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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/29390
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/29390
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players. So sayeth the Bard, and he should know.

No story is set in a real place. It is set on a stage created by the author, a stage designed carefully for the convenience of the author's plot. It may share names and physical features with some real place, but no real place is ever entirely convenient for telling the story that the author wants to tell.

It the real university in the real town on which you have based the details of your stage had parking regulations that are inconvenient for your plot, then give your stage university the parking regulations you need.

Is it possible that that detail will ruin you story for some particularly anal employee of the University of St. Louis parking patrol? Maybe, though if it is a good story they will probably soldier on anyway. But the vast majority of your reader (if you write a book that is good enough to get a vast number of readers) will tacitly understand that your stage is not the real city or the real university, and, in any case, will not have the USL parking regulations in the front of their minds when they are reading your book.

If it really bugs you, though, you can do what some historical novelists do when they combine two naval battles into one or put their hero's division in the thick of two different battles when the real division was present at neither: you write a confessional end note for your book that outlines exactly where you have transgressed. This will blunt the teeth of the anal SLU parking patrol person and salve your own conscience.

Original score: 4