Fictional vs. Real Setting
Axel Toelke
I've been following the Brit vs. US language thread, and I believe
there's another facet to it. In that thread the discussion was, should
you use
localised language, even if you are not intimately familiar with it.
Now, what about setting as a whole?
In my WIP I'm currently debating whether to create an original
setting, or use a real-live one instead. So, for example, in AMFV
Infocom used Rockvil, ND (fictional), when they also could have used,
for example, Grand Forks, ND (which exists).
In my mind, there are several good examples of fictional settings that
did not lose any of their credibility, or indeed sense of location (in
space and time). Consider I-O, none of the places exist (correct me if
I'm wrong), but I had a good feeling what the place was like and that
something similar most definitely exists. I also had a pretty distinct
idea about where on the big US map this setting is located (although I
don't really know all that much about the US).
If Adam had chosen to use real place names instead, I suspect that
some of the comedy wouldn't have worked, and people familiar with the
actual places would have felt let down by him not having implemented
their favourite burger joint, which in real life is just opposite the
Taco Mesa, or somesuch.
Now, like in I-O, I have a very clear idea of how the place should
look and feel, and where it is roughly located on the map. In this
case, I want the Pacific Northwest, and have, more specifically,
written with Vancouver in mind. Now that I've started to implement the
city, I'm getting second thoughts. If I had used a fictional place,
nobody would mind (or miss) that my imagined place does not have one
monument/sight/building or another, but what about the real life
Vancouver? Also, I am not intimitely familiar with the real place, so
my knowledge comes from one brief visit and recently a lot of guide
books. Is that good enough?
I am just wondering, since I am still early on, whether I should
switch to a fictional (but similar) setting to avoid inconsistencies
and have more creative freedom over what is there and what is not. Ok,
I'm also not a native English speaker, but I believe that won't be
obvious ;)
Opinions?
Axel
Sabrejack
> In my WIP I'm currently debating whether to create an original
I wholeheartedly endorse the idea of a fictional setting, following in
the footsteps of (supposed) literary giants as Stephen King and his
fictional location "Castle Rock, Maine". It allows you the freedom to
define the location as you see fit, provided you can keep up the
suspension of disbelief (I would refuse to believe, for instance, that
there was a giant evil tower in the middle of Make Believe, OH that
the US government just left there and hadn't taken out Waco style..
unless that tower was magically insurmountable or had an SEP field or
otherwise exlained away, get me?)
> I'm also not a native English speaker, but I believe that won't be
> obvious ;)
Your english is quite good =) Just wait though, you'll misuse
something sooner or later and the bullies on this board will jump your
case about it. ;) Still, your english is better than a lot of the
native speakers I meet here in the states.
Eric Mayer
wrote:
>
>I am just wondering, since I am still early on, whether I should
>switch to a fictional (but similar) setting to avoid inconsistencies
>and have more creative freedom over what is there and what is not. Ok,
>I'm also not a native English speaker, but I believe that won't be
>obvious ;)
>
>Opinions?
>
I prefer fictional places, because you can shape them to your needs.
But I think to maintain some illusion of reality you have to stick to
smaller places. If you decide to have as a setting the largest city on
the east coast of the United States and it isn't New York then you're
suddenly writing a fantasy.
I'm not sure where the line is, where a player/reader will accept the
fictional setting as part of our real world and where the setting
becomes so obtrusively fictional that it makes the world around
unreal.
As to inventing a small place that suits your needs, one might argue
that if, say, you need a place with a pizza joint just here and a
stream there, well, if only you knew about them all some place in the
US would actually meet your needs!
Harrok
news:97ded55e.02020...@posting.google.com...
> I want the Pacific Northwest, and have, more specifically,
> written with Vancouver in mind.
I can't help agreeing with Mr Mayer. It's one thing to create a fictitious
small town, but creating an imaginary city that is almost-but-not-quite-like
Vancouver would, I think, be a stretch.
I don't know Vancouver at all, myself, but I would imagine that as long as
you set the story away from the main streets, with just the occasional
glimpse of the sights in the distance, it would establish the setting
without leading to rows with people about whether the newstand outside the
Hilton sells the Sydney Morning Herald.
Cheers
Harrok
Kodrik
> define the location as you see fit, provided you can keep up the
> suspension of disbelief (I would refuse to believe, for instance, that
> there was a giant evil tower in the middle of Make Believe, OH that
> the US government just left there and hadn't taken out Waco style..
