Edmonton as a setting?

I set part of my story from 2007's NaNo in Edmonton and the rest in Ontario/Quebec.
Yes, I named it Edmonton, Alberta, including naming several streets in Downtown, Southside, along with the Whitemud, Anthony Henday, Highway 16, Baseline and Wye.
This choice was made because I was describing a car-chase scene (or maybe a chapter) and needed intimate knowledge of a Canadian city. Edmonton was a no-brainer.

If you have any more questions, please ask, I'll do my best to answer them.

I'm sort of the opposite of ShirtNinja. I don't have an intimate knowledge of a Canadian City which is why I don't use Edmonton. I usually use a made up city. This year, like year's 3, and year 1, my novel takes place in fictional Melcal City. My novel is science fiction and since the city is fictional I can go wherever my imagination takes me. I guess the city is a cross between New York and maybe Las Vegas without the oodles of gambling places. Although there will be some gambling places this year in Melcal City. I've never been to New York, so it's almost what I see New York to be, busy streets, busy people walking.

I do know of someone who has used Edmonton for a novel (not yet published). So I don't think you'll narrow down the market. I think it'll make your story richer to introduce an unknown city to others.

I usually make up cities though, it's fun and you can really play with it :), though you could do that with Edmonton, Alberta too. Why not have a Waterpark in Hub Mall? lol

I wrote my entire novel last year set in Edmonton, during a dystopian alternate reality.

Heck, I even made a ten-page description of West Edmonton Mall being destroyed, right down to watching the pyramid where the theatre's dragon is collapse.

It was fun. But there was a lot of research involved, too...

The illustrious Edward D (emdash) Ellipsipuff Jr...

Slew the fire dragon to save the Ellipsis...
From certain doom as a snack.
For the dragon thought the Ellipsis...
Was a line of marshmallows...
And had a craving for Smores.

I have before, though I don't think I'm going to be using it this time. However, it might end up being Edmonton without being named as such.

I never mentioned the city by name in my first novel, nor did I mention any street names or landmarks, but it was instantly recognizable as Edmonton, to someone who lived there. I like that approach, myself. Write what you know, after all -- and besides, it must be tough to make up a city and keep all references of Edmonton out of it.

(I remember a webcomic from years back which was set in a fictional Ontario town... except that all the characters kept on meeting up on Bank St. That's basically Ottawa's equivalent of Jasper Ave.)

Later on, I tried the same thing with an unnamed major Canadian city on the west coast. I think, that if I had named it, it would have been either Viccouver or Vantoria. : )

Denton, a.k.a. Aquadeo - ML for the Alberta::Elsewhere Wrimosaurs

I'm typing this year's novel LIVE on:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/late-write-featuring-aquadeo

My city last year was Edmonton. It didn't really matter to the plot, and readers wouldn't have to know Edmonton to understand the novel, but knowing the city definitely helped write the novel. I also have a non-nano novel set in Edmonton for the same reason. Both of these stories use real places.

NaNo '06: Fallout - 50,013
NaNo '07: Dark State - 55, 133
NaNo '08: Living in the After (awaiting a better title) - 50,088 (and readable!)
NaNo '09: Hunger - ???

Yeah, mine will most likely be set in Edmonton. If the name comes up, it'll go in there. There will likely be Edmonton specific landmarks featured.

I don't really feel it necessarily narrows the market. I sort of feel like people who know Edmonton will catch the references and appreciate the detail, and to others, it'll read as generic urban detail. It won't necessarily take them out of the story. All depends on how it's done, of course.

I'm setting it in Edmonton because that's the sort of size and personality of city this story needs to happen in.

*looks in purse for $0.02 and deposits in machine*

I used Edmonton as the location for NaNo in 2007. A few streets, a few made up businesses that looked like real places. Mish mash real with fiction. I think it worked well for what I needed.

