Words and Pictures

At the moment we have a friend from England staying with us. This is his first visit to New Zealand, and we are enjoying the opportunity of showing him the local sights as well as places further afield we love to visit. One of the great things about doing this is that it makes you look at familiar places as if you’ve never seen them before.

Last week we spent a few glorious days in Sydney, and it was great to look at this city we love as if it was our first visit.

We took lots of photos – although we already have plenty! 

There is a saying that a picture paints a thousand words, but words can also paint magical pictures.

About half of Driftwood is set in Sydney and while I haven’t experienced any of Juliet’s problems or had someone try to kill me, there are a number of elements and snatches of scenes included in the book that are places I’ve visited or things I’ve seen. When I read those scenes it brings back the incident I witnessed, or alternatively, when I visit a place I’ve included in Driftwood it reminds me how I used it in Juliet’s story.

Alex takes Juliet to dinner in Darling Harbour – this is a favourite spot of mine and while the restaurant they visited doesn’t exist, there are heaps of good places to eat in Darling Harbour.

In another scene Juliet watches a street entertainer in Circular Quay – I’ve since cut back this description, but the little I’ve left reminds me of his act and I can still see him clearly.

One of the chapters ends with Juliet watching a bride and groom in the gardens close to the Opera House. I watched the couple I describe posing for their wedding photographs by the harbour, and I sometimes wonder where they are now, and hope they are as happy as they were that day.

The New Zealand sections of Driftwood are set in Auckland, Christchurch and the Tasman area at the top of the South Island.

Juliet’s view from her home of the Auckland Harbour is the one we had at the time I was writing the book. The scenes set in Christchurch are ones I remember vividly, and with great sadness, as some of the places were badly damaged in the earthquake in 2010 and the severe aftershock in February 2011.

The Nelson and Abel Tasman areas of the South Island are outstandingly beautiful and we’ve spent many happy holidays exploring the beaches and walking the tracks through the National Park.

If you’re interested in seeing some of the places, I’ve been working on a board using photographs I’ve taken during visits, and I’ll be adding more images over the coming weeks.

Lies of the Dead - Cover

I'm really excited that my latest book Lies of the Dead is just about there and thrilled to unveil the cover created by the talented Andrew Brown of Design for Writers.

Unlike Driftwood and Lives Interrupted I had absolutely no ideas for the cover of Lies of the Dead, but working with Andrew makes the process incredibly easy. He asks a lot of questions about the plot and characters, important (poster) scenes, my own likes and dislikes, and then he goes away and works his magic.

Lies of the Dead is set predominantly in Cornwall which is an area I love. Writing those scenes has allowed me to wander through villages, along beautiful cliff walks and feel the sand under my feet on the glorious beaches. The setting of Poldrayth is fictitious but it is based on a real Cornish village to allow me to play around with the geography a little.

What would you risk to find the truth?

How well do we know those closest to us? When Liam kills himself, his older brother Tom needs to know why suicide was the only answer.

Tom's search leads him, and his sister Andi, to a criminal world where their ideas of right and wrong don’t exist, and where people aren’t who they claim to be.

Liam’s legacy of deceit is dangerous and when Tom and Andi and her twin daughters are threatened, Tom realises that truth may have too high a price. 

Thanks a million Andrew for a wonderful cover - drumroll

A Perfect World

Every day I pass a billboard, actually I pass a number of billboards, but this particular one is at a set of traffic lights, so I’ve had time to study it.

The picture is supposed to represent an office. You’ll understand why I say supposed as I describe it.

Two glamorous ladies sit either side of a gleaming white desk enjoying a cup of coffee. They look as though they’re ready to model the latest designer labels rather than a day at the office. I know the desk is white because other than a laptop on one side, and an Apple keyboard and monitor (no computer!) on the other side, the desks are bare. Apologies, I forgot to mention the vase of flowers.

I’ve worked in many offices, and never have I seen one that looked less real than this. The keyboard and monitor are stylish, but useless without a computer and where is the work they're supposed to be doing? I'm also pretty sure I’d knock over the vase at some stage while working.

The billboard shows a perfect office, but I’ve never yet seen one in reality.

Whatever the genre of your book, one of the most important things to get right is setting. It doesn’t need endless paragraphs of description. A few judicious words in the right place will paint a scene for the reader, and not just any scene, but the one you want people to see.

To me setting covers a number of points, though some may be more important than others at any given time. 

Where am I?  The genre will give some pointers. 

• Fantasy – am I in a different world, or a different version of earth. 

• Sci-fi – is it a different world, or a future version of earth? How far in the future? 

• Historical – what point in history? What country?

If you have a mix of genres then setting becomes even more important. Think Cadfael - historical murders.

