Creating a sense of place in fiction

It is crucial if you write about a place that the reader can see it. 

You have choices: do you write rich and vivid prose to paint a word picture or do you keep it minimalist - describe a tree in a park and we all see a different tree and a different park?  Perhaps we only need to say it is a tree in a park?

Whatever you do, do not make it too long, you do not have a lot of words to play with in a short story.

If you seek to describe the setting, and the reader does need something to focus on, seek to use the following components:

1 Physical characteristics - what does it look like, any quirks which bring it to life?

2 Use your reader’s senses - what does the place smell, taste, sounds like?

3 What does it feel like to be there?

John Dean

Why description still has its place

Further to my previous blog about the modern writer, this is an article I wrote on sense of place in 2011, which develops the theme and shows how there is still a place for description

 

As a writer, I am always inspired by a sense of place. Whether it be a gloomy city or a stunning hillside, a glass-strewn council estate or a majestic waterfall, something about my surroundings repeatedly triggers ideas.

Before I explain where I think sense of place fits into the creative process, let me take you back to a hillside in the North Pennines in an attempt to show you what I mean.
I was on a family holiday and we were staying in a village on the Durham/Cumbrian border. There was a play area in the middle of the village and every evening my two children would go for a swing and I would wander out to keep an eye on them - they had gone past the ‘Dad, give me a push’ stage but had not quite reached the stage where they could be left alone.
In such circumstances a person has a lot of time to think and as they swung, so I found myself staring at the hillside opposite. And as with all writers, ideas started to swirl around in my mind.
Something about the hill’s slopes and its late evening shadows, the way the buzzards hunted across the ridge, the sound of the sheep bleating and the distant barking of a farm dog, worked their magic on me and by the end of the week, an idea was born, eventually turning into The Dead Hill, my seventh crime novel published by Hale in 2008.
My experience as a journalist meant that I knew a lot about wildlife crime and the more I looked at the buzzards on the hillside, the more the place and the idea came together as a good theme for the book. But place came first.
Character arrived third when striding into my mind came Detective Chief Inspector Jack Harris, a disillusioned officer working in the rural area in which he grew up, dragged back by the pull of the hills despite his attempts to stay away.
Mix in a bit of gangland intrigue, a few friends with secrets to protect, the DCI's re-awakening as a detective and the ever-changing northern landscape and The Dead Hill assumed a life of its own.
The story itself told about the discovery of a dead gangland figure in a quarry that brought back dark memories for Harris and the hilltop community in which he works. As the detective investigated the murder, not only was he forced to deal with hostile villains, frightened townsfolk and colleagues who doubt his capacity to bring the killer to justice, he also has to confront part of his past that he had hoped would be forgotten. And in doing so, he was forced to re-evaluate the loyalties of those closest to him. And all from that hillside!
I do a lot of creative writing teaching and I always contend that despite the many elements of fiction, it comes down to a triangle, three things that come together to make the story work right from the off - story, character and place. Get them right and pace, economy of words, themes, emotions, the lot, fall into line.
Different writers would put a different thing at the top of the triangle, identifying it as most important. I know writers who would say it all starts with the story, a strong idea which drives the narrative and everything else follows. Get the idea then search round for somewhere to set it.
Others would put characters at the top. I have worked with writers who contend that their stories begin with a person, a character from whom everything flows, whose experiences and views shape the narrative.
Me? I start with the place, always the place. Another example. We went on another family trip to an old wartime POW camp not far from where I live. Standing in the huts, looking at graffiti left by the Germans and Italians, their scrawled pictures of home, seeing the dust of ages flying, feeling the spirit of long gone men, I was gripped by the emotion of the moment and within 15 minutes the plot for what became The Long Dead came to me, set in a wartime camp where secrets abounded even fifty years after it was abandoned. Never had a plot come together so rapidly and it hardly changed during the writing.
That story was the fifth in the John Blizzard series and they are mostly set in a fictional northern city, based on cities in which I have lived and worked. For me, I was fascinated not by their ‘nice’ areas but by neighbourhoods in decline, the peeling paint, the shadowy tower blocks, the converted Victorian houses turned into seedy bedsits. For me, the sense of place overwhelms in such locations and characters and storylines emerge from the surroundings.
