Is it possible to write about a city without having actually been there? Writing is no more than a hobby and I don't feel like packing up and moving to NYC or Paris just to write a novel.
>>7395161
yes, as long as you don't presume to talk much about the city itself, no one will notice.
>>7395161
no. the police come around and cut off your hands if you try.
>>7395202
dude, we need to found the Patrician State, with a brutal legal system to punish shitty writers
>>7395161
As a hobby? Of course, who cares?
As a guide, think of it as a Turing test where you can convince someone you lived somewhere. It's just lying.
Why not just set the novel in a city you've actually been to? Is the location that important?
>>7395214
>It's just lying.
All fiction is just lying. Who the hell are these retards who read novels as if they are some real life experience. If you want to know about Paris in the 1870s , read a history book or go in the newspaper archive. Naturalism in fiction isn't any more relevant or interesting than naturalism in visual art. In other words, you sir are a fucking pleb.
>>7395221
Who ares if it's "realistic" or not? It's not a non-fiction essay for The Atlantic, it's a fucking story. You can write a story about LA, but call it NYC, no one fucking cares. Well, plebby retards will care, but no one who matters will care.
>>7395161
>read texts where authors who have been there describe it
>extrapolate your own description off those texts based on how you think you'd react
>>7395161
Read invisible cities
>>7395233
this
>>7395161
Thornton Wilder wrote The Bridge of San Luis Rey about Peru, a place he had never been to. You can also write about things that didn't really happen - it's called "fiction".
>>7395233
The advice I've heard is to avoid basing your writing off of other writing, and look at pictures and talk to people who have been there instead. You want to create all your details yourself.
Yes, OP the world definitely needs more stories set in Paris and New York.
That's easier if you're setting it in contemporary times, because you can just full hipster it and streetview the distance between the yelp reviews you summarize. It becomes even easier for large cities which were previously photographed because you can make sure that the character's timeline and entry to the city aren't incongruous with previous versions.
If you want to set something further back, it's the same kind of research but harder to get info on and someone will correct you who has read more books about an obscure topic, time period, or setting, compared to what basic research for faking living in a city your average wannabe hip character does now. Get a bus timetable wrong two years before the bus time table is invented, some autist will make it his life's work to make you admit your fault; get the times wrong on a current line and people will think it's fiction for at least fifty years before the autists set in with
>there was never a 22.40 Lewton bus through Central Park
I will however say that you should limit it down from the entire city, as most people who live in cities only travel to a few select districts within a city any way, and usually take the same routes to and from these locations to each other.
>>7395274
Ya, and I'd agree with that advice. That said, I'm not the one who set myself up with a stupid writing task in the first place. Authors are gonna describe things with more sensitivity than any other source you're gonna find.
>The advice I've heard is to avoid basing your writing off of other writing
> talk to people who have been there
Not that much of a difference - the latter are just (prolly) shitty writers.
Also, you prolly know as well as I do that pictures, even well taken ones, are actually really shitty at capturing the effect of an environment.
