If you want your character to do
something unusual, do it yourself .
Otherwise, you will never be able to convey -
convincingly - how the experience looks, feels,
hears, smells or tastes to the character. True,
you might not wish, personally, to flee a drug-
crazed axman or abseil one-handed down the
Burj Khalifa tower in Dubai. But if it’s do-able,
do it.
When I wanted my character to rescue a heron snarled high in an ancient elm, I scaled my plum tree.
After ten feet, my hair was thick with dust,
leaves, and insects. (I had never realised how
dusty tree bark can become in dry weather.)
My trousers grew green with mould and I
became massively perforated like St
Bartholomew with little twigs.
Of course, I then got stuck. (Branches are never
as close to hand in real life as they are in
fiction.) My wife had to rescue me with the
window cleaner's ladder.
On another occasion, I needed a thief to climb
an old staircase with a lantern in his hand. So I
did exactly that. I found it was necessary to
step on the inside of the stairwell to avoid
telltale creaking noises and to breathe very
slowly (ditto). I also had to tread on the balls of
my feet (ditto) and to balance myself on the
banister by my left elbow. (I didn’t want to
leave tell-tale finger marks.)
Have you ever dragged yourself across an
attic floor, gibbering?
In a different tale, I was minded to have my
protagonist explore the eaves of an old castle
in search of dark family secrets. Luckily, I live in an old house. So I dragged myself across a blanket of 18th century dust. My knee went through one of the
ceiling planks. Below it, I found an orange -
perhaps the lunch of some bygone builder. The
orange was entirely hollow. Its inside had
withered away to leave only a perfect
mummified shell.
It nicely symbolised my fictional family -
immaculate before the gaze of the world but
rotten within.
You can't make these details up. You have to discover them.
So if a detective finds the full mark of a flat foot
on a dusty stair, I realized, it had probably been
put there for a deceptive purpose. Because
people typically climb stairs on the balls of their
feet.
All these little points of observation found their
way into my story.
When historical novelist Elizabeth Chadwick
sets her stories in medieval castles, she visits
them - with camera, notebook and tape
measure in hand. If she tells you that her hero
in 1395 wriggled out of a kitchen window of
Ludlow Castle that was exactly 15 inches wide,
16 feet above the courtyard and ten paces from
the main gate, you can trust her. She’s
measured it.
That’s one reason she has a loyal readership.
Apparently, some readers make a point of
visiting the locations of her novels, just to
check her measurements!
Don’t imagine it. Do it. Walk your story, so far
as sanity permits. And readers will then believe
you - and your story.
something unusual, do it yourself .
Otherwise, you will never be able to convey -
convincingly - how the experience looks, feels,
hears, smells or tastes to the character. True,
you might not wish, personally, to flee a drug-
crazed axman or abseil one-handed down the
Burj Khalifa tower in Dubai. But if it’s do-able,
do it.
When I wanted my character to rescue a heron snarled high in an ancient elm, I scaled my plum tree.
After ten feet, my hair was thick with dust,
leaves, and insects. (I had never realised how
dusty tree bark can become in dry weather.)
My trousers grew green with mould and I
became massively perforated like St
Bartholomew with little twigs.
Of course, I then got stuck. (Branches are never
as close to hand in real life as they are in
fiction.) My wife had to rescue me with the
window cleaner's ladder.
On another occasion, I needed a thief to climb
an old staircase with a lantern in his hand. So I
did exactly that. I found it was necessary to
step on the inside of the stairwell to avoid
telltale creaking noises and to breathe very
slowly (ditto). I also had to tread on the balls of
my feet (ditto) and to balance myself on the
banister by my left elbow. (I didn’t want to
leave tell-tale finger marks.)
Have you ever dragged yourself across an
attic floor, gibbering?
In a different tale, I was minded to have my
protagonist explore the eaves of an old castle
in search of dark family secrets. Luckily, I live in an old house. So I dragged myself across a blanket of 18th century dust. My knee went through one of the
ceiling planks. Below it, I found an orange -
perhaps the lunch of some bygone builder. The
orange was entirely hollow. Its inside had
withered away to leave only a perfect
mummified shell.
It nicely symbolised my fictional family -
immaculate before the gaze of the world but
rotten within.
You can't make these details up. You have to discover them.
So if a detective finds the full mark of a flat foot
on a dusty stair, I realized, it had probably been
put there for a deceptive purpose. Because
people typically climb stairs on the balls of their
feet.
All these little points of observation found their
way into my story.
When historical novelist Elizabeth Chadwick
sets her stories in medieval castles, she visits
them - with camera, notebook and tape
measure in hand. If she tells you that her hero
in 1395 wriggled out of a kitchen window of
Ludlow Castle that was exactly 15 inches wide,
16 feet above the courtyard and ten paces from
the main gate, you can trust her. She’s
measured it.
That’s one reason she has a loyal readership.
Apparently, some readers make a point of
visiting the locations of her novels, just to
check her measurements!
Don’t imagine it. Do it. Walk your story, so far
as sanity permits. And readers will then believe
you - and your story.
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