City details

[kyomiscarlett87]

How do you determine what buildings shops people live in a city? What do you look for as far as occupations who your characters meet in the city how your city looks and feels? How do you determine and why do you pick certain side characters NPCs that your main characters interact with?

 

[Prince of Spires]

I just go with what I need at a certain location. In a big enough place, you'd find pretty much anything you need in terms of shops. So if I need it, it's there.

There are a few caveats of course. First is the general era in which you're writing. A roman town would have different shops from a late medieval one, which would be different again from a early modern shop (though only slightly in some cases...). Also, historically, you'd find certain shops grouped together and certain areas designated for specific things. It's why you still find things like bakersstreet in many European city centers, since that would be where you'd find all the bakers. And you'd have a market specifically for cattle, and one for vegetables, and so on.

Also, size does matter. In a large urban capital, you'd find anything you want really, while in a small local hamlet, you'd get maybe a blacksmith or a potter, or some similar shop dedicated to the absolute bare essentials. But certain shop require certain population sizes to operate.

 

[CupofJoe]

Once I know the rough type of place I’m thinking about, I tend to leave a lot of that stuff blank. Unless there is a plot point to it, I’m going to assume that a city has what it needs to trundle along. But things will not be even across the city. A poor area is maybe going to have more old clothes/pawn shops than the swanky end of town.
The donjon site has a lot of [at least] interesting tools.
donjon; RPG Tools
Specifically this page gives you the potential numbers of businesses in a town.
donjon; Medieval Demographics Calculator
One cavate that I read somewhere is that it is based on [15 Century?] Paris so isn’t representative of much but can show you sort of businesses there could be.

 

[pmmg]

I've not really been concerned with this since I was a RPG game master and player. I had a lot of little hand made stuff for random listings, and what there might be in a 'in period' time frame.

In my writing, many people live in small dwellings. Many are made of hide and mud, some are proper keeps and castles. But, no one ever really goes shopping, so it does not come up.

In book 5 (<--yes 700K words in), I had a character purchase a horse. That might be the first on screen purchase in the story.

 

[Calin Sarbu]

Mostly down to utility. If I need a merchant or a banker, then those will be focal points in the story and placed somewhat convenient in my narrative. Same would go regarding how much detail I offer about a particular establishment. Usually if it is reoccurring or important, ad more details and develop the place to feel real. Same with occupation.
How the city looks and feels I determine before actually building within the city things like shops, landmarks, factions, social classes. I generally start from a general tone or premise of the city. Since i work more with modern day cities, I will look at what i thinks fits my story. For instance, if I'm looking at stories about people living in a more poor environment, with less possibilities of prosperity or wealth, I might opt for small cities or that lack resources that would help them grow fast; i.e. if there is a gold mine next to this small town, it probably doesn't make as much sense that most people are poor (not exclusively, but as a general rule, it would probably not indicate poverty if there are obvious sources to provide economic growth) or if I'm thinking of a more business/ corporate environment, opting for a city where a lot of big companies have offices or their main office feels like a better option to get my corporate ideas working. But works the same way for more medieval or any period cities.