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A Tip to Set the Fictional Stage
One trick to help your reader feel like they’re “there”
I have to know a place intimately before I can set a novel there. My new novel FIERCE LITTLE THING is set at a rural Maine lake that’s based on a family home I’ve been going since before my writing career started. But though I know it well, I still had to spend a lot of time just sitting by the lake, or walking through the woods, to get the details right.
In the days before I had kids, I had plenty of time for sitting and absorbing. But my New York Times bestseller BITTERSWEET — also set in a place I know and love well — was the first book I wrote after my son was born. I quickly realized that I needed to maximize the moments I had in that setting as I was in writing mode, so that I could go back to them and transform what I had observed and experienced into something that felt real on the page.
I came up with this rudimentary trick which has allowed me to turn even a single day of observation into many different pages of action for a given a setting.
- Pick a comfortable place to sit for at least fifteen minutes (more than thirty minutes, and I find this exercise loses its meaning — but figure out what works best for you). Set a timer if you can, and try to make sure no one disturbs you.
