novel locations

Do you use real, disguised, or fictional locations?

This year I used disguised locations. For example in one place there's an Ansel Road but in the novel I referred to it as Adams Street. It became a game for me and I hope it will bea game for my readers should the novel ever get published. It seemed an appropriate puzzle to add to a mystery, this year's genre.

A combination of the three.

If it is a place that I have pictures of, and NOT a privately owned building/piece of land, I'll use real locations, especially if it is a past or near future story. (Google Earth, with pictures, is also useful.) Sometimes I'll make 'improvements' that would be useful.

If I'm trying to use a 'real' feature that happens to be privately owned and is not part of a national brand, I'll disguise it. (I might mention it by name if I'm REALLY good friends with the owners and the place is being presented with a positive spin.) If it is part of a national brand, like McDonald's, I may disguise the actual location, so you can't say that it is a specific McDonald's.

If I'm world building, or tweaking our world on a large scale, I'll use fictional locations, adjusting them to match what is needed. In some instances it is one of the more productive uses of my degree in City and Regional Planning and my studies in architecture.

I'm using a mixture, too. Half of the novel is on the moon, in an established mining/manufacturing colony which, obviously, is entirely of my own invention.

The other half of the novel takes place on Earth, in Chicago and Ann Arbor. For the most part, I'm using real street names. If I am referring to a private house, however, it's a made-up address.

Mostly I create worlds for my stories (fantasy). This year's Nano is more urban fantasy, and I set it in and around Washington, DC. I used to live there so I know the area. I refer to, and have my characters visit, the Smithsonian and the National Zoo, but otherwise the buildings are fictional. Fake restaurants, fake business building, no addresses. Their apartments are based on a real apt. complex, but I don't name it.

I have been mostly writing fantasy with completely fictional worlds. This years Nano was put in a hastly created D&D-inspired landscape, but the fill-in short story which is modern fantasy was only partly fictional: the island was an invented but I imagined it somewhere along Finland's western coast. Both stories of the previous years happened in Helsinki area, last year's urban fantasy even to the extent of having the MC living in the same suburb as I do (lazy, no need to do research as I know the place...).

In my own mind, I used scenes from two different cities I've lived in, only so I had a consistent layout . I never actually told the reader where we were. In this particular story, the location is irrelevant.

I made up street names. I did use a real soup kitchen and a men's recovery program, names that are easily identified with Raleigh, NC. If I try to publish, I'll change them.

London now and Paris 1913. I had to do some quick research to check some of my writing - which I enjoyed doing.

Usually I set my novels in New Orleans, but this year's steampunk novel was set in Europe. Most of it is historical Europe, but I invented a city/state near Switzerland called Leutzkreig for the villain to conquer and a region in Romania called Lobdova for him to come from.

For my urban fantasy series, I set it half in Faerie, and half in real Denver. I used real towns and neighborhoods, but I didn't get too specific as to addresses. I also mentioned some real places like LoDo and Tattered Cover.

For my zombie novel, I kept the location purposely vague. It's obviously a place that has four seasons, since they have a snowstorm at one point, and I might have made some references to it being west of the Mississippi, but I didn't name any city or region. When I gave directions or talked about areas, I just said things like "the compound east of the city" or "north of the train tracks" or "past the highway." That may or may not have been the right decision, but that's what I did. I wanted it to sound like it could have been Denver, Salt Lake City, Boise, or any other large American city in the West.

I'm using Lyme Regis for my WIP, but another WIP I'm using a real state in the western US but I think I'm going to create a fictional town that's based upon a real place.

Deniliquin, NSW, Australia (you may need to google it) - it is a real place -set in mid to late 19th century.

I tend to use real geography with fictional locations. I don't understand enough science to create worlds that adhere to the laws of physics (about which I know nothing). I do however enjoy creating my own towns, villages, economies etc. My current world covers the southern end of the U.S. and trails through parts of Mexico and central america to end with a small part of south america. I have had a blast creating the various cultures and societies that I want to use for my stories.

Talking about locations, Dancing Thunder, my grandmother was born in Greensboro.

I think I'd find it difficult to set a story in a location that I'm not familiar with. A previous Nano is a steampunk set in 19th century London and other parts of England, so it's not only the location but the era that I have to research. That is going to be a challenge to say the least. (No, no zombies in that one.)

I lot of it I blame on laziness on the part of the writer. They just don't want to do the research involved. And part of it I have to lay on the publisher. When a simple Google could lay bare an obvious error, they have no excuse.

I yell at films, too, for simple stupid mistakes. I remember a film that supposedly took place in Denver, about a nuclear bomb that went off in the city. For one thing, probably everyone from Ft. Collins to Colorado Springs would be dead, but even if we ignore that....

the characters walk north from a little south of downtown Denver. After a couple miles they're in thick forest and getting into the mountains.

Hello? You could probably walk a thousand miles north of Denver without getting into the mountains. The Rockies are WEST of Denver.

Looking at any map of the United States or of Colorado would have fixed that error.

That said, I am scared of making really stupid errors that I wouldn't notice because I've never been to London, much less 19th century London. That's why I don't write historical fiction, much as I love reading it.

What I ought to do, and would love to do, is go to the places I'm writing about, take tons of pictures, collect maps, write notes in a journal, all before I set pen to paper, so to speak. But we writers are poor....

Mine's set in Paris. I'll have to have a Parisian as one of my beta readers (if I can find one).