Virtual reality

So, you’ve recruited your characters, you know them intimately and even have an inkling of where they’re heading – but don’t get so carried away with the drama that you forget about the setting in which it unfolds. You can’t cast John Gielgud as King Lear, usher him onto a pink plastic stage set and expect people not to snigger.

Your characters – no matter how existential they are – need a world around them (even the characters of Waiting for Godot have a tree and a crossroad). Readers expect nothing else. Think of your favourite literary heroes (or vilains) and I’ll bet their surroundings pop up with them. Marlow on his Congo steamer surrounded by the dark forest; Winston Smith amidst the antique junk of the store as he waits for Julia, or deep in the bowels of the Minstry, in Room 101. Characters need to be tied down in a place and time, given context, if they are to become believable in the eyes of a reader.

We are instinctively nosy creatures; we want to know how other people live, what secrets lie hidden in their cupboard. Fiction lets you look around characters’ homes without their knowing. What you see isn’t put on for the cameras – smiles, neatness, colour – it’s them in their natural habitat, warts and all. You can pry into every nook, peer into every cranny, poke under every floorboard, without anybody ever realising you’ve been there.

A reader’s relationship with your literary world is tentative: not enough reminders of where they are and they will drift back to their own place and time; too many and the effect will be ruined, snapping them back to reality quicker than a slap on the face. The trick is to tread lightly, stay subtle. If you’re planning to start off along the lines of ‘It was a dark and stormy night in New York’, don’t leave it there. OK, we all know what New York looks like, but our mental picture is general, imprecise, and boring because of it. We don’t know what New York looks like to your character, the details that are important to him, which he notices first.

It’s not enough to assume that readers will conjure up the world around your character based on an initial statement. If you don’t keep laying on subtle reminders, the mental image they have will soon grow fuzzy and unappealing. Start with the small details, the ones that matter most. Think about the first things you notice when you arrive at a new location: the smell of lavender, the way the ivy clings to the graffiti-strewn walls, the cold air on your cheeks, the sounds of a car engine turning over. You don’t necessarily notice the grand picture first off, and your characters probably won’t either.

So when setting the scene, start by describing the details that mean something to your characters, the small points they might notice above all else – aim to capture a character’s emotional engagement with his surroundings. That way, not only will the scene stay fresh and vibrant in the reader’s mind, it will also reveal more about your characters and the way they view the world.

Of course, there’s only so much detail a person can take in at any given point. If you’re writing in the first person, or the third-person limited, you need to restrain your creative urge when describing a fictional world: unless your character is obsessive, it’s doubtful whether they’d notice the fluff under the couch, the number of pennies in the jar or how many glittering pendants are dangling from the chintzy lampshade. Even if you’re taking a wider narrative scope, limit how much descriptive information you provide. The aim is to make the setting personal and realistic, not to imitate a scene of crime report. Take D. H. Lawrence’s advice and look for the objects that are alive, which resonate with energy, which are special, which are used.