Urban vs Rural

Yikes. I feel your pain. You've visited cities, perhaps? And you've read books set in cities and seen movies likewise. How about if you wing it based on your 2nd-hand knowledge and your imagination? Maybe once you get one story or two finished you'll start to get more ideas that fit in a more rural setting.

You can find all the information you need about the particular details of a city online (the City-Data Forum is good for this type of research), but I understand that's not your main concern.

You might make friends with a few people who live in the city you are most interested in, or similar cities.

The day-to-day things are not so much different than living in a small town (people go to work, buy groceries, take their kids to the park, go out to eat, go to a movie, etc.), except there is more traffic, more people, more places to go, more crowded living conditions, more problems parking, more tourists (there certainly is where I live), taller buildings, and a more hurried pace generally--in other words, the things you would expect.

Well, I've never lived on a 19th-century plantation or in 18th-century Paris. I guess the simple answer is: use your imagination.

Maybe you'll have to do some research--you know, ask friends who live in The Big City, or maybe visit The Big City for a few days. What areas are stumping you? The getting around from place to place? The things a city dweller does in his/her free time? Those things depend a bit on the city . . . . Figure out where you have an information gap and fill it in the best you can.

FWIW, I grew up in a semi-rural setting (not on a farm, though) and am still most comfortable writing about rural settings though I live in a mid-sized city and have done for several years.

What a shame about the urbanocentric stories. I loves me a good, strong rural tale, esp. about areas that don't often get used as settings.

angeliz2k said:

Well, I've never lived on a 19th-century plantation or in 18th-century Paris.

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I lived in 18th century Paris and I didn't like it.
Never stay in a place where the street is also the sewerage outlet.

jallenecs said:

What I'm thinking about doing is creating a "sister city" to St. Louis, sitting on the Kentucky side of the Mississippi River. On my one journey west, I was particularly struck by the St. Louis cityscape (with the obvious Arch) as seen from the eastern riverbank.

I just lack confidence. I can think my way into a spaceship. I can think myself into a haunted house. But cities? Cities are hard; they're big and complex and intimidating. (which is weird, right? Spaceships and the doings thereof are the complex ones, but that's as easy as falling off a log)

I'll try researching added to just making it up, if you say that it doesn't create a dreadful dissonance with the urban-dwelling reader.

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As an urbanite, who has created fictional cities for two WIPs, one thing to keep in mind is that even in large cities most people stick to within a few blocks of where they live, and where they work if it's that far away, with mostly 'hamster tunnels' in between.

Larger cities tend to have 'pockets'. Even small towns tend to, so you can always look at how your nearest town varies from one block to the next, and then expand on it.

One neighbourhood will be full of people who've lived in the area for generations, and will be mostly older houses and establishments. Another will be a sketchy area frequented by prostitutes and drug-dealers that most dwellers avoid, but for others, it's very cheap to live in.

Then there are ethnic enclaves, depending on the immigration patterns to the city. Those can also change over time.

You might be best simulating a city by imagining the sort of neighbourhood the person lives in, and what their lifestyle or occupation is and then building from there.

jallenecs said:

I have two, count'em TWO, stories that are in a rural/small town setting. One stalled due to structural issues, and the other is big. I mean really big (think V for Vendetta, plus Red Dawn, plus The Battle of King's Mountain, all set in central Appalachia). I am going to need to work up to that bad boy.

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That sounds absolutely fantastic. You so have to take a run at that big 'un.

jallenecs said:

I'll try researching added to just making it up, if you say that it doesn't create a dreadful dissonance with the urban-dwelling reader.

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Maybe post some of it in SYW and ask urban-dwelling readers here to comment on whether they pick up on the dissonance you're concerned about. You've mentioned lack of confidence writing about urban settings--could be your writing is fine but you don't know it.

Amy

Just curious -- OP, are you concerned about actual locations of things, or are you concerned about getting the 'flavor' of living in an urban setting? If the latter, I'd think beta readers (or maybe alpha readers) would catch anything that's off, especially if you ask them to watch for that.

If the former, fuggedaboudit. My current WIP is set in Lincoln, Nebraska and I've never been anywhere near Nebraska. Google works fine for that stuff.

