Building a City

[aeriedraconia.livejournal.com]

Building a City


Some people say they just create it as they go; I am not one of those people. Yes, create as I go works to some extent but I need to know more and I need to write the specifics down because my city does figure in several books. Other people say they've been working with their city for so long already that they know it inside and out. I used to be like that but I discovered that I could forget things over time and that I was so familiar with the details that I didn't realize that I forgot to describe things to the reader who wasn't familiar with my world (a danger for the fanfic writer too I'd guess).

If you have a city that will be the setting for many scenes or that will feature in several books you need to know something about that city so the details don't morph, drift or change through the story or the series of books. So, how do you build a city? What goes in a city? Where do you start?

I thought turning this into a group brainstorming exercise might be helpful and interesting.



PART 1:
Where do you start and how much do you need to know? There are all sorts of things to consider when building your city many of which the reader may not ever know but that you, the author, may need to know to help make your city live and breathe. Things like: government officials, key characters, markets, political factions, economics, taxes, weather, rich and poor sections of the city, church, education, trade goods export and import, military, housing, public areas, transportation, sanitation, water, food…

What other broad categories can you think of?

PART 2:
Where do you start?
What do you need first?

The City as a whole:
You could start with drawing a map. Figuring out where the city is located is always helpful.
Is it a port or inland trade center? Is it located with an eye for defense or trade?
What kind of impression does the city give? Mood, looks, prosperity, size…?

Inside the City:
If you are working a scene or several scenes: What do you need to accomplish with the scene(s)?
Where in the city will the first scene(s) take place?
What is the function of the place where the scene(s) take place?
What does the immediate surrounding look like? Smells? Sounds? Feelings, tactile and emotional?
Are there other people around? What are they doing? Saying? Their general mood?
What else?


PART 3:
What comes next?

Comments

[captlychee.livejournal.com]

I think you've covered a lot there. You've touched on politics and economics and since those are the areas that interest me I'll put in my two cents on those.

Questions

Politics

Who rules the city? Governing council, religious elite, royal family, witches' coven, group of rich families a la medieval Italy, secret council of Elders working behind the scenes, powerful vampire group etc etc. Each of these will affect the way the city is run as a whole, touching the lives of everyone in it. For example, the vampire group would ban anything that tainted human blood, meaning that the city will have no inns or taverns as we know them. The rich families will practice both marriage and assassination amongst themselves to secure control of more of the city. The religious elite may neglect questions of sweerage to build even more glorious places of worship.

Economics

most cities begin as places of trade, usually with something unique to trade. Farms and villages start up later, to serve the population of the city. So what is the city's unique resource? Do they still have it? If they have it, is it significant? (For example, London started off exporting dried fish, but that is no longer a significant resource or industry there.) If they don't have it, is the city poor or still prosperous? Consider present-day New Orleans as a poor city on the edge of collapse. Whatever services the city runs (some kind of guard or police force, some kind of sanitation, some methof of moving fresh water around etc etc), are these still working well or are they crappy?

Not all cities begin with control of an economic resource. Some are purely administrative centres, although this was rare in medieval times. You could, though, have a medieval or ancient city set up purely as an administrative centre - a Washington DC (or Canberra, Wellington, Pretoria, Brasilia) of an ancient empire. What sort of bureaucracies go on there? What about a city that grew out of a military garrison? (Which I think York is.) A lot of soldiers running around still, with all their anciliary needs (armourers, bowyers, fletchers, gunsmiths, prostitutes). Is the garrison still important or have events passed it by? Do the military people still carry on a proud military tradition or has that fallen into decline?

Consider John Swartzwelder's rather facetious example of a town founded by prostitures. If that grows into a city, who rules it? (I think I'll have a ponder about this.)

Finally

If we were to create a city, we could do a community for it. Something like orbis_terrarum which is awesome in its detail. The only problem I foresee is that these projects too often become a wiki, blanded into inanity by everyone wanting to push their own barrow and thus compromised to the n^th degree. What method could we use to stop this? It can work (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medea:_Harlan's_World), so this could too.

The Tale of Two Cities

[captlychee.livejournal.com]

It occurred to me the other day that one way to start is to name the city. Most cities get a name pretty early on. The name may change as languages change (Llyn Dyn to London), as the country of which they're a part changes (New Amsterdam to New York) or as the whims of politics dictate (Salisbury to Harare). Nonetheless, they get a name pretty early and that name can be instructive in talking about the city. (Salt Lake City is the best example I can think of.) Anyway, once you pick a name you can get some idea of the history and geography of the city. Accordingly I bring you two cities: Umber Noel and Stalemate Cote. (These sophisticated anagrams come from http://wordsmith.org/anagram/)

Umber Noel clearly describes that it was named around Christmas, or whatever the locals celebrate that they give the name 'Noel' to. Compare this with Natal which was named after the Nativity becasue that's when it was first sighted. 'Umber' refers to the color of the soil so whatever it is that makes soil umber coloured is a resource that this city has, or had when it was named.

'Cote' means coast and 'stalemate' is ovvious. Clearly the city was named after a naval battle that ended in a stalemate, thus protecting the status quo and allowing the city to survive. It probably wasn't founded after a stalemated naval engagement so it's name may have been changed to celebrate the stalemate. If so, some of the steeets and buildings will bear the old name of the city, whatever that might be, (Let's say it was called Oak Pens. There will be some oak trees still around in the older parts of the city and possibly a club or society called 'the Old Oakians'.) The renaming of the city is either because the stalemate is to celebrated or because it meant the city was taken over by a new government who are keen to remind the inhabitants why they're street signs have all been changed (if they have such things) and why the town criers all refer to Stalemate Cote. The first example produces a happy city glad that its ruler saved it from the enemy, the second option produces a city that resents its occupation and probably has a kind of French resistance operating in it. (Which does seem the more interesting of the two for fiction purposes.)

So, one city was founded on some kind of trade and the other has been reshaped in light of a change in politics.

Umber Noel was at one stage rich. Therefore it will have large buildings in an older stule than the current fashion. The older sections of the city will have these large buildings either given over to local government or falling into disrepair as they become slums - depending on whether it's still rich or not. If it is still rich there will be a flourishing art community, an active concert scene or whatever the local culture deems is 'art', which might be anything from massive communal Boggle tournaments to cannibal feasts where they eat their enemies. It takes a lot of money to support an arts community and in a rich city you'll have plenty of it. If present-day Umber Noel is poor, having mined out all of whatever it was that made the soil umber, then you have no arts community and most activity is given over to whatever the locals consider crime. There is far more residential life in the city with older buildings now divided up into taverns and cheap accommoation as the owners of the buildings, even if that is the local government, try to scrape up as much money as they can through renting the buildings out. (If the local culture doesn't allow renting, then you get squatters.)

Stalemate Cote may take a bit more pondering.