So how do you go about creating a sense of place? Well, I think there are three things you need to do, the first of which is to give the reader enough visual information to create a picture of the place.
There’s a lot of debate among writers about how much description you should use and I can see the argument for being sparing on the details although having said that, I do agree that done well, longer description can make for compelling reading.
My best advice would be to keep it relatively tight because too much description can slow your pace. However, do you need to provide at least some clues. Take a leaf out of flash fiction’s book, identify what you think the most important things are about a place and describe them. Even if you do that sparingly, the reader will build up the place for themselves in their mind because good writing is about triggering a response in the reader, bringing out memories.
For instance, you could spend three paragraphs describing the differing colours and hues of the forest - and it might be wonderful writing to book -but it might be enough just to say that the conifer woodland stretched away into the distance until it gave way to moorland. We all know what a forest looks like and we can all visualise a moor. If my instinct is correct, in my giving you those two facts you will already have thought of a place you know. So what if you see a different forest than I did when I typed those words? As long as you see a forest what does it matter?
Apart from visual clues a writer needs to go further and use the senses - take the forest, again; one of the most striking sensations is the smell, of the dead and dying brown undergrowth beneath the canopy perhaps, or maybe of the sound of a stream somewhere through the trees, unseen but heard. Again, two or three fragments of description but I bet you have conjured up a forest you know. And if you haven’t but want to create one  -  pull on your boots and head out on the forest path with a notebook.
But for me there has to be a third aspect to this and that is what does it feel like to be there?  I know that many writers, myself included, would say that the narrator should never impinge on the story directly because he or she can get the message over through their characters. If a normally brave character becomes scared in the forest, you have told the reader how the place feels and you have triggered off all sorts of reactions in your reader - the time they got lost in a forest, the time the kids vanished in among the trees, the time the sky turned black and a sun-dappled scene turned to one of darkness and menace. You will have made them feel.
Back to how sense of place inspires and the continuance of the story which started when my kids went swinging in that North Pennines village.
The second novel in the series was  To Die Alone,  published by Hale and again featuring Jack Harris and his North Pennines beat.
The idea came when we went on a family holiday (funny how often that happens, must be something about having time to think). This time we were in the Isle of Man and went for a walk on a wet and windy morning. Our attempts to follow the path along the river valley were repeatedly thwarted by trees brought down by the ferocious winds the night before and now strewn across the hillside.
Standing there, my connection with the place took  over and a storyline unrolled itself there and then, a man alone and fleeing for his life on a tree-strewn hillside.
Knowing that such a landscape would slot beautifully into the North Pennines, I picked up that Isle of Man hillside and moved it over to the world inhabited by Jack Harris.
So for me, sense of places goes on top of the triangle - it inspires, it enthuses, it moves, it evokes - and by God, it doesn’t half make me write!

John Dean

The unreliable place

I am teaching a course which looks at the idea of the unreliable narrator but have also extended it to the unreliable place, the idea of using weather, darkness, shadows, sound etc to turn a place from somewhere safe and reliable into somewhere that can create unease in a reader.

Place is so important in writing and it is crucial that if you write about somewhere  that the reader can see it. 

You have choices of approach: do you write rich and vivid prose to paint a word picture or do you keep it minimalist - describe a tree in a park and we all see a different tree and a different park?  Perhaps we only need to say it is a tree in a park?

Whatever you do, do not make it too long, you do not have a lot of words to play with in a short story.

If you seek to describe the setting, the reader does need something to focus on, so seek to use the following components:

1 Physical characteristics - what does it look like, any quirks which bring it to life?

2 Use your reader’s senses - what does the place smell, taste, sounds like?

3 But above all, what does it feel like to be there?

 

John Dean

A sense of place

Following my previous blog on place, a few more thoughts. Whether it be a gloomy city or a stunning hillside, a glass-strewn council estate or a majestic waterfall, something about my surroundings triggers ideas.

