: Re: Should I create a fictional college if students go missing in my script? I’m writing a fictional drama/crime/mystery sceenplay. In my script, college kids go missing from a REAL University.

@Murray165

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Maybe it is easier for you to decide, if you make a distinction between your feelings as an author on the one hand, and the impression on the readers, and the feelings you invoke in them, on the other.

What would be the advantage to you, as the author, to use the name of a well-known university?

Do you fantasize that every reader will have the same picture of the Cambrige campus as you have it in your mind? Just by dropping the name „Cambridge“? They will not, as they have different brains, different memories and different fantasies.

Are you trying to avoid working hard on creating intensive impressions and emotions, by describing the environment and the interaction of people? Do you honestly believe that dropping a well-known university‘s name will spare you that work? Less than 0.1% of your readers ever visited Cambridge, and close to zero percent have ever seen a Cambridge dormitory from the inside.

Pro tip: Write the best text you can for a fantasy university that fits the characters, the plot and the mood you want to invoke. This is what counts, not its name. Though, coming up with a creative name that supports the mood and the theme, gives brownie points. After polishing the text, rewriting the manuscript a dozen times for full effect, and testing the story on a dozen beta readers, do a global search & replace, and change the university‘s name to Cambridge, or whatever you dreamed of originally.

You will have likely one of two outcomes:

Either it does not make a difference for the reader. Then why use
the well-known name, if you could use the better name you created?
Every suspense reader knows Derry, Maine. Is this because Derry is a
well-known tourist spot?
Or it does make a difference, and the
text‘s impression on the reader is so much better. Then you
probably have not done your best work when editing the drafts yet.
I have never seen any third option in any manuscript I read. (Other
than in „fictitious novels, after motives of the author‘s life“ — in
other words, dressed up autobiographies.)

This is exactly what „Kill your darlings!“ is about. It does not mean „kill the character who is dearest to you“. It means you should find out which elements in your novel are based on an idea you once thought was marvelous, and which turned out to be tripe after writing it — but you still cling to it, because of your past feelings.

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