A city doesn't have to be famous or well known to be useful or memorable. Your writing should give enough description for someone who has never been to Edmonton to be able to understand a few basic things. Perhaps that there is a swath of greenery going through the middle of the city where Mother Nature keeps taking back her land. It doesn't mean the readers will be able t drive around, using your novel as a map, but next time they hear that Edmonton reference (like in the hockey episode of CSI), they'll go AHA!

Do you think many people ever heard of Forks, Washington before Bella and her crew kidnapped people? Look how THAT turned out. Maybe your novel adds Edmonton to the literary mecca list. Pittsburgh and Chicago are certainly on mine because of stories that they featured.

(Keep in mind that the following methods probably wouldn't work so well for fantasy novels or some types of futuristic sci-fi, for which you would likely need to make an entire world from scratch.)

I don't see making up a whole new city as giving a lot of added leeway for creativity. The energy you would spend on fleshing out a make-belief setting could be spent on thinking up a more unique way of approaching the main conflict of your novel, and it wouldn't get you very much further than if you based the setting off a place you're familiar with.

The definite advantage to using a city you already know is that you can alter it as you see fit (add businesses, fictitious streets, etc.) without 'bastardizing' the place, because you are writing from your own experience, which always gives the opportunity for realism. Many published authors have done this, so there is no 'rule' against it so long as you get a good story across to the reader. The only difference is you don't have to worry about whether or not you have the right depth to the environment. A real city will already have all that you need.

Another easy way of addressing the issue is to base the location of your first draft on a location in reality with which you are familiar. You can then consider the points where certain stores/bars/streets/houses became important to the plot progression, and use those as focal points for altering other details as you edit the novel. Saves you time and worry right off the bat, and gives you a little more to chew on later (which is always easier, because that's when you'll have the momentum to deal with it).

Hopelessly adrift in the eyes of the ghost again.
Down on my knees, and my hands in the air again.
Pushing my face in the memory of you again,
But I never know if it's real,
Never know how I wanted to feel.

Never quite said what I wanted to say to

I used Edmonton for my 2006-2007 novel in two parts. Although I messed around with it a little bit; I was allowed, since my characters were crossing into parallel universes anyway. I liked the one where there was a secret tunnel under the Roper Road LRT station. The only other modern-day novel I did was set more in Toronto; I did a lot of Mapquest research.

This year may be another Edmonton one, unless it's set in Pleasantview instead. Or some kind of weird hybrid.

--
--Alfvaen(Web page: http://www.telusplanet.net/public/alfvaen/ )
Current Album--Mae Moore:It's A Funny World
Current Book--Walter Wangerin, Jr.:The Book of The Dun Cow
We hurt the ones we love the most; it's a subtle form of discipline

I used Edmonton and largely the U of A for my superhero novel last year and it worked great (although the story is still unfinished). Other cities I used were real, too, but that was the nature of the story - people transformed into superheroes in today's Canadian north (actually 2010). I thought having the places real would counter-act the zero chance that what made my characters into superheroes would actually happen and it would make it fun for local readers to recognize different settings in the book. My belief, though, is if you're going to use real places - you need to be correct in every detail otherwise readers will call you on it.

In my current non-NaNo novel, the first few chapters were set in Cold Lake, but my female protagonist did wind up spending a day at West Ed Mall. I never actually used the name of the mall, and kept the descriptions fairly generic, but it's still a great place to set a book because it literally has everything you could possibly need (except maybe a hardware store...)

A long, long, long time ago, my friend and I wrote (but never managed to finish) a story that was set almost entirely in Prince George, BC, and Edmonton. (Come to think of it, a lot of my teenage stuff was set in Edmonton even if I never actually came out and said where it was... granted that stuff was total crap..)

Anyway, if Edmonton's the city that works best for you, go for it. Good luck!

My novel this year is set in Chicago -- I'll probably fill in most of the really detail specific stuff later, but in the meantime, yeah, generic chicagoland. I'm not too worried about getting everything perfect in terms of setting on a first draft, so I'm okay with using a city I'm not super familiar with. I'll have plenty of time later to spend hours on google maps or do other research.