If your setting is contemporary, there are still a huge amount of options. 
New York, London, Sydney.....
City, small town, rural, coastal.....
Hospital, fire station, school, university.....

The list is endless. 

The location makes a difference to our view of the characters. Do they live in the rush of a large city, or the comparative peace of a rural setting? Do they love where they live, or are they there under sufferance? Why?  

Time.   What time period does your book cover? In a contemporary setting even a year or two can make a difference to the technology your characters use, or the landmarks they might see. In my first draft of Lives Interrupted I had Kate looking at a memorial that wasn't actually on the embankment until some time after the year the book was set.

What season? This may, or may not be important to your plot.

It’s crucial to get your setting right. The poster I mentioned at the start of this post doesn’t show any type of office I’d recognise as being ‘real’. 

There’s a lot to be said for writing what you know. You don't have to let this restrict you, but if you're not familiar with the setting it will mean researching to get it right.

If you set your book in a different country think about the lifestyle, what hours people work, their food, and how they talk. Even though Australians, Americans, Canadians, South Africans and New Zealanders all speak English, they sound different. They use different words, and some different sentence structures.

If you set your novel in a hospital, and you’ve never worked in one, you’ll need to get to know someone who does. The same goes for setting a book in a university or police station, or anywhere else that works in a very specific way. There’s a reason why John Grisham writes legal and courtroom dramas. 

If you get things wrong in your setting, you can be sure there is an expert out there who will see all the errors.

My husband always quotes the start of the film Top Gun when making this point. The inside shots of the cockpit, and the outside shots of the planes making the manoeuvres don't match up. I’m not an expert on aircraft and can’t tell the difference, but I know what a real office looks like!

Yes, we’re writing fiction, but it’s got to be as real as we can make it.

Set the Scene

In some books or films, the setting is so integral to the story that it feels like one of the characters. If the setting changed, the story would change.

As I thought about this an old Robert Redford film came to mind, (sorry but I can't remember the name). It's a cowboy film, and throughout the film the scenery is harsh desert giving a feeling of searing heat, and a decided lack of life.

In several of Daphne du Maurier's books setting plays an important role. Think of the gloomy threatening inn on Bodmin Moor (Jamaica Inn), and of the oppressive house, Manderley, in Rebecca. 

Heathcliffe is as wild as the Moors surrounding him. 

Lives Interrupted (for me) couldn't be set anywhere else but London. Kate has dreamed of living in London through her teenage years, and we see the city through her excited perspective. Whether it's the dingy arrivals area at Heathrow or the gloomy tube stations, she sees everything as new and exciting. Even having her bag stolen doesn't change her delight at living her dream. After the bombings, she views London in a very different way as she attempts to get back something of the person she was before.

My current book, Lies of the Dead, is set in a Cornish village called Poldrayth. The village is fictional, but based on a real place. The three main characters are two brothers and a sister. Tom, the older brother, is the only sibling who still lives in the village, and it has a strong influence on his character. He is steady, reliable and always there, just like the village. It has been the family home for generations, and Tom can't imagine living anywhere else. However, when his life is threatened there, it changes his view of the village.

The importance of place doesn't have to (and shouldn't) mean long paragraphs of description. The setting is seen through the characters, and affects their actions and the way they view the world. It makes them who they are. Someone who makes quick, rash decisions will view their surroundings differently to someone who is slower and methodical. A couple in love would enjoy a walk in a secluded setting, that same setting at night would have a totally different feel for a nervous person on their own.

Knowing our characters, and how they will react to their surroundings can have a huge impact on our story, indeed it can make the story. The whole basis of the film Crocodile Dundee is having the two main characters spend time in a vastly different setting to their usual one, and seeing how they react.

What is the setting of your book? If you changed the setting would if change the story? You don't have to change the setting of the entire book, but if you changed the setting of an important scene would it make a difference? It might move your story in a totally different direction.

If you're having difficulty with a scene, change the setting and see where it takes you.  I'd be interested to know if you've tried this and how it worked for you.

Train Your Brain

Much of my 'day' work is in the area of learning and development. I've always been interested in how we learn, and what we can do to retain more of what we learn. That knowledge would have been useful when I took exams at school.

Here are a couple of learning tips I like because I also relate them to writing. Some of the links are tenuous, but that's how my brain works!

One thing that teachers have always known, and anyone sitting through a long PowerPoint presentation, is that we don't pay attention to boring things. Apparently research shows we check out after ten minutes. Believe me I've sat through some presentations and not even reached the ten-minute mark before my mind was somewhere else.  On the positive side emotion helps the brain to learn. There are talks I heard 5+ years ago that I remember clearly, because the presenter used stories or created a talk rich in emotion.

