: Re: Is it Ok to make up places if I want the reader to think it’s set in the real world? What I’m doing is making a story in the medieval times and I wanted to make up a village and

@Margaret427

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I think that at this point you must consider the importance of the location to the plot or the message you want your readers to get. For example, Dostoevsky, in Crime and Punishment, omits street names by just giving their first letters (interesting reddit discussion in here). While some speculate he did it for censorship reasons, I viewed it at the time as a tool enforcing the reader to be more focused on the story. Hence, by omitting real locations, the reader will not be attempted to memorize street names because they are not crucial to the story. From fear that some people may debate me on this with regard to "Crime and Punishment", I will just conclude with the following:

I do not see real locations as important in stories. As long as the setting is consistent (i.e. you do not jump from place to place uselessly), I think you should be fine. When you say

It’s important to me that it’s set in the real world because the second book is supposed to be in Wisconsin so I don’t want to switch from not real to real.

I think the best advice is just to not care about locations and focus more on character development in this part of the plot.

Another example of not real to real stories is in the Agota Kristof's trilogy: "The trilogy of the twins" (The notebook trilogy). If I remember correctly, the first book does not give you any indication about what the real location or time are. Next, it becomes more clear and uses more "real" descriptions. This comes up as the location and time become more crucial to the story-telling.

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