So, my notes for this post started out with “because I’m a control freak?” and I won’t claim that’s not true. It’s not the whole of it, but I most certainly do derive a lot of satisfaction in creating large scenarios I, alone, control. If you happen to play The Sims, I can explain it perfectly for you: I still love Sims 2, and I don’t much like Sims 4.
Another reason for writing in fictional cities, though, is that—as strange as it is for a fantasy author—I’m also a realism freak. Sure, I’ll write about magick schools and werewolves and centuries-old half-rakshasa mages and not bat an eye, but if I say a character walked three blocks up the street to grab food from Taco Bell, you can be sure I drove the route, counted the blocks, and made sure that Taco Bell was, indeed, present in that location on that date.
I used to write in real cities, and it was exhausting.
And that’s not to even get into the pitfalls of being too realistic with a real city: i.e. the fact that there are real people in those cities. To stick with my example, if I were to write a character visiting a particular Taco Bell on a particular corner, do I then have to worry about accidentally implying one of the employees I make up might be confused with someone who really works there?
When they’re minor characters in a setting that isn’t really the point of the story—like when a couple of my characters in The Nexus visit Columbus, Ohio and go to a Jeni’s Ice Cream shop that really exists in a neighborhood I used to live in—I had no worries, because I wasn’t going into any detail about actual people, and I knew for sure the place was there on that date and I’d been there lots of times to describe it accurately.
(Of course, I say “no worries,” but I also Googled the everloving crap out of which flavors were actually on offer during that month and year. Like I said, realism freak.)
But another book I wrote (which will likely never see the light of day, sorry readers) had a character who was the manager of a Barnes & Noble in a particular, real, shopping center. My main character, a vampire, was seducing him for the purpose of feeding from him, and he allowed her to hang out in the store with him after closing, and did all sorts of un-managerly things with her in that store. And having worked for retail chains and other major corporations, that felt like something I probably should have saved for a fictional store—or at least not done in a specific, named, location of that chain.
But all the real-world overlap unpleasantness aside, writing in cities of my own making has lots of perks. I can add any features I want to my fictional cities, even if they aren’t typical for the region. Every city, after all, has something that makes it unique.
For example, both Barrow City and Arcanum have subways, despite few—if any—Midwestern cities having such a thing in the real world. Barrow City has an elaborate tunnel system under its surface—something that’ll be an important feature in later books—while Arcanum has the Nexus, and a rich local history of urban legends and supernatural shenanigans.
And, I think, the most fun part of creating a city all my own is that I can weave in symbolism and mythology. I can’t go into too much detail with B.C. here, because I haven’t revealed much of that city’s mythological ties, which are extensive. But I can talk about Arcanum, since its mythological symbolism isn’t as wrapped up in the actual plots.
For Arcanum, I leaned into the myth of Leda and the Swan for the names of several places and features. There’s the Pollux River running alongside Castor Avenue, and there’s a major metro-park called Cygnet Park. The city’s mascot is a swan. I’m sure I’ll come up with more as the seasons progress. There’s a bit of foreshadowing in the choice of that particular myth but, honestly, not much.
So, what about outside my cities? Both B.C. and Arcanum exist in what is otherwise the real world. (Not the same world as each other, mind you, but the real one.) I mentioned characters in the Nexus getting ice cream in Columbus. I’ve also shown Nexus characters in Norway and Chicago, and referenced plenty of other places. I’ve mentioned where a few students at Olive Tree Academy are from, including places like California and Michigan.
What I don’t do on page is tell you exactly where in the real world my cities are. There are two reasons for this. One, because while I feel the need to be ridiculously accurate with things like a real city’s architecture, I take many liberties with geography. A major feature of Barrow City, for example, is that it has five rivers. One is more of a creek and another is a mostly-dry riverbed, but three of them are large, working rivers. And, I assure you, the spot where I imagine B.C. to be, where my map actually does connect to existing highways, railroads, etc., does not have three major rivers running through it. Likewise, there’s no real-world version of the Pollux river that bisects Arcanum.
The second reason comes back to real people. Because both of my cities exist in places where there are actual cities in the real world, albeit ones smaller than B.C. or Arcanum. My cities aren’t fictionalized versions of real cities, like some authors write—they’re plopped on top of real cities, replacing them entirely. Just like I found it weird to write a Barnes & Noble manager doing things B&N would surely have fired him for, I don’t like to openly erase the existence of whole cities full of real people on my pages. I mean, technically, I do—but I don’t share.
There are clues here and there, times when a character will mention the approximate distance to some real-world location or the like. You can narrow down which state or general area each city might be in, if you’re so inclined. But I’ll never tell. 😉
Thanks for reading!