I picked Chicago for a lot of reasons -- I'm making use of a few distinctly American systems, like a ridiculously screwed up foster care system (Chicago/Illinois were particularly bad in the 90s), and I like the grit of bigger cities -- Edmonton just doesn't have that kind of personality.

I am considering making one of my characters, an 18-year-old vagrant telepath, Canadian, maybe from Vancouver, but probably 95% of the novel's action will take place in Chicago.

I also just really love Chicago, I think it's one of the most amazing cities I've ever visited. So I'm looking forward to setting a novel there.

I've used Edmonton once. The novel was terrible, admittedly, but that was more the subject matter than anything else.

However, I know of several stories I've read in the OnSpec magazine and in Minister Faust's novel Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad that have used Edmonton as a location. One particular OnSpec story was a futuristic Edmonton, detailing the expliots of a journalist; Minister Faust's was set in 1995 Edmonton.

This year I'm revisiting a story idea I originally had my first NaNo, but it didn't work out then. I've done much more research now, and have come up with both a decent plot, and details to flesh out the universe this time.

Either that, or I'll write a Star Wars novel and submit it to Del Rey and see if they like it.

And darnit, I've never seen "strong" or "cite" as HTML tags, but I have seen [i] in use on boards and in use in HTML.

David Adams Richards uses New Brunswick for the setting of his novels. Anyone who uses Edmonton as their setting could make the city famous. There's lots of opportunity for name-dropping of famous people and places to bring it alive.

I am using Edmonton for my setting because it makes it easier for me. My novel is basically a horror-filled 30 murders in 30 days. Every day I will write a new chapter and another murder. Since I work and travel in and around the city, it's easy to incorporate real places into the novel. If I have lunch for real at a restaurant, I will write about the experience, except add in a fictional part about killing the waitress.

It's basically a fictionalized diary. My real life + fake murders = my novel.

Yeah I'm using Edmonton, it has refrences to the mall, and it being the province's capital, and there're refrences too to it being in Alberta--oilfields, etc. but I'm going to call the city Augustana which is where the series I'm writing is set, just in different high schools. I chose this because I didn't want to, like you said, narrow the market. I didn't want to be a fun little local writer, I wanted people to set it where they want to set it in their brains. I just want readers to know that it's in Canada, or somewhere with provinces, if the term comes up. (and, randomly, I love your signature. Good good song.) :-)

"No need to be afraid. It's real love. Yes, it's real love."
--Regina Spektor

My last two NaNo Novels were based in Edmonton, but last year the city background was used as a springboard to get my fingers flying. I soon after used undefined locations that were not necessarily in Edmonton but could have been.

Year before, my first year, I used the city much more substantially, through I made some modifications to make it more of an environment that I felt writing about. Such as the City Council deciding to turn downtown into a garbage dump just to get more people interested in coming to the core, and having a mad scientist take over the Bay LRT station.

Even though it was wild and crazy, having the setting of Edmonton gave me a good crutch to lean on when I was running out of ideas. When I started to run dry, I would just move the story to another section of the city.

Oh, and during my first year I discovered it was a lot more difficult to write first person that I thought it would be.

You may be disappointed when you fail, but you are doomed if you do not try.

My killer ran over a kid on a bike by the West Clareview LRT station. He also murdered a family in Hawrelak Park. He hasn't gone to West Edmonton Mall yet or other hot spots, but he will make his way there eventually. His goal is to kill 30 people in 30 days.

My novel is set in Edmonton at the beginning--my main character's father is a prof at U of A, and he vanished on his way to the folkfest at Gallagher Park. Kenzie rents a house in Ingersoll near the abandoned Charles Camsell Hospital. There is also a scene in Vegreville, but the action then moves to a fantasy location, as it is a sci-fi/fantasy hybrid. It helps to write about places you know, as the description rings true. If I tried to write about Chicago, I couldn't, but I could write about Nassau as I lived there. Todd Babiak set his novel in Edmonton--and it did really well. I think he recived a Giller nomination. Mind you, Americans don't want to read about Canadian locations. So I go for the Canadian markets.