I discovered Meg Gardiner’s Evan Delaney series a few months ago and liked it so much, I wrote her an email to tell her so. I also asked if she would be willing to share any of her writing wisdom with us. Meg very kindly — and quickly! — responded with the column below, which she had written for another publication. Thanks for your generous spirit, Meg! Looking forward to more books.
CREATING A SENSE OF PLACE
By Meg Gardiner
Novels can’t exist in a vacuum any more than people can. Stories need a sense of place. Without it, they seem to occur in a void, and readers feel unmoored. With it, readers feel that they’re on the streets of a living, breathing world, sharing the characters’ experiences.
How do you create a sense of place? You start by knowing the world of your story inside and out. It’s where your characters exist, and it shapes their lives. A novel set in New Orleans will differ from one set on the Arctic icepack. They may both deal with murder, love, and death, but will play out in different ways.
The most important thing in creating a sense of place is particularity: precisely observed details rather than generalities. Anchor your story in a specific place and time. Setting a novel in “a city” or “Asia” is as vague and useless as setting it “on earth” or “in the past.” Bring descriptions to life by being precise. Don’t mention “restaurant aromas.” Mention curry, BBQ, or the yeasty smell of beer.
You don’t need to overwhelm readers with visual description—you’re writing a novel, not a travel guide. Give readers a few vivid markers to spark their imaginations. Their minds will fill in the rest. And you don’t want description to be static. Don’t simply stick in a paragraph that lists sights like a tourist checklist. Weave information about the setting into the story. Put it to use. Make it affect what’s happening. Is the night so cold the hero’s tears freeze? So humid that sweat darkens the back of his shirt, making it impossible for him play it cool? Are the alleys in Marrakech wide enough for a fleeing motorcycle, but not a Mercedes?
Describe your setting via all the senses. Sounds: horns echoing between skyscrapers; steel drums; the murmur of waves on the beach. Tastes. Smells. Dialogue can also define a place. Do cabbies say, “Thanks, dude,” or “Cheers, mate”?
My novels are set in California. Crosscut opens in the Mojave Desert. Here’s how I introduce heroine Evan Delaney’s hometown:
The wind skipped over me. I stood in the parking lot, shielding my eyes from the setting sun. The heat was a wall against my face.
“This was a bad idea. Let’s get out of here,” I said.
Out on the highway an eighteen-wheeler rumbled past. Dust spun into the air behind it, blowing across the razor wire that marked the edge of the naval base.
Jesse looked at me as if I’d blown a cylinder. “Are you nuts? You can’t back out now.”
I peered over the roof of the Mustang at the strip mall. “Nuts isn’t backing out. Nuts is going in there.”
He pulled off his sunglasses. “Let me get this straight. Evan Delaney is chickening out of her high school reunion?”
The invitation read China Lake’s brightest nightspot hosts our festive gathering. The nightclub sat between the adult bookstore and the auto wrecking yard. Beyond that was a million acres of absence: the Naval Air Warfare Center, where mirages hovered over the desert floor and the horizon flung itself up into mountains at every turn, purple and red against a huge sky.
The scene creates the sense of a place that’s isolated and foreboding, where a killer can easily hide out. Your novel will be different. Distinctively so, if you create a vivid sense of place.
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