So my trilogy (first draft already completed) is based on a real place - actually, the area where I live currently. It has the perfect ratio of history, preserved past, ghosts of the past, and combination of wealth and poverty for this trilogy to take place in, and ever since taking a college literature class on the region, I wanted to write something that takes place here and tell what I see of the area. I’ve wandered the very same streets my characters wander in the downtown area of the city in question and have explored nearby smaller cities/towns and rural land.
However, the area itself is small, and I feel . . . weird for calling out specific places/neighborhoods or even streets, especially in the downtown area of the city. The downtown area is where the MC lives in the first book (in a motel that doesn’t actually exist). Then in books two and three, the MC lives on a rural farm, which doesn’t feel as weird to write because it’s less “real” than the city, as in it doesn’t technically* exist and people can’t go find out if it exists or not.
*technically, because the farmhouse itself does/did very much exist in another county.
This same series has NYC in it, as well, and while I have never lived there and am not as familiar with the city as my home city, it feels less weird to try to be specific about places. For instance, at one point while he is in NYC, my MC and his friend stop at a cafe, likely somewhere in Manhattan. When writing this, I felt like I could make the cafe be however I wanted it to be because there are probably dozens if not hundreds of cafes in Manhattan. How would the reader ever be like, “Oh, it’s cafe X!”? However, in book one, the MC and his girlfriend frequent an antique store in the downtown area of my home city. I think it’s very likely that a person from the area would know what antique store I’m talking about, which feels weird even if I do not call the store out by name.
I want people to consider these books to be literature of the region and fall into that category. So on the one hand, I really want to make this book depict the area accurately - I want people from outside the area to leave the trilogy feeling like they know this area better than they did before (if they even knew it existed) - but on the other, I just have issues with “real” feeling “weird.”
If it’s at all helpful to see where I am coming from, my standalone book that I wrote before this takes place in New Hampshire (a state I have yet to visit but know some about), in a defined area/county, but the towns are mostly fictional, and that felt comfortable for me to write.
My question is, when I start revisions for the trilogy, how should I handle setting, because it definitely needs work. Should I just not worry about place-dropping specific areas? Should I fictionalize part of the city? What have you all done when writing real places? I especially want to hear about experiences writing smaller areas, but if you’ve written a story in NYC or some other major metropolitan area, let me know how you handled that, as well.
However, the area itself is small, and I feel . . . weird for calling out specific places/neighborhoods or even streets, especially in the downtown area of the city. The downtown area is where the MC lives in the first book (in a motel that doesn’t actually exist). Then in books two and three, the MC lives on a rural farm, which doesn’t feel as weird to write because it’s less “real” than the city, as in it doesn’t technically* exist and people can’t go find out if it exists or not.
*technically, because the farmhouse itself does/did very much exist in another county.
This same series has NYC in it, as well, and while I have never lived there and am not as familiar with the city as my home city, it feels less weird to try to be specific about places. For instance, at one point while he is in NYC, my MC and his friend stop at a cafe, likely somewhere in Manhattan. When writing this, I felt like I could make the cafe be however I wanted it to be because there are probably dozens if not hundreds of cafes in Manhattan. How would the reader ever be like, “Oh, it’s cafe X!”? However, in book one, the MC and his girlfriend frequent an antique store in the downtown area of my home city. I think it’s very likely that a person from the area would know what antique store I’m talking about, which feels weird even if I do not call the store out by name.
I want people to consider these books to be literature of the region and fall into that category. So on the one hand, I really want to make this book depict the area accurately - I want people from outside the area to leave the trilogy feeling like they know this area better than they did before (if they even knew it existed) - but on the other, I just have issues with “real” feeling “weird.”
If it’s at all helpful to see where I am coming from, my standalone book that I wrote before this takes place in New Hampshire (a state I have yet to visit but know some about), in a defined area/county, but the towns are mostly fictional, and that felt comfortable for me to write.
My question is, when I start revisions for the trilogy, how should I handle setting, because it definitely needs work. Should I just not worry about place-dropping specific areas? Should I fictionalize part of the city? What have you all done when writing real places? I especially want to hear about experiences writing smaller areas, but if you’ve written a story in NYC or some other major metropolitan area, let me know how you handled that, as well.
