In a post on Lit Hub, Dwyer Murphy says the best way to write about a city is to get out and walk around it.
“If your city is New York, or a comparably chronicled metropolis, you’re in luck, because the printed record is abundant and wildly colorful,” Murphy says. Old newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, and court records abound. However, that’s merely a starting place.
“Do you want your city to feel vast and intricate or personal and intimate?” Murphy asks. In other words, do you want to depict intimate moments that reveal the character of a place or tackle the city’s structure, using different experiences to create a clash of imagery and theme? Either approach will direct you to different choices in style and description.
Finally, Murphy strongly recommends you spend a lot of time in your place, if you’re able. “I don’t just mean a few blocks,” he says. “I’d suggest putting in a few thousand miles over the course of several years, if at all possible.” The more your narrative relies on specific detail, the more you need to know. If fact-checkers question any of your details, you need to have a well-sourced answer ready.
In the end, you’ll never capture every element of your city the way it exists in your head. “It’s too vast,” Murphy says. “Better to just take the subway some miles away, walk home with an open mind, talk to a few people, then live quietly with your thoughts for a few hours, and you may find you have the start of something new, quite possibly a novel that wants to be written, and you’ll only have to wear out a few shoes and what’s left of your sanity working it through to the end.”