Let me take you back several years to a hillside in the North Pennines in an attempt to show you what I mean. I was on a family holiday and we were staying in a village on the Durham/Cumbrian border.

There was a play area in the middle of the village and every evening my two children would go for a swing and I would wander out to keep an eye on them - they had gone past the ‘Dad, give me a push’ stage but had not quite reached the stage where they could be left alone.

In such circumstances a person has a lot of time to think and, as they swung, so I found myself staring at the hillside opposite.

Something about the hill’s slopes and its late evening shadows, the way the buzzards hunted across the ridge, the sound of the sheep bleating and the distant barking of a farm dog, worked their magic on me and by the end of the week, an idea was born, eventually turning into The Dead Hill, my seventh crime novel published by Hale in 2008.

I returned to the area for the next books in the series, To Die Alone and To Honour the Dead (also Hale), and once again used the real landscape, the hills and the ravines, towns and villages. Currently, I am writing the fourth in the series, again inspired by the surroundings.

I use a similar approach to my John Blizzard series for Hale, this time set in an urban city setting. Hafton is a bit of everything, the river and the terraced streets from Hull, housing estates from the North East, rural villages from East Yorkshire, the hospital in Darlington. Mix them all together and you have Hafton and that inspires me.
　

John Dean

Hints on character and place in fiction

These are some of the handy hints from our free writers’ toolkit . We’ll be running a few more over the days to come but the full guide can be downloaded from the home page of our website at www.inscribemedia.co.uk
　



A sense of place

It is crucial if you write about a place that the reader can see it.

You have choices: do you write rich and vivid prose to paint a word picture or do you keep it minimalist - describe a tree in a park and we all see a different tree and a different park? Perhaps we only need to say it is a tree in a park?

Whatever you do, do not make it too long, you do not have a lot of words to play with in a short story.

If you seek to describe the setting, and the reader does need something to focus on, seek to use the following components:

1 Physical characteristics - what does it look like, any quirks which bring it to life?

2 Use your reader’s senses - what does the place smell, taste, sounds like?

3 What does it feel like to be there?


A sense of being

Creating characters

You can create the finest landscapes, the greatest stories, the most remarkable writing but you can not make your stories live unless you have characters. They are your vehicle to tell the story.

Characters have jobs to do within the story, making things happen, imparting information, allowing other characters to react to them etc

They should also be realistic (unless in over-the-top comedy where stereotypes can sometimes work) - your reader should feel that your characters can actually walk into the room.

When creating a character, describe what they look like and how they move, speak, react, dress etc but also try to get into their head - how do they think?

Keep secrets, reveal the character as the story progresses.
John Dean

How place triggers stories

We receive Global Short Story Competition entries from all over the world and this allows me, from time to time, to return to a theme which greatly interests me.
I have always believed that writers respond strongly to landscapes. While acknowledging that authors come into stories from different angles - characters, concepts, ideas - I believe that place has to be a major trigger. The major trigger for some.
I am sure that writers in scenic areas are inspired to create stories by the fabulous landscape and the extremes of weather, for example.
As a writer based in Northern England, for example, I am inspired by the North Pennines and the stunning Lake District, which brought forth my character Jack Harris, who has featured in three of my novels.
Plenty of time to enter the latest competition by going to www.inscribemedia.co.uk
John Dean

When sense of place is not enough

I tried reading a book by a much-lauded Scandinavian author a few weeks ago (not my usual fare of crime fiction). Her novel has been much praised by some big names and in the opening pages the sense of place (snow, ice, biting winds) was brilliant.
Trouble is, nothing happened and, increasingly bored, I put the book down after 30 pages and will not go back.
Maybe I am shallow/impatient but it does show that sense of place is crucial but in itself is not enough.
John Dean

More on sense of place

Following on from my previous blog, as mentioned I’m one of those writers who is inspired by places, a theme I return to time and time again in my teaching. An example of how it works: it was a hillside strewn with fallen trees that inspired my latest novel To Die Alone, published in 2010.

