Creating a vivid setting in your novel

Setting is vitally important in a novel and I think about this a lot. It may be my background as a TV producer but I need to be able to see the spaces my characters will move through, both the look and the layout of a room or an office for example. Only then can I write scenes that feel real. Sometimes I even sketch the locations out roughly to help me get it right.

In my latest novel Woman of the Hour I have created two main locations: a TV station housed in a converted Victorian warehouse on the river by London Bridge and a flat in Chalk Farm where my leading character, Liz Lyon, lives with her daughter Flo. How did I set about creating a visual sense of these two places?

I wanted the TV station where Liz works to be a visually striking building. It is the cauldron where big egos clash and much of the drama unfolds.

‘I’ve worked here for years yet I still find that the building gives me a lift when I arrive in the mornings. The architect who converted it used its space to great effect and there’s this dramatic light-filled atrium which you enter from the street. Off the atrium are the main studio, the small news studio, dressing rooms and the Hub, our staff café. There are two staircases, on either side of the atrium, which take you up to the executive offices above; features is on the left and news is on the right. It is a very showbiz building.’

I included details like the fact that Fizzy the TV presenter demands a posy of fresh flowers on the set every day; she has a chaise longue in her dressing room; the staff café has lime-green and orange tables and chairs and trendy lighting and Julius Jones, the big boss, has the large corner office with the best views over the river and acres of polished oak floor. The reader needs to be able to see the building and believe that this is what a TV station is like; a glamorous building with an appearance designed to impress. TV is in the business of creating illusions and the impression it makes is more important than the reality. 

In contrast Liz’s home is her personal space where you see the real, emotional Liz. You can reveal aspects of your character in their choice of home. After her divorce Liz is keen to have a nice home for her daughter so she takes on a mortgage that is too big for her. This means she can’t afford to leave her job even when the stress gets to her. Her flat is both a millstone around her neck and her haven:

‘There’s not much of a garden, it’s more a patio with potted plants, but there’s room enough for Flo and me to have two deckchairs out there in the summer and to pretend we have a garden. It’s not a big flat inside either. It does have one beautiful large room, the living room, which is also our kitchen and dining room. The doors at the far end open onto the patio and I bought the flat because of this room. It’s costing me more than I can comfortably afford and a great slab of my salary goes on my mortgage every month. But my flat is my haven.’

              

When Liz gets home from work she often cooks in order to decompress so I included scenes of her making macaroni cheese or flapjacks. I show her ironing. Her home environment is cosy with its squashy yellow sofa and the outdoor lights that twinkle along the garden wall. At the end of the book I included three of Liz's recipes which I called Comfort Recipes for the Stressed Out.

A novel set in a TV station and a London flat was not the easiest of settings to bring alive but it was important to try to do so. However with my second novel, After the Storm, I had a fantastic opportunity to create a vivid setting. 

The novel is about two couples who set off together in a sailing boat after knowing each other less than 24 hours to sail from Belize City in Central America to a paradise island in the Caribbean Sea called Roatan. 

I had made that sail of 138 miles and I could not have written After the Storm without that first-hand experience. It was a stunning place and I kept a journal and took lots of photographs. My journal was full of descriptions of the food I ate, the birds on the island and the fish I saw when I went snorkelling. 
These details helped me create the visual setting and as a result conch stew, cooking live lobsters in a boat, houses on stilts and pelicans landing clumsily on a mangrove tree all make an appearance in the novel.

Describing the sounds as well as what the characters see can also be evocative:

'He could hear the whisper of the sea as it spread itself onto the sand. The palm trees were making all kinds of noises. He could hear them crackle, rustle, creak and sigh. And there was a clicking noise as a single dry palm frond hit the trunk of their tree.'

By creating a vivid setting you can establish mood and atmosphere, you can reveal characters and you can make the world of your novel feel very immediate. You know you’ve got it right when readers say things like ‘I felt I was there’ or ‘It felt so real.’

Woman of the Hour  and After the Storm are published by Head of Zeus 

Two of my photos from my trip to Roatan which I drew on.

This piece first appeared in Linda Hill's book blog Lindasbookbag