It’s Iola here. Welcome to our Australasian Christian Writers Tuesday Book Chat, where we encourage book lovers to answer our bookish question of the week.
Today’s question is:
Do you prefer city, town, or country settings? Why?
I don’t think I have a preference. I enjoy city, town and country settings. I’m usually more interested in the characters than the setting.
But I do have to laugh when the author describes a place as a small town when it’s bigger than my city (population: 100,000). Or when we’re told the small country town has a population of under 1,000, yet it still manages to have the health and education facilities I’d expect in a much larger town or city. In my experience, such one-horse towns are lucky to have a doctor, let alone a full hospital.
Which do you prefer—city, town, or country? Why? And where do you see the difference?
We look forward to hearing your thoughts. Please join in the conversation in a comment on this post or in a comment on the blog post shared in our Australasian Christian Writers Facebook Group. Or, if you’re feeling wordy (like me), write a blog post and link to it in the comments.
Hi, to me the setting doesn’t really matter, it can be anywhere as long as the story is a good page turner! I have read a lot of books with different settings and I don’t find myself preferring one or the other. I enjoyed reading this blog and answering the question, it really is a good question to ask. Have a Great week. God Bless you.
City, town, country–it entirely depends on the plot.
What facilities and amenities a “town” has depends on how far it is to the nearest city. In the Rocky Mountain West of the United States, a town of 20-30,000 might be the largest community for more than 200 miles. Shiprock, New Mexico, USA, has fewer than 9000 residents, but it has a hospital that does general surgery. For something more major, people might go 93 miles to the 99-bed hospital in Gallup (population <25,000). Really major means a trip of 209 miles to Albuquerque (regional population 600,000). The next "closest" town over 100,000 is Flagstaff, Arizona, and that's almost 250 miles. Kinda like being in Australia!
I guess I prefer the country over the city. More back to basics and nature usually.
It depends on the story but I like unique communities where the setting is a character in itself. So whether it’s downtown New York, a cozy village in Québéc, or the surfers on Bells Beach, if you write a good story, I’m in.
I commented yesterday and lost it.
I do prefer country or rural to city probably more because I live in a smaller town.
I had a few pen friends in America and I would say I come from a small country town. One wrote back that she also came from a small country town of only 100,000 people. I was like that is a regional city here. My town a the time had 5,000 and now has around 7,000. Then another wrote back and said I am from a really small town with only 500 people. It is interesting how different people see a small country town.
Our town does have a hospital which does quite a bit of surgery but the surrounding smaller towns (1,000 down to 100) come to our hospital. By surrounding most are up to half an hour away although some from further away come for surgery.
To me it depends on the location. I don’t relate to some big city stories especially the really rich, who own mansions and have large boats etc. If the story is well written and the characters don’t look down on the working class people its not so bad. Also if its more suburban it can feel like a country town. (Think a place like Hahndorf in the Adelaide Hills). I like places where people know people (you don’t know everyone but the community has events where people get together).