. If young men had cars, they were older cars, sometimes pre-war. Owning and running ANY car was a sign of more income than most at the time.

The main reason it irritated? Apart from the misunderstandings of the place at that time, anonymous was right about the main denoument of the plot - the switch from one woman to another. I hadn't built up sufficient background to demonstrate that Harry, the 'hero', had known both women for several years.

 

[RetroFan]

My suggestion is to not get too over-detailed if the setting is a place you have not personally encountered otherwise you could come unstuck, and don't make glaring mistakes. All my stories are set in the past, in a lot of varied locations with some taking place years before I was born, so I need to plan carefully.

One Erotic Couplings story I wrote was called "Switchboard Girls, Soldiers & Sirens", set in the southern England county of Sussex during The Blitz. Obviously I can't travel back to 1941 England to see what it was like all those years ago in World War 2, but I did my research before writing it so that it would be realistic enough without too much detail as to derail my story if a discrepancy was picked up, and avoiding a massive blunder such as using American soldiers as characters when America had not entered the war at that stage.