A SENSE OF PLACE

                                                                                  

A sense of place is important to a story and if you create one a reader can see, hear and experience, they will believe in what happens in your story.

In yesterday’s interview with Amanda Flower, she discussed why she chose the setting she did, and because she’s familiar with the places where she sets her books, they are believable to the reader. But although it helps to be familiar with the setting, it is not necessary if you use details of the surroundings, time of day and year and other aspects that set the mood.

Recently I finished The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. The book begins with the following open scene.

“The small boys came early to the hanging. It was still dark when the first three or four of them sidled out of the hovels, quiet as cats in their felt boots. A thin layer of fresh snow covered the little town like a new coat of paint, and theirs were the first footsteps to blemish its perfect surface. They picked their way through the huddled wooden huts and along the streets of frozen mud to the silent marketplace, where the gallows stood waiting.”

The book starts with a dark cold morning. The homes are hovels or huts so already the mood is set for a dark novel with time of day and year and place. It is locked in with the last five words.

Although Follett didn’t use a limited sense of place, much of it took place in a monastery, but even in that monastic setting, one never quite felt safe. A monk, Phillip, is a major character and following is his first view of the monastery Kingsbridge, which became almost like a character in its own right.

“Kingsbridge overawed him at first. The walled monastery was bigger than many villages; the cathedral church was a vast, gloomy cavern; the prior’s house a small palace . . . the church was visibly in need of major repairs.”

Ellis Peters' Brother Cadfael series takes place in the same time period with King Steven and the Empress Maud waging war to be the ruler, but although she doesn't ignore the brutality and bloodshed, she doesn't go into graphic details. In the first chapter of One Corpse too Many, this early scene shows the monastery as a more tranquil place.

"Come, see what manner of labour you're taking on yourself," said Cadfael cheerfully, and downed his spade to take the new boy around the enclosed garden, showing him the vegetables, the herbs that made the noon air heady and drunken with fragrance, the fish ponds and the beds of pease that ran down almost to the brook. The early field was already dried and flaxen in the sun, all the harvest gathered, even the later-sown hung heavy and full of pod."

Notice how not only the cheerful Brother Cadfael, but the time of day and year creates a lighter mood. Although by the title the reader knows it's going to be a mystery with dead bodies, one still doesn't feel the underlying horror one felt from the first scene in the Follett book.

 

And now a scene from a monastery in northern Quebec in Louise Penny’s latest book A Beautiful Mystery. It’s autumn and so far north that it’s earlier here. Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and Inspector Jean-Guy Beauvoir are being taken by boat to an isolated monastery to investigate a death. It’s a closed isolated monastery that never opens its doors to visitors. The following passage sets the mood.

“At the end of the bay a fortress stood, like a rock cut. Its steeple rose as though propelled from the earth, the result of some seismic event. Off to the sides were wings. Or arms. Open in benediction, or invitation. A harbor. A safe embrace in the wilderness. A deception. This was the near mythical.”

This is a strong sense of place with a mystery attached. One feels this will be nothing like the Benedictine Abby of Saint Peter and Paul that was Brother Cadfael's home. Instead one gets a sense there's something sinister behind those walls. 

In all three settings I’ve described, the atmosphere and mood work to get the reader interested. The first a sense of horror, the second a sense of a quiet tranquil place, and the third a sense of apprehension.

A well woven plot and believable characters are important to any story, but so is the sense of place against which the plot and characters are woven and sometimes writers seem to overlook the importance of sense of place.

In what book or books did you find the sense of place quite strong?

If you’re a writer, what setting do you use for your book or books?