Fictional counties are locations within books, movies, television shows or songs, created for character placement and story background. Fictional counties, cities and towns are arrows in the fiction writers' quivers they lend an air of authenticity to the story, and since there are so many of them, readers find them to be a plausible addition that makes the story more realistic. Credible, well fleshed out, and named locales are integral to fictional world building. William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County uses a convincing set of facts and details, and is a prototypical development of a place and time in a work of fiction. Faulkner often referred to Yoknapatawpha County as "my apocryphal county." Fictional county maps are part of the creative process, and are part of selling the story. They sometimes combine existing cartographic information to present an imaginary location, or combine existing cartographic information to show a different perspective of a location. Absalom, Absalom! includes a map of Yoknapatawpha County drawn by Faulkner.
United Kingdom
Barsetshire – locale of Anthony Trollope's Chronicles of Barsetshire novel series; also used by various other authors
Borsetshire – containing the village of Ambridge, in the BBC's long-running radio drama The Archers
Midsomer – setting of the Chief Inspector Barnaby series by Caroline Graham and the TV adaptationMidsomer Murders. The book Great British Fictional Detectives writes, "Midsomer's villages and county town are painted by Graham in faintly surreal colours and at times have a macabre tint."
Mummerset – county named for the non-specific West Country accent affected by actors
Naptonshire – setting for Home Defence training simulations of the 1970s, analogous to Northamptonshire
Trumptonshire – setting of the interrelated TV seriesCamberwick Green, Trumpton, and Chigley
Wessex – location of Thomas Hardy's novels, comprising six fictitious counties: North Wessex, Upper Wessex, Mid Wessex, South Wessex, Outer Wessex, and Lower Wessex, plus Off Wessex.
United States
Georgia
*McAfee County – Setting of the novels ' and Angel Child by Mark Steadman. The Companion to Southern Literature wrote, "He created an entire fictional community in Georgia where a series of strikingly singular characters, mostly lower-class racists, radicals, criminals, and dim-witted innocents, unself-consciously act out the sexual, racial, and economic tensions that define their lives."
Indiana
*Raintree County – setting of the 1948 novel Raintree County by Ross Lockridge, Jr. The county includes representations of two actual counties, Allen and Monroe.
*Crow County – Setting of the novels Clay's Quilt, A Parchment of Leaves, and The Coal Tattoo by Silas House. He grew up in Leslie County, which served as the basis for the county in the novels.
Mississippi
*Boone County – Setting of the 1970 novel Losing Battles by Eudora Welty. It is located in northeast Mississippi. It is likely modeled on Tishomingo County or at least in the same geographic area. Eudora Welty's Aesthetics of Place writes, "The location is important because it explains the traditional poverty, the absence of plantations, and the absence of black people in Losing Battles. The area is an extension of the hills of Middle Tennessee, and the soil in these hills is made up of gravel and sand."
*Tibbehah County – Setting of Quinn Colson novel series by Ace Atkins. The author calls the county "the quintessential North Mississippi town – on the surface". He compared it to actual counties Marshall, Calhoun, and Yalobusha.
Montana
*Hope County – Setting of video gameFar Cry 5. The Billings Gazette wrote, "The fictional Hope County looks and feels most like the northwestern part of the state, with tall peaks, winding rivers and lots of evergreen forests. But it could just as easily stand in for the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness in south-central Montana."