How does this apply to writing. Boring is not going to cut it, especially in fiction. If you absolutely have to read a non-fiction book for a test or exam then you'll do it, but how much better if you can enjoy what you're reading. Non-fiction doesn't have to mean dry and boring, we can use stories and anecdotes to make information relevant and easier to remember.

In fiction if the story doesn't grab me I'll put the book down. What does hook us is emotion. What type of emotion? That depends on your genre. The emotion used for a horror book will be different to writing a romance - at least I'd hope so, though I enjoy a touch of humour added to most things.

We have short and long-term memory. Moving something from short-term to long-term memory works better if we can link it to relevant existing knowledge or memories. Retrieving a piece of information, such as a name or a memory,  is much like searching for a book in a library - the better the storage system, the easier it is to retrieve what we want.

As you probably already knew, smell is very good at triggering memory.

How to use these things in writing. I watched the start of a mystery/thriller a few nights ago. A lone police officer turned up at an isolated house in a desert area. He walked around the house knocking on doors and windows, but couldn't get any answer. Up to that point it had been silent, but then came the sound of a single fly. Aha - there has to be a dead body. The viewer or reader links new information to current knowledge. 

There is an informal agreement between the writer and the viewer/reader. This is basically that if we put emphasis on something, the reader will assume it is important. If the police officer had merely swatted the fly and driven off, I would be unhappy, as I expected more. If we name and describe a character the reader puts effort into remembering this person. Futile and annoying if the character is just delivering pizza and doesn't play any further role. As the quote goes, 'If you put a gun in the first act, then it should be fired in the second act.'  In the case of the thriller, as the police officer approached the shed so the buzzing increased, as did the number of flies once he turned the corner.

Don't forget to use smell in your descriptions. I'm sure that became pertinent to the police officer as he got closer to the body. Smell is very evocative, and too often we spend a lot of time on visual descriptions and forget this very important sense. Likewise sound, the buzz of that single fly was a strong signal for what was to come

Now I just need to remember to apply all this. Simple!

Spring

I took time over the weekend to enjoy the daffodils and freesias in the garden, and the magnolia in bloom nearby. Spring is a wonderful time of year, full of new life and unlimited possibilities. Auckland has a sub-tropical climate and mostly evergreen trees. In autumn the few trees that shed their leaves do so against a backdrop of green, but today I did spot a few trees nearby with new buds and some obligatory lambs in a field.

If I stop to think about the fact that it's September then the spring feeling does seem a little strange. After living so many years in the northern hemisphere it takes time to rearrange your year, and look forward to summer from December through to March.

I'm sure I'm not the only person who is affected by the weather outside my window. A clear blue sky and a warm sunny day makes me feel good, and it's harder to find that deeply buried well of enthusiasm on a cold, damp day.

When writing scene settings I make every effort not to sound like a weather forecast, but weather is a great mood setter, and don't forget your characters may be as affected by it as I am.

Context is King

I live halfway up (or down) a hill, it's a little like a bowl with houses on the far side. Stick with me for a moment, as I promise you this is relevant.

One evening about a year ago I was on the phone talking to a friend while looking out of the window. It was winter and dark so I couldn’t see much other than house lights. Suddenly flames shot up from a house on the far side of the hill.

My words were along the lines of, 'Oh my goodness it's a fire.' You can see how restrained I was! My friend, at the other end of the phone, had no idea of the context of my words. Did I have a kitchen fire? Was my house suddenly a raging inferno?

Context is everything when we write. We don't live in a void and neither do our characters. Non-fiction writing also needs context. A prospective reader will want to know why they should buy this particular book. In learning and development terms this is generally referred to as WIIFM - What's in it for me? If I'm going to invest my money, and more importantly my time, then there has to be a good reason.

In my last post I mentioned the shoot-out at the beginning of the film. I didn't know any of the characters, or the reasons behind the gunfight so I didn't really care about the outcome.

We need to care about characters to invest emotion in them, and we need context as where something is happening and why.

It doesn't need to be pages of description; often a few words or a sentence is enough for readers to paint the picture themselves.

Context is most important in our beginnings - obviously the start of a book, and the start of sections or chapters to orient the reader, especially if we've moved the setting, time has elapsed, or we are now with different characters or a different POV.

We may be able to see the scene clearly in our minds, but if we haven't taken the reader with us, they'll be stumbling around in the fog wondering where they are.

Weather or Not

Last night I woke to the sound of wind howling and rain pounding on the roof. I love weather like this when I'm inside and don't have to go out.

The old writing cliché about weather is, 'It was a dark and stormy night', and we all know better than to start with that.  Don't we?