The novel, the second to feature Detective Chief Inspector Jack Harris, had its beginnings during a family holiday on the Isle of Man.

Although my characters live and work in the North Pennine hills, something about the Isle of Man scenery struck home.

The idea came when we went for a walk on a wet and windy morning. Our attempts to follow the path along the river valley were repeatedly thwarted by trees that had been brought down by the ferocious winds the night before. It was quite a sight, a reminder of what Mother Nature can do when she is angry.

Standing there and surveying the hillside, my connection with the place took over and a storyline unrolled itself there and then, a story that starts with a man alone and fleeing for his life on a tree-strewn hillside.

Knowing that such a landscape would slot beautifully into the North Pennines, I picked up the hillside and moved it over to the world inhabited by Jack Harris. One of the beauties of being a writer is the ability to do a bit of tidying up on the map.

As I stood there, I firmed up the idea, which evolved into the discovery of the dead man and his dead dog on the northern hills, the latter torn apart by another animal. Jack Harris has always loved animals more than humans so it seemed a nice touch that he be more moved by the dog’s death than the man lying dead in a copse a few metres away.

As police investigate, it turns out that the dead man‘s life is full of secrets and those discoveries lead Harris and his team into a dark and murky world which raises the spectre of a killer stalking the panicking northern hillside communities. And all from a thwarted walk in the Isle of Man.

Sense of place has always been important to me as a writer. So many of my ideas have come not from snippets in newspapers or overhead fragments of conversation, but from the overpowering sensations presented by places, be they rural or urban (my other strand deals with DCI John Blizzard in a grimy northern city).

I think that connection with places is what shapes my own reading when it comes to crime fiction as well.

As a young boy, I loved the Sherlock Holmes stories and, yes, I was drawn to the wonderful creation that is Holmes, but what also struck a chord with me then, and does so now, was the evocative way in which Arthur Conan Doyle painted 19^th Century London. Yes, I know he had to go into more details because in those days many people had not been to London but for me, his description, weaved as it is into the stories, is beguiling and inspiring.

I feel the same when I read about Rebus. Ian Rankin draws you into a dark and disturbing world that exists behind Edinburgh’s popular façade and the stories are all the better for the way he paints pictures with his words.

Yes, I know that writers debate endlessly the role of description in fiction, that it is increasingly archaic given the nature of modern readers, but for me, I like to be given a sense of where I am. Yes, I like imagining things but I also like the writer to point and say ‘look over there.‘

After all, if a place inspires a writer, can not it inspire a reader as well?
John Dean

In praise of Scandinavian writers

I have been reading a novel by the great crime writer Jo Nesbo. One thing that strikes me is the terrific sense of place, something that characterises a lot of writers from Scandinavia.
As a writer, I am also inspired by a sense of place. Whether it be a gloomy city or a stunning hillside, a glass-strewn council estate or a majestic waterfall, something about my surroundings triggers ideas, just like it does with the Scandinavian crime writers.
And as it should with all writers.Why? Because the reader has to feel they are there and that starts with a writer’s connection with a place.
John Dean

Sense of place in fiction

We receive Global Short Story Competition entries from all over the world and this allows me, from time to time, to return to a theme which greatly interests me.

I have always believed that writers must respond strongly to landscapes. While acknowledging that authors come into stories from different angles - characters, concepts, ideas - I do believe that place has to be a major trigger. The major tri8gger for some.

I am sure that writers in scenic areas are inspired to create stories by the fabulous landscape and the extremes of weather, for example.

As a writer based in Northern England, I am inspired by the North Pennines and the stunning Lake District, which brought forth my character Jack Harris, who has featured in three of my novels.

Plenty of time to enter the June competition by going to www.inscribemedia.co.uk

John Dean