Hello everyone,

I am writing a fictional novel after carrying the idea with me for 12 years. I love writing and find it wonderfully therapeutic but am getting a bit tangled in what is and isn't acceptable when it comes to making references to real places, e.g. towns and cities. I had wanted to use a real town as part of the setting but I am now wondering whether I should create a fictional town instead but that idea seems fraught with difficulties. Does anyone have experience of this and/ or advice?

Thanks

it's perfectly fine to use a real town, as long as you make it realistic and accurate. People who live there will recognise it, and it's quite annoying to read about a place you know but where it's completely wrong, and then the reader will get irritated with the book.

I would either:

use a real place and make sure you research it accurately (I'd recommend this, because it's much easier to describe a real place that you know well)

make up a place, but be very clear in your mind about where everything is, and be consistent.

alternatively, you could base it on a real place but make up a name for it. That way, you can describe it easily but nobody can come back with a criticism if you get some details wrong!

So have you actually begun writing (always the hardest part)? Or are you still mulling over your ideas?

<Added>

sorry, I meant to say Welcome to WW! Just shout if you need help working out where everything is

Thank you for the kind welcome.

Yes, I have started writing it and thankfully the writing is flowing, although I had under-estimated how much extra research I would need to do but that is fine too.

95% of the story actually takes place in a university town that I live in (although I am working in the Middle East at the minute)and part of the story involves a university department. I have contacted the university and they would prefer it if I didn't reference their actual institution. So I am left with being able to write about the town that I know really well but not being able to use the real university in the story.

I suspect I may have to use a fictional town and university. I will have to think about the town for a few days until a picture of it develops in my head and then I will be able to write about it clearly.

Thanks for your reply, it has made me think about what I need to do.

I think you could have a fictional university in a real town if you wanted to - like Dorothy L Sayers set some of her novels in Oxford but made up a fictional Oxford college called Shrewsbury College for her heroine to attend - presumably to avoid legal action or offence!

It's quite clearly similar to Sayer's Alma Mater, Somerville, in many respects, but she changed the name and certain aspects to suit the plot.

Lots of towns have two universities after all - Manchester has at least three, or more if you count some of the sub divisions, so you could add a second, imaginary university to your real town as long as you made it distinct from the real one.

But I think as Freebird says, it's equally fine to make up a new town - David Lodge modelled his university in Small World and Changing Places on Birmingham, but the town is called Rummidge in the book (he states in an author's note that Rummidge is a fictional place with imaginary inhabitants and institutions, which occupies "for the purposes of fiction" the place that Birmingham occupies on the map in the real world.)

Good luck!

Hi Mongoose, and welcome to WriteWords.

I'd agree with all the options that Freebird and Flora have suggested - either fitting an invented college into a space between two real colleges, or an invented university into a real city, or an invented university into a real university.

If you want an Oxbridge-like setup, I think it's hard to make convincing without setting it in either Oxford or Cambridge - but yes, if Sayers can put Shrewsbury on New College Cricket ground, and our own Rosy Thorton (RT104) can invent a whole all-women college for Cambridge, why not?

I often do a Lodge, and just take an existing place, and re-name it. That way it's easy to get the geography right without having to invent the wheel every time you need to work out how long it takes to get from A to B, but if you need an extra road, or a firestation, or ten minutes instead of thirty to get from X to Y, you can.

The thing to remember is that you don't have to get anything right, just in order to get it right. This is not fiction.

All you have to do is not get anything so wrong that a reader trips up and is pulled out of the world of the novel

Thanks for all the advice. After thinking about it, I think the end product will be better if I stick with the setting in a real town and create a fictional university. I think that will work as the geography of the real area plays a part of the story but I can design and locate the fictional university in a way that ties in well with the plot. I'm really grateful for all of your help.

Hi Mongoose
I’m very new here, too, in fact this is my first post, but I do have experience of your situation.
When I set about writing my first book I knew that it was odds on that I would have to self-publish. I set my book on Dartmoor using real locations, accurately described. I mentioned real pubs, real cafés and real tourist attractions. When I published the print format of the book all of the businesses I’d mentioned became outlets – very important when so many bookshops have closed.
It also meant that local newspapers and magazines were happy to carry reviews and those reviews provided the content of very effective point-of-sale promotional materials.
Good luck with the book.

that's a good point - if it's set in a real place, then you can focus quite a bit of local publicity and sales there, because people love to read about their own patch!

I am using a real town and real places in it and I have placed a fictional university in an area just outside the town in an area that is actually big enough to fit a real university in if someone wanted to build one there.

I have really enjoyed creating the fictional university in my head and drew a map of it out in my notebook to help me to be able to write about it confidently.

I think it is a great idea to use local resources to promote distribution and create awareness but thankfully that is all still a long way off for me