Using a real small town

I just randomly picked a small town in Florida that I thought sounded cool and wrote around it. Any drawbacks to this or should I just create a fictional town and call it even?

 

Depends on if you care about people complaining that your portrayal of the town is inaccurate. Like if you say everyone is at the movie theater but it doesn't have one. But if it's really small town few people will care, relative to who may read it.

I'd probably use a made up name, but that's just me.

 

I wrote a story that takes place in a couple of tiny communities that I am familiar with. I took the communities back 60 years to when they were a little more prosperous, and added a few things like a branch of the county library and and a fictional church. But to choose a small town based on its name alone and build an imaginary community around the name? Hmm. Seems a little presumptuous and possibly fraught with drawbacks. For the same amount of effort you could create a place and name it, too. Heck, Craig Johnson invented a whole new county for Wyoming.

 

My novel uses actual towns. I am familiar with them, but they are "fictionalized" to a certain extent. The only concession to 'accuracy' I make is in geography. For example one of the towns has a river running through it and the orientation of said river is accurate, as it is slightly related to the plot.

Steinbeck famously set his stories around his home town. Vonnegut set several stories in places he's been, or lived, like Barnstable MA.

 

If this town is to be a core part of your story, then it would have to be accurate for reasons mentioned above.

Personally I would make up a fictional town, then you can make it your own and run wild with it.

 

taking a real town you are familiar with will help you write something that people recognize as true, but being inspired by it means you can play with the town and its inhabitants and make the necessary changes to suit your story. If you take inspiration, then you don't have to worry. However, if you write down bit by bit details that people recognize as unique to their town and themselves you might incur into legal issues.

 

I have used small towns for inspiration, but I would not go as far as using their name. People from that town are the most likely to want something written about them and are going to be the first to point out all the discrepancies.

 

This town can't be more than 5-10k people. Even if they did object to inaccuracies, I would think it would fall within the confines of creative license. Also, I would think there'd be an equal number of locals that would appreciate the light being shined on their locality.

 

I have named the town in my novel, Taft CA, pop about 10k. I have only been through it once, as it is not on the main highway between LA and Bakersfield. I chose it because the petroleum industry figures in the story and it is one of the last remaining 'oil towns' in the state. The desert landscape of oil pumps is part of the opening scene as the protagonist is leaving it behind. Most of the story is set in Orange County CA, which I am more familiar with.

 

Small inaccuracies about existing places can be small irritations that distract from the story itself. I once read a book with a scene set in my town. It referred to a hotel located on a certain street. The street exists, but is in a residential area. I've always wondered if the writer thought he made up the street name or if he just pulled it off a map legend without checking any further. Three decades later, that is one of the things that stands out in my mind about the book, and I suspect that is not what the writer intended.

 

Small town I grew up in is mentioned in the opening paragraph of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. People there either love the book or hate it. I read it in two days.

 

I'd create a fictional one, especially since that's what you'll be doing anyway, not having visited this place. All you're using is the name and a rough location--just make up a new name.

 

Hmm.... shocking no one brought it up yet. Cool I get to be first.

The Twilight Series takes place in the town of Forks Washington, which is a real town. I am not a fan of the Twilight series but I find the relationship between the series and the town utterly fascinating and I'm not the only one there was at least one documentary about it.

It is a bit of an extreme example but if you really want to look at the best and worse that could happen, I would look at the History of Forks.

However my opinion is, create a fictional town 'based on' a real town. It gives you the benefits of using a real town, without any of the negatives.

According to google (always accurate) the smallest town in florida is Fisher Island, so you could make your story take place on Angler Island Florida.

 

Had a similar situation with my last story. I wanted to set it in one of the towns I grew up, only problem is you can't see the name "Belchertown" for the first time without laughing. So I used an older name for the town - Cold Springs. But then I realized that one of the schools is still called "Cold Springs School" and I didn't want that connection because the story itself involved some shady happenings at a school, so I changed it to Cold Spring (singular) and left the school unnamed. No one has complained yet.

TLDR - do some research on the place, find out where its name came from, then use that as your jumping off point.

 

I prefer using a real place if setting and plot of your story permits. I would avoid using real people or real businesses in the town, as there’s of course a lawsuit risk. Theoretically a town’s local government could sue you if you portray them poorly… highly unlikely, though more likely if you paint them in a bad light.

 

Pretty much any time I use a location and don't want the hassle of asking businesses permission to use their establishment I create a fictitious street or two in the town and/or give it non-existent businesses and addresses. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle pretty much did the same thing with 221B Baker Street as the address of Sherlock Holmes. There is a real Baker Street but 221B was never an address there, much to the chagrin of those who went looking for it...

 

I tend to use real geographical locations, roads and exits, but not real names of towns or businesses. I might write something like, "A couple of minutes after turning off I-95 onto I-295 North, I parked my pickup in the lot of the run-down roadhouse just outside town." Now, if you really wanted to know where the story took place you could figure it out, but there is no need to be too direct about it. Now is there a roadhouse in that part of Maine? Don't know, doesn't matter.

 

Point taken. I guess I could have added an exit number narrow the geographical location, but it would it really matter? It would still be a New England roadhouse outside of a small town. I can imagine the same characters stalk both locales.

 

I like to make up a fictional name in a real geographical area so that I can design the town as needed.

 

I like to pattern a town after a real one but rename it so nobody will chew me out if I change some details.

 

Belfast is the main setting for my novel but I've taken a few liberties; a hostel that doesn't exist, a derelict mill has been converted into luxury housing, etc

 

I use the same town name in every one of my stories. It's a city or a small town or a village depending on the story. It is on the coast, in the mountains, in the desert. (At one point there were 30+ towns in the USA with that name)

Also, the Simpson's.

 

More to the point, that level of specificity can be counter-productive. Since I used to drive that route regularly, I know that when you leave I-95 north onto I-295 north, you are immediately in South Portland. It's still a limited access freeway, with exit and entrance ramps. You can't just pull off I-295 at a roadhouse -- and there aren't any roadhouses to be found there, anyway. (Unless you count Texas Roadhouse -- a steakhouse chain -- as a "roadhouse.")

Of course, most readers probably won't be familiar with wherever it is you choose as a setting. Nonetheless, I think if you're going to use a real place, it's important to get the basic facts right because, otherwise, it's off-putting to readers who may know the area, or who (like me) are map buffs and like to look up the details of places I read about.

 

Raise your hand if you've ever heard of Marianna, Florida.