Tori

I was wondering if there was any basic guidelines writers follow about real places in Fiction. Is it alright to use actual street names, cities, towns, buildings in fiction (I am thinking yes)? On the other hand, how acceptable is it to put a make believe streets in a real town?

Just wondering if anyone has any advice on this.

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Spudley

If you're just talking about trying to make your story authentic, no problem -- your story has to be set somewhere, and if you write about a real town, it's natural and good to put real details into it. Your readers wouldn't believe your story if you didn't.

However, you need to be sensitive to when it's a good thing and when it isn't. If the street or building is a public building or a well known landmark, or in the town center, or something like that, there's nothing to worry about (consider all the books out there that go into great detail about the buildings on Wall Street, for example).

But on the other hand, it's probably a bad idea, for example, to give real-life details for your characters' home and street address - the people who really do live at the address you give may not be too happy about it. If you really must give a street name for your character's home, make up something plausible; your readers won't notice, because residential streets aren't well known anyway.

If you're unsure about it - if it seems to be on shaky ground - the best idea would probably be just to play safe and make something up instead of writing about something real (this is fiction, after all).

Hope that helps.

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Tori

yeppers, thanks!

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Airborneguy

Being as realistic as possible is great..but I agree with Spudley. The closest I got in my book was placing a person in a nieghborhood, or saying that something was on a certain street without giving an address. Ever heard those stories about the real people who have the phone numbers from songs? They get called all the time. They might even possibly sue you for it. Be descriptive, but general.

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Nimbus1944

Mapquest.com might tell you if your make-believe name is a real street by accident. It could suggest the type of neighborhood you're creating --Railroad Ave., Dock St., North Commerce Highway, Magnolia Hollow Rd., Executive Blvd., etc.

For a fanfic, I had Scottish characters start a business trip on an actual downtown street in Aberdeen, but without a building number; travel the A9, an actual highway; then, take an unspecified route, and end up on the C961, an invented farm road that seemed to agree with the UK road-numbering system. From indefinite reality to definite fakery!

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Spudley

[ot:47f1981ee7]UK roads - 'A' and 'B' roads, yes... 'C'... they do exist, but in practice they're very rare. In practice it's more likely to be unclassified than given a 'C' number.
(This is going a bit off-topic though, so if you want more info, PM me, or start a new topic )[/ot:47f1981ee7]

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