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.

‘Words have meaning and names have power’

A lot of years ago I had a short-term work contract at a university in Wales. To be honest, I don’t actually remember much about the job, but what I do remember is the large database of student names.

The full name of each student was captured, and while there were some interesting first names, there were many more unusual middle names.

Names tell a lot about a person. They are generally a good pointer to age, famous celebrities of the time, and in the UK they are also an indicator of social status. They also say a lot about the parents.

A few of those names have stuck in my mind. One male student was named after several famous soccer players – his father was obviously an ardent Manchester United fan. Among the females was a Tamsin Tinuviel and another girl called Arwen, their parents would have been fans of Tolkein, or at least had read Lord of the Rings.

Before Gwyneth Paltrow named her daughter Apple, I knew a lady called Brie.

Choosing names for my characters is something that takes time, and the names are often changed several times as I get to know the characters.

In my current novel, Lies of the Dead, the names of the three main characters never changed. I think that is a first for me.

The oldest of the three siblings is Tom. He is pragmatic and reliable, and (to me) this name fits him well. I didn’t look up the origin or meaning of the name, so I may have it completely wrong, but for me it suited him totally.

Andi is the middle sibling, her name is Andrea but she shortened it to Andi as a child, hoping it would make her mother love her more. How sad is that!

Liam is the youngest of the three. He is always called that, though we discover early on his full name is William, which he hates.

In Romeo and Juliet, Juliet says, ‘What’s in a name?’  I think the answer to that is everything.

‘Words have meaning and names have power.’ 

‘Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.’ W.H.Auden

Mixing Business and Pleasure

This world of ours seems to get more frazzled and frantic on a daily basis, leaving us with less time to spend on what's important, if we let it.

It's often difficult to put work out of our mind and just enjoy the moment, as so many articles and magazines tell us to do.

Working full-time and writing novels doesn't make that any easier either (not that I'm complaining!), but this week I've managed to mix pleasure and writing business on a couple of levels.  

I have a number of writer friends, and at the moment I'm beta-reading a novel by one of them. Reading often feels like a guilty pleasure, as when I'm reading I think I should be writing, but this week I can tell myself it's work.

I also belong to a Writers Group and on Sunday we're having our monthly meeting. We usually meet mid-week after work, but this month we're getting out of Auckland and meeting at the home of one of our group who lives further afield. 

With this in mind, and because work has been especially frantic the past few weeks, I decided to take the opportunity of a weekend in Raglan. A great mix of downtime and writing, and with the two extracts we're critiquing I've had more reasons for reading!

Fascinating Phrases

Although companies talk a lot about using 'Plain English', I think it's still as far away as ever. On the positive side a lot of it makes me smile.

A sign on a door says, 'This door is alarmed.' Every time I see it, I wonder what's worrying the door.

In an email recently I came across this gem. This document was socialised. I know people socialise their dogs, but documents!

Another one was 'obtaining a rate via a skeleton' - hmm, that paints a vivid picture.

In the past couple of days I've heard two phrases that always irritate me.

'Almost exactly' and 'almost unique'. 

I won't bother with the rant, it is the weekend.

What funny phrases have you come across recently, and what are the misuses of words that irritate you most?

Silence, Subtext and Unreliable Narrators

As I walked into a small shop a few days ago, I overheard part of a conversation between the store owner and a person at the counter. The customer asked about someone they were thinking of employing. 

The owner hesitated for the briefest of moments before giving a pleasant, but non-committal response.

The hesitation said everything. The polite words spoken without any enthusiasm merely confirmed my initial reaction. I wouldn't employ the person they were discussing.

As I came out of the shop I thought about that exchange as a writer. 

Dialogue is vital in writing. It should do at least one of the following things:

• Advance the plot
• Deepen understanding of the character
• Create or advance conflict and suspense. 

Silence, or a pause that is slightly longer than it should, can often tell us far more than conversation. Why is the character silent? Is it because they don't have an answer, or because they don't want to tell what they know? 

Is it a comfortable silence, or does the person act awkwardly and out of character? Does another character rush to fill the silence with chatter?  What questions would go unanswered, or be answered ambiguously or untruthfully?

Silence can also heighten tension, especially when it's obvious one character knows something, but isn't telling. Does the reader know the answer, or are they being kept in the dark as well?

If used well, silence can do the same job as dialogue in expanding plot, deepening character and creating suspense or questions. 

Subtext is the content hidden under dialogue, and is a good way to show the relationship between characters. For example, Sally and Jane have had a disagreement at work. They sit at adjacent desks, but have been working silently since the disagreement. Then Jane says she is going to buy coffee and a muffin from the cafe along the road, and asks Sally if she would like anything. Neither mentions the disagreement, but the offer of coffee and a muffin is subtext for an apology, or at least a request to forget the disagreement. Subtext is often used between people who know each other well, although a group of people may use it to laugh at someone outside of their group. 

Another way that dialogue can keep the reader guessing is by using an unreliable narrator. I recently finished Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, and without giving away too much of the plot, as you read further into the book you begin to realise that what you are being told is not necessarily the whole truth. 

A narrator may be unreliable because they are deliberately misleading you, or it could be because they don't fully understand the situation. An excellent example of this is The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime by Mark Haddon.  The narrator is fifteen-year old Christopher Boone, who has behavioral difficulties. Because of this and his age, there are scenes which he doesn't understand, but which the reader does. 

Christopher gets into trouble because he doesn't understand other people, or subtext. An example of the type of subtext he wouldn't get is, 'Can you open the window?' To Christopher this is a question about his abilities, but we know he is being asked to open the window.

Using an unreliable narrator isn't something you can decide to do halfway through a manuscript, at least not without a lot of rewriting, but it makes for an interesting read when used well. 

ANZAC Day

Today is ANZAC day. Here in New Zealand and in Australia, it is a day we specifically remember the New Zealanders and Australians killed in war, and also honour returned servicemen and women.

The date marks the anniversary of the landing of New Zealand and Australian soldiers – the Anzacs – on the Gallipoli Peninsula in 1915. 

My father was too young to serve during the Second World War, but he remembered being evacuated to Devon as a young child. His mother died when he was four, and I can only imagine how he must have felt losing his mother at such a young age, and then being parted from his father and family, and also how his father must have felt.

Today there were ceremonies, large and small, around the country to commemorate ANZAC day. In our quiet area there was a lovely ceremony at the memorial in the park by the beach. 

I stood in sunshine and looked out over the beach and calm sea, and thought how lucky I am to live at this time and in this place. 

In our busy world we have too few moments to be still, to enjoy what is around, and to be grateful. We should treasure each of those moments.

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.