We can use the weather to good effect in our writing, even making the same type weather do different work. For example, new lovers laughing together in the rain, a person walking alone after a break-up, a dark, wet street where streetlamps gleam eerily - this could be a precursor to a murder or a body being discovered.

Books and films have even used weather almost as a main character - The Perfect Storm, Twister, and The Day After Tomorrow are all examples of this.

While we don't want to sound as if we're writing a weather report, it is a way to build a mood, or foreshadow an important event.

Sydney

I've spent an interesting few days this week in Sydney, a city I love visiting.  It's vibrant, and even though the downside of that is that it's busy, everyone I've come into contact with has been friendly.  Although the city covers a large area it has a real heart, which is something many cities lack.

There are some beautiful parks (reserves) and gardens, and I spent a happy couple of hours wandering around the botanical gardens early morning when it was still fresh enough to enjoy.  One of the things you couldn't help but notice is the abundance of jacaranda trees in bloom.  They are stunning with their beautiful blue/purple flowers.

Although it's early spring it is significantly more hot and humid than Auckland at present, and there was a spectacular lightning storm on Tuesday evening while I was on the ferry to Manly.

Using the underground/rail system so much over the past few days I've really noticed the number of people using iPads and Kindles etc. to read. 

The underground seems to have a life and culture of its own.  It certainly has its own weather system with hot breezes that appear to come from nowhere.  The London underground is great and I enjoy using that, but some of the stations in the Sydney system have taken things to a whole new level, or should that be depth.  Getting out at Town Hall you can go above ground to the stores, or wander the underground labyrinth of shops.  I find it amazing how you can stroll along window-shopping and find yourself in the basement of the QVB (Queen Victoria Building) without going near street level.

What has this got to do with writing I hear you ask.  Not a lot, except I sat in a café in the lovely QVB and wrote this while enjoying an iced drink and resting.  A number of years ago I used a weekend trip to Sydney as an opportunity for research as I set part of Driftwood in Sydney.

In my first drafts I tend to do a lot more scene setting and description than is needed, and consequently a lot of it is cut in later drafts.  It makes for pleasant travelogues, but doesn't move the plot forward.  The same happened with Lives Interrupted.  I deleted chunks I had enjoyed writing from my research when in London.

It's a fine line between setting the scene and boring the reader, hopefully I haven't bored you with this little travelogue, sorry post!

Setting

For some books setting is everything - the story couldn’t exist anywhere else.  For others it doesn’t really matter.   

The first question is whether to make it up, or keep it real.  Writers often set books in their home town/city, or in places they've visited.  But equally there are many books set in places the author has never been.  With the internet, libraries, and perhaps having friends in far-flung places, there are many ways of carrying out research about an area.

Driftwood is set in Auckland, Sydney, and an unnamed area at the top of the South Island of New Zealand.  You won’t be surprised to find out that I live in Auckland, and have visited both the other locations.  Driftwood is an example of a book that could have been set in any city.  

In my mind I know exactly where in Auckland Juliet lives, though I don't mention it in the book.  I based the coastal area setting on a real place, but I didn’t name the area because I wanted the freedom to change the topography to suit the story.

Lives Interrupted is set in London, and because it touches on real events I wanted to set it in that city. 

The setting will also have a great impact on the type of characters living there.  Someone who has grown up in a city will have had different experiences, and therefore a different outlook on life and their surroundings, than someone born and raised in a rural setting.

I have a first draft of another novel, as yet unnamed, involving three siblings.  The settings are a Cornish village (Poldrayth), Bristol, and London.  Each is home to one of the siblings, though all grew up in Poldrayth.  The settings reflect the different characteristics of each, and how they think of the others. 

I enjoy developing the settings for my writing, and to me, it is as important as developing the characters.  Poldrayth is based on a real village, but again, as I wanted to play around with the geography of the area, I fictionalised it and created a new name. 

Using real settings is helpful as the reader will already have some knowledge of the place and you don’t have to give a lot of background information.  If I mention London you don’t have to have lived there to conjure up pictures of things you’ve seen or read about it.  Busy. Crowded.  Traffic.  Underground.  Red double-decker buses.  Ancient buildings. Tradition.

Even if you are using a real place you can still blend fact with fiction, and change the geography a little by adding other buildings, streets, or parks.  In Lives Interrupted Kate lives in Wood Green.  I knew some of the area, and also used online maps, but I had already decided on the type of house they were renting, and created the park and shops where Kate met Francine.

One thing we have no control over is how our readers will react to a place.  Some people may think living in London is a dream come true, but to others it might be the stuff of nightmares. 

We're never going to be able to please everyone.  Ultimately we can only make sure the setting we choose is true to the story we want to tell, and to the characters who inhabit it.