How to Build Realistic Worlds in Fiction

If possible, have your story set in real places and have your characters use real everyday products that exits in the real world.

For instance instead of having your character living in a small town in the south or north pick a real place, a place most of the readers would know.

Instead of having Bob being from a major city in the North East, pick a city. Have Bob be from New York. Everyone has heard of New York, your reader can image a person being from New York even if they've never been there personally.

Do the same thing with products, instead of having Bob drinking a beer have him drinking a cold Budweiser.

Specific names reduce the risk of confusion and help to sharpen the picture you are creating in your reader's mind.

Specific names of products and places make your fictional world seem real, everyone's heard of New York and even people who don't drink have heard of Budweiser beer.

Another thing that specific names do is they to help defined your character and the world your character lives in.

Say for an instance that you want to convey that the young black male that you are writing about is into rock.

Instead of having him listening to some generic rock band have him rocking out to "Van Halen" or "The Rolling Stones" Stephen King is a master at this.

He stocks his characters homes and the world they live in with instantly recognizable names so when something shocking happens, the impact is more potent because the world that the readers have ventured into seems so real and familiar to the one the reader lives in.

They say you will never catch a good actor acting, because a good actor doesn't just play the character they become the character.

The same thing should happen when you pick up a story or a script; the reader should be sucked in.

The real world around you should fall away and the transition from the reader's real world into the
writer's fictional world should be seamless.