How to Write a Good Story

Fictional vs Real Settings for your Story

Fictional Settings vs. Real Settings

Which is best: to use fictional settings for your novel or real ones? The answer, of course, depends on the particular novel you have in mind. Different novels demand different settings...

Some will demand real locations (a novel about a plot to assassinate the British Prime Minister in Downing Street, say).

For others, fictional settings will be essential (think Alice in Wonderland). In most cases, though, either could work.

Which brings us right back to the original question: Is it best to use fictional settings or real settings in novel writing?

As you might expect, both options have their advantages and disadvantages...

Imagine you are writing a romantic novel and you decide on Paris as your story setting. The good news is that your readers will already have a strong mental picture of your location before they read a single word of your novel.

Mention the Eiffel Tower and they will already know what it looks like. All you need to do is add a brush stroke or two of your own (the distorted reflection of the tower in the puddles, say) and - voila! - your novel's audience will have all the information it requires to picture the scene.

Set your novel in a fictional city, however, and you will need to put in an awful lot more work to describe the landmarks there.

Of course, having the readers already know the setting of a novel isn't necessarily a good thing. Most people's "knowledge" of a real setting will be limited to the picture-postcard views of the city - and the Paris that you want to portray in your novel will likely be very different.

This means that your descriptions will have to be vivid enough to dismantle the mental images that the readers bring to the novel.

With fictional settings, the readers can bring no preconceptions with them. Their minds will be a blank canvas for you to paint on.

Another drawback to using real settings is that you will need to get your facts straight.

If a character in your Parisian romantic novel takes the Metro from point X to point Y and the journey takes ten minutes, you had better be sure that in reality it wouldn't take significantly longer. For readers with local knowledge, any such slips would chip away at your novel's authenticity - never a good thing.

Novels set in real locations, then, demand detailed local knowledge and/or meticulous research of the setting. But the payback, of course, is that a romantic novel set in Paris will have a far stronger "shelf appeal" than a romantic novel set in a city (or even a country) that no one has ever heard of.

The same would hold true if your novel was set in Manhattan or Mumbai or a cruise boat on the Nile.

Choose a lesser-known real setting for your novel, however, and 99% of your audience won't have heard of it anyway.

Bottom Line?

If your novel would work in a well-known real setting and you are willing to put in the research, go for it. Otherwise, my best advice would be to hedge your bets.

You can do this by "broadly" setting your novel somewhere real...

In a real country.

Or a real region within that country.

Or even a real town within that region.

But make the heart of your setting fictional...

A fictional region within a real country.

Or a fictional town or city within a real region.

Or a fictional district within a real town or city.

Or a fictional street within a real district.

Even fictional buildings in a real street.

Taking this option with your novel's setting offers you the best of both worlds...

You will benefit from the glamour of setting your novel in a place that people know, and you will include plenty of real-life references to keep your readers satisfied.

But because you will use fictional settings for the specific locations (the lead character's house and street, for example), you will have the freedom to build your setting to meet the needs of your story, not the other way around.

Settings are important in stories, but plot and character must always come first.

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NOTE:

This book is here to help all us writers improve, so if someone needs advice you think will help them, feel free to send them a link to one of the chapters in this book. Keep writing!