The dialogue task was hard, right? But fun too! I like to do what I just asked you to do, namely sit eavesdropping on people on the underground, trying to memorise interesting conversations for possible reproduction in one of my books. It’s not only useful, you also get to hear loads of interesting stuff... Another aspect that’s important for fleshing out your story is, of course, environment. To me, the environment is almost its own character, with its own tone and its own voice. It’s also something that’s quite gratifying to write. A few broad strokes of the brush, a few details, and the readers see an entire landscape in front of them.
Environment
Choose the environment you know best as your primary setting. If you’ve only been up north for a couple of weeks on holiday, don’t choose it as an environment for your crime novel! This is because no matter how much you have read up on and done research into Norrland, you won’t know all aspects of that environment. The one in which you live, grew up, and spend a lot of time – that’s where you feel the atmosphere and know people’s mentality and how they talk and think. I myself set my stories in Fjällbacka, which is where I grew up. OK, I moved away from there 13 years ago, but I know that environment like the back of my hand, in terms of both topology and mentality and of everything else that I want to get across credibly in my books. Not even Stockholm could I portray with such familiarity, despite having lived there for the past five years.
The weather is a powerful factor in the creation of atmosphere. Use it! Steady, grey rain can convey a heavy, gloomy mood and so on.
- Don’t use the background as, well, a background – let it lend mood and atmosphere to your story. Let your principal character tip her head back in despair and feel the rain run down her face like tears; let the sun pound relentlessly against a naked back digging a grave in the woods.
- Use all five senses in your descriptions. Don’t just let the readers see; let them smell, hear, smell, feel and taste too. For example: “The air conveyed a metallic taste onto his tongue and his nostrils were filled with a strange, sooty smell.”
- Describe instead of telling the readers what to experience. Instead of just saying that it’s raining, write something like “huge, bloated drops of water burst against the windscreen, rendering it all the more opaque.” Describe how clothes stick sweatily to bodies instead of writing that it was a hot day.
- Give the readers information about the place other than just the purely scenic: each location has its own history, economy, demography, legends and so on. In my books, for instance, I mention Schartaunism on a couple of occasions, and briefly explain what this sect believes and why this religion has so profoundly affected the people of Bohuslän – and with them my principal characters.
EXERCISE:
A woman returns to the place where she spent her childhood for the first time in twenty years (which happens to be the place where YOU grew up too!) Describe the environment and her feelings towards it on at least two sides of A4.
RECOMMENDED READING:
I’ve just read the first two parts of a trilogy by Andrew Taylor. The first volume in the series is called “The Four Last Things”. An excellent plot, an excellent environment!
Suggested reading:
1. How to write crime novels by Isobel Lambot, pages 66-77
2. Writing mysteries by Sue Grafton, pages 39-49