I need opinions. If you are reading a low-fantasy story (i.e. one that takes place in our world/a world adjacent to our own as opposed to one that is clearly in a different world) do you prefer that the places be named after real-world places (such as town names being real-life towns and stuff) or do you prefer that the writer(s) come up with a fictional location for their characters to exist in? I feel like both have merits, and I'd like help deciding which one to go with in my story. Thank you in advance for your replies!
For low-fantasy, I usually like to read about real places.
I don't really have a strong preference as a reader, but as a writer I tend to write more about made up places.
The main pro to writing a real place for me is if its set in a city that you're very familiar with, then pretty much all your world building is taken care of (I guess that goes for cities that you're less familiar with, but it just means more research).
The downside of that is that sometimes you can't take as many liberties with the layout of the city. Like, if I were reading a story set in my city and they said the character drove from the aquarium to the airport in under 10 minutes I'm gonna know that they author is totally bs-ing because those two places aren't even close to a 10 minute drive from each other.
In a made up location, you pretty much have free rein with that kind of thing.
Also, for a less important thing to think about, I always think that it's really cool when I see my city represented in books. It's only happened once (shout out to Rick Riordan) but it was cool to see the names of different landmarks and being able to go "hey, I know that place! I was there last week!" You obviously don't get that when you're writing about a made up city.
I guess it just really comes down to do you want to have your entire city laid out for you but not have any liberties when it comes to locations of certain things? Or do you want to build your setting from scratch and lay it out however you see fit?
Anyways, sorry that got kinda long, but I hope it helped.
