Your character walks into a home they’ve never been to before or visits a destination they’ve never been to previously. If your character starts telling the reader, “There was an open plan living area idea for a young family…,” or “The Trevi Fountain was designed in the eighteenth century by Nicola Salvi…” and they are neither an estate agent nor tour guide, you’re missing a huge opportunity to show character. You also risk boring the reader who might be inspired to remember they meant to check out that properly for sale on a neighbouring street or book that weekend away to Rome instead of reading your story.
Let your readers see the location through your character’s eyes. Someone who walks into a home and starts asking about the family photos on the mantelpiece is a very different person to the one who walks in and notices the faux-marble fire surround was so last year, the current trend was for a warming Cotswold stone. A character who plonks themselves on the over-stuffed sofa is at ease in direct contrast to the one who stiffly perches on the edge of a rigid armchair as if in fear of creasing the cushions. By showing readers what the character is drawn to or notices first, you no longer need to tell the reader your character is relaxed or nervous.
Similarly, if your character is travelling, they are not going to regurgitate the tour guide. A character who watches the sunlight ripple on the surface of the water is in a different frame of mind to one who is wondering how cold the water, which reflects the greys in the stone, is. One who purposely gets there early to avoid the main crowds so they can linger over the details of the figures around the fountain is a very different character to the one who moans that there are too many tourists, they couldn’t get anywhere near the place and the ice-creams were way overpriced.
The other risk of going into tour guide mode is that some of your readers may have visited the place you’re describing. Others may live there or have lived there. This means you need to do your research, or your readers will tell you that you can’t possibly drive onto Horsefair Street from Main Street because there’s a barrier of bollards. Or your readers will stop reading because your scenario is unlikely, e.g. one book I stopped reading had a scene where an elderly man, not in the best of health, and a younger man who had never been to the village, neither of whom used a torch, had a conversation while walking up the unlit Glastonbury Tor, which sits on a rabbit warren, around midnight on a pitch-black November evening. The advantage of fictional locations is that you can make up the rules.
Wherever you locate your characters, make sure they become the reader’s guide and enable to reader to sense the scene as the character does. Don’t let them see or state the obvious. A New Yorker knows the taxis are yellow. A Londoner knows the taxis are black. What is your character seeing?
Contributed by Emma Lee
leicesterwritersclub.com 