> unless that tower was magically insurmountable or had an SEP field or
> otherwise exlained away, get me?)
Other big cities:
Arkham, Monopolis, Gotham...
Roger J. Long
> more specifically, written with Vancouver in mind.
Vancouver, Washington state, US
or
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
? :)
Stuart Allen
> But I think to maintain some illusion of reality you have to stick to
> smaller places. If you decide to have as a setting the largest city on
> the east coast of the United States and it isn't New York then you're
> suddenly writing a fantasy.
I'm glad this post came up now, as it has been on my mind for a while.
I have recently started a game that is set in Hong Kong, for reasons
to do with the real-life issues addressed in the plot. The big problem
is that I have never been to Hong Kong. I have toyed with the idea of
finding a way to twist the plot and therefore set the game in a city
that I am familiar with, but I am starting to think things are not
going to turn out well either way.
I have, of course, done as much research on Hong Kong as possible -
enough to fool someone who has never lived there, but I still get the
feeling I am making a terrible mistake.
Stuart
Eric Mayer
wrote:
>
>I'm glad this post came up now, as it has been on my mind for a while.
>I have recently started a game that is set in Hong Kong, for reasons
>to do with the real-life issues addressed in the plot. The big problem
>is that I have never been to Hong Kong. I have toyed with the idea of
>finding a way to twist the plot and therefore set the game in a city
>that I am familiar with, but I am starting to think things are not
>going to turn out well either way.
>
>I have, of course, done as much research on Hong Kong as possible -
>enough to fool someone who has never lived there, but I still get the
>feeling I am making a terrible mistake.
>
>Stuart
I suppose you might reason that not many potential players for
your game live in Hong Kong. Which would probably guarantee that
everybody In Hong Kong with the vaguest interest in any sort of
computer game will hear about it and say "Wow, a game about Hong
Kong," download it and be enraged that you have a bus running at the
wrong time (Yeah - I'm sure they have buses because I remember Jackie
Chan jumping on top of one) and before long enraged martial arts
experts will be kicking your door in.
This is a real dilemma. A few years ago my wife and I wrote a
mystery story for Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. It was set in
Ulaanbataar, Mongolia where neither of us has set foot, but we read a
lot of guidebooks. The magazine has a fairly large circulation and no
one complained to the editor about any inaccuracies. However, some
months later, researching a new story, my wife got into correspondence
with a diplomat at the Mongolian Embassy in Washington who informed
her that Ulaanbataar's Chinatown, the area where the story was set,
had vanished some years before our story's time thanks to the
political upheavals of the early nineties. I'm not sure what the moral
is. Maybe that if you make mistakes somebody, somewhere, will
inevitably notice but the vast majority of readers won't.
In that case, Mongolia having so few large cities, it would
have strained credulity too much, in my opinion, to have tried to
invent a fictional Ulaanbataar. So I would say, if the story has to be
set in Hong Kong, then try to confine what the player can encounter to
things you can be pretty sure about.
But do your research. I set my IF game The HeBGB Horror! in a
fictionalized CBGB's rock club in a "real" New York City. I had been
there plenty of times but years earlier. I wasn't much interested in
the real geography and so just quickly refreshed my memory with a map,
checking some street names. Sure enough, someone who actually lives
around the Bowery played the game and was disappointed that it didn't
depict the area very accurately. Again, no one else commented on the
inaccuracies but I didn't feel too good about my sloppiness being
caught out.
So I think you can write about places you haven't visited, if
you are careful. As for research, my approach, now, is to do more than
just the amount I figure I can get away with!
--
Eric Mayer
Web Site: <http://home.epix.net/~maywrite>
"The map is not the territory." -- Alfred Korzybski
Axel Toelke
>
> Vancouver, Washington state, US or
> Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada? :)
I was thinking of Vancouver, BC actually. Thanks for the feedback!
The essence seems to be that it's easier, and often preferrable
to use a fictional setting in the case of smaller towns or not
so well-known places. Large fictional cities are probably unbelievable.
That leaves me to ponder whether my story actually needs a large
city, or if it can do with a small fictional city *near* Vancouver
or thereabouts.
Best,
Axel
Michael Iachini
> But I think to maintain some illusion of reality you have to stick to
> smaller places. If you decide to have as a setting the largest city on
> the east coast of the United States and it isn't New York then you're
> suddenly writing a fantasy.
