People and Places

Putting your reader in the picture

As a writer you must think in three dimensions. Or four if we include time! It's sometimes called spatial awareness, which says it all. You have to be aware of space.

Here's Stephenie Meyer writing in Breaking Dawn, the fourth book in the Twilight series. Bella is visiting Jason Jenks, attorney and forger, who has his office in a run-down district. Take a look at how Stephenie sets the scene without going into too much detail.

To say that it wasn’t a nice neighbourhood would be an understatement. The most nondescript of all the Cullens’ cars was still outrageous on this street. My old Chevy would have looked healthy here. During my human years, I would have locked the doors and driven away as fast as I dared. As it was, I was a little fascinated. I tried to imagine Alice in this place for any reason, and failed.

The buildings—all three stories, all narrow, all leaning slightly as if bowed by the pounding rain—were mostly old houses divided up into multiple apartments. It was hard to tell what colour the peeling paint was supposed to be. Everything had faded to shades of grey. A few of the buildings had businesses on the first floor: a dirty bar with the windows painted black, a psychic’s supply store with neon hands and tarot cards glowing fitfully on the door, a tattoo parlour, and a daycare with duct tape holding the broken front window together. There were no lamps on inside any of the rooms, though it was grim enough outside that the humans should have needed the light. I could hear the low mumbling of voices in the distance; it sounded like TV.

There were a few people about, two shuffling through the rain in opposite directions and one sitting on the shallow porch of a boarded-up cut-rate law office, reading a wet newspaper and whistling. The sound was much too cheerful for the setting.

We get the picture. We also get the sounds, which are important in this case. Smells are useful too. Your character walks along an old harbour and smells rotten fish, thereby adding to the sense of decay. Your character picks up a baby and it smells sweet, reminding her of her first child's infancy. Sounds and smells can draw your reader right into the scene.

Here's a short excerpt from my new novel, partly set in medieval Holland:

Coster shook his head as though the tall man were a simpleton. He gave no immediate answer but instead went to the window, freed the latches, and threw it open.

A gallimaufry of sounds swept in: the whinny of a horse, a fiery argument between two uneducated men, the grumble of a load being deposited in a nearby yard, three dogs barking from three different quarters, the distant thump of a cannon sounding the hour, a girl singing out of tune in French, the bawling of an infant in need of suckling.

"There lies Haarlem," Coster said unnecessarily. "The finest city of the Lowlands. Men come from every corner of Christendom to sing her praises."

Note my use of "antique" English: simpleton, gallimaufry, suckling, etc. They're not hard to understand but help to create the medieval atmosphere that's needed.

Stealing from the movies

No, I don't mean downloading films from the internet for free. I'm talking about using stills from movies to help with your writing. I do it very often and find it very useful.

Say you've set your story in Italy—as Méabh has. If you've never visited then you'll have no more than a vague idea of what a typical Italian interior or street looks like.

Google "movies set in Florence" for example. Or Genoa or Venice. There are a great many but you'll probably want recent ones. Once you've found one that fits your story, you can rent or borrow it. You can go through it and freeze the action whenever you see a good interior/exterior, and describe what you see.

An even easier way is to do a Google image search. Try this one: "Italian interiors". Within seconds it led me to this great image. But you can get bigger ones of course.

Atmosphere means a lot in your writing. It helps your reader to truly experience a scene.