Find a way to write country stories. Millions out there write everything from suburban to inner city stories, and they get them exactly right because that's where they live. This means editors see these settings over, and over, and over, and over, and over.

Even writers who live in the country want to use these settings, which means editors see even more of them. They get old fats, even when realistic. When they're unrealistic, they can kill the entire story.

But give an editor a setting they haven't seen at all, or see extremely rarely, make that setting realistic, bring it to life, and you're at least halfway to a sale for this alone. To you, big cities are esoteric. To editors who live in big cities, rural settings are esoteric.

I learned early on that I can almost sell a story based on setting alone. I'm a country boy, and grew up in Millville, Indiana, a farm town of about one hundred people, famous only for being the birthplace of Wilbur Wright. Small town or not, I know every inch of that countryside for miles around, and as soon as I started using it for a setting, sometimes changing the name, sometimes not, I started selling big time. Editors almost never fail to compliment the setting, often putting it into the blurbs for stories. None of them have ever lived in midwestern farm town this small, and it's as exotic to them as inner London is to me.

Too many writers think nothing exciting happens where they live, that it's just a boring piece of nothing set in Nowhere USA. This is true, until you make something happen there in one of your stories.

OP, if I was in your shoes (and I have been with my WIP), I'd write it based on what sounds reasonable to me, then identify the parts that are uncertain and either post them in SYW or post a question in RESEARCH. They sound like they'd be the type of questions that you'd get a lot of feedback on.

Keep in mind that the major difference is mindset. Rural people value independence, owning their own, and hard work. Urban people value convenience, social conformity, and having a good time or becoming the ultimate in their occupation (depending if they're type A or B). I met a New Yorker that could not stop working, even when she knew it was too much for her. She had at every single second of the day to be doing something important for her students or family.

Also, city folk like having stuff to do late at night, whether it's eating, partying, or just having a place to meet friends.

jallenecs said:

99.99% of the stories I read set in Appalachia come in two flavors: 1. "let's all laugh at the stupid, backward hillbillies" or 2. "let's feel sorry for the poor, backward hillbillies." It would be nice to have something out there that doesn't hit on those two EXTREMELY tired notes.

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Then write that something. Break the mold.

In general, I hate the advice to "write what you know," but that advice seems applicable here.

jallenecs said:

AND! 99.99% of the stories I read set in Appalachia come in two flavors: 1. "let's all laugh at the stupid, backward hillbillies" or 2. "let's feel sorry for the poor, backward hillbillies." It would be nice to have something out there that doesn't hit on those two EXTREMELY tired notes.

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I would suggest taking a look at the three books by Homer Hickam set in Coalwood, WV (a real place). The first book in the series is Rocket Boys, which was later made in to the movie October Sky.

Try City-Data forums:
http://www.city-data.com/forum/

I've used it before to gather some insider knowledge on different places.

When researching something I know very little about, rather than come at the problem with specific questions that might not even be relevant to the topic, I like to just soak up as much information as I can. That's sort of the problem with research. Sometimes you don't even know what you don't know. The more I learn, though, the better position I'm in the ask the right kinds of questions.

And btw, I've lived in New Orleans my entire life, so if you ever need some info for a story set there, ask away!

jallenecs said:

I can think my way into a spaceship. I can think myself into a haunted house. But cities? Cities are hard; they're big and complex and intimidating. (which is weird, right? Spaceships and the doings thereof are the complex ones, but that's as easy as falling off a log)

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You can't compare writing a spaceship to writing a big city because none of your readers will have ever lived aboard a spaceship. You could have all kinds of things "wrong" and no one would know or care as long as it made sense in the story. But the majority of your readers will have lived in an urban area at some point, so they'll pick up on every little error. That doesn't mean it can't be done, just that it's a LOT harder to convincingly fake an experience lots of people have actually had.

I am kind of curious what ideas you have that can't possibly take place in a more rural setting. I have read a few contemporary stories that HAD to take place in a big city (a story revolving around the crazy high-end private primary schools in New York City, for example), but the vast majority could've been adapted to take place anywhere.

There is no such thing as urban life; there are only lives in urban settings. Individual lives vary as much in cities as anywhere else.

Even the phrase "urban setting" is vague. New Orleans is nothing like Seattle. New York City is nothing like Los Angeles. And areas within individual cities can be night and day.