>
> I'm not sure where the line is, where a player/reader will accept the
> fictional setting as part of our real world and where the setting
> becomes so obtrusively fictional that it makes the world around
> unreal.
As the example in this thread of a diplomat who knew Ulaanbataar,
Mongolia, illustrates, the line is where people are generally going to
be familiar with the real-world basis for your fictional setting.
Most people don't know the small towns in Maine or Texas where fiction
such as Stephen King's or IF like I-0 is set. I'd guess, however,
that people from those areas have a good idea of when the author took
real world places and then modified them to his or her needs. So,
there will be a few people who question the credibility of that
locale, but not many.
On the other hand, most people ARE familiar with the fact that New
York is the largest city on the east coast of the US, and London is
the largest metropolitan area in the UK. Most people will question
the credibiity of your locale if it's a fictionalized New York or
London or the like. Vancouver, BC, is possibly a borderline case. I
would guess that most worldly people are familiar with the name of the
city and the general idea of what it might be like, but not the
landmarks or neighborhoods. Given that, you'd probably get some
emails from players in Vancouver (Vancouverans? Vancouverites?) if
you aren't right on the money. There are quite a few people in the
city, though I don't know how many play IF. If it were me, I'd make a
fictional city based on Vancouver. It might be a small enough city
that you can get away with this. Tough call, though. Good luck! I'm
looking forward to the finished product.
Michael Iachini
David Thornley
Stuart Allen <stu...@jacl.animats.net> wrote:
>
>I'm glad this post came up now, as it has been on my mind for a while.
>I have recently started a game that is set in Hong Kong, for reasons
>to do with the real-life issues addressed in the plot. The big problem
>is that I have never been to Hong Kong. I have toyed with the idea of
>finding a way to twist the plot and therefore set the game in a city
>that I am familiar with, but I am starting to think things are not
>going to turn out well either way.
>
you presumably know a lot more about it than I do. So, let's discuss
some place I do know about - the Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota,
metro area.
Now, everything I've read that's set here has been by a native, the
area seeming to lack a "cool factor" (even with the world's greatest
shopping mall). Anyway, if you were to describe a totally bogus
Minneapolis, I'd find it jarring. ("The sand blew through the
palm trees" - huh?) If you did research, and had a map, and weren't
all that specific, I doubt anything would bother me. Only if you
were to get specific about details that mattered to the plot, and
got them wrong, and I were familiar with these details, would it
bother me. If you wanted to put something of a generic downtown
setting, or generic neighborhood setting, I doubt I'd be bothered.
--
David H. Thornley | If you want my opinion, ask.
da...@thornley.net | If you don't, flee.
http://www.thornley.net/~thornley/david/ | O-
A.P. Hill
use for your story. The answer is , Real world is better is you are
writing to white people with blue eyes that are balding. Fictional is
preferred by everyone else. So the answer to your question is , It
depends on the audience your are writing to.
I have a question, When I walk down a sidewalk, is it better to step
on the cracks or not? Which is better, I mean, which feels better for
me? Please be specific and create a large discussion forum on my
sidewalk question, thank you.
Also, you mention, you were not English speaking. Why did you mention
that? Are you trying to seduce me?
A.P. Hill
Amateur IF Writer
Creator of 'Sucka Piss Grit' technology
Adam Thornton
A.P. Hill <aph...@altavista.com> wrote:
>You are inquiring about which is BETTER, real world or fictional to
>use for your story. The answer is , Real world is better is you are
>writing to white people with blue eyes that are balding.
Wow. Am I not white, not blue-eyed, or not balding?
Maybe I'm not balding. I don't think it's a participle anymore.
>Also, you mention, you were not English speaking. Why did you mention
>that? Are you trying to seduce me?
Oh no! He spent too long in the Mining Camp Of The Undead Stiffies!
Quick! Get him some oxygen!
Adam
Plugh!
> your game live in Hong Kong. Which would probably guarantee that
> everybody In Hong Kong with the vaguest interest in any sort of
> computer game will hear about it
or guys like me, who spent a year there as an ex-pat and would love to
have some HK based i-f.
I can't claim to be an expert, in only one year, so don't go asking me
lots of questions; but I'd love to beta test (or earlier) and comment
on general look & feel.
Plugh!
Steve Evans
>You are inquiring about which is BETTER, real world or fictional to
>use for your story. The answer is , Real world is better is you are
>writing to white people with blue eyes that are balding.
Wasn't there a song about that? "Don't it make your blue eyes bald",
or something?
SE
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