Author A. A. Sekhon on how, when it comes to character and plot, the setting of your novel can be an absolute goldmine . . .
Whenever I sit down to write a new piece of fiction, I always begin with the characters. Two particularly important considerations for character development are the locale and time period in which the story is set, as these can have an enormous impact on character.
The Setting Your Story Needs
For this reason, before I even set pen to paper, I strive to have a clear idea of the setting the story needs. In writing Assumptions, for example, I knew that I wanted to write a gothic, Victorian-style novella, and that I wanted it set in London, as so many of the great gothic stories of the nineteenth century were. Given that I am a modern person who would be writing for a modern audience, however, I also wanted to make sure that this bygone world would not be wholly unrelatable. For this reason, I chose to set the tale in the 1880s.
The late Victorian era in many ways laid the foundation for our own. Londoners of the time had access to trains (including the subway), cabs and double-decker city transport (albeit horsedrawn), telecommunications (the telegraph), a regular, efficient postal service, and, on the major roads, (gas) streetlights. London, even back then, had over a million people (and many tenements), so crowds were certainly nothing unusual. There were journalists who wrote about everything from news to rumors to true crime, the police were well established, and Jack the Ripper was only a year or two away. Saccharine had been invented, too.
Yet one must also bear in mind the differences between then and now. For example, back then, a far greater proportion of the population was religious, and this to a much greater degree than today. Evolution was a relatively new theory. Poverty was even more extreme and prevalent, and society more classist, homophobic, racist, sexist, and xenophobic. Laudanum, cannabis, and cocaine were acceptable medical treatments. The surgery performed most often was amputation, in order to prevent the patient’s death. Aspirin was new. Prevalent rumors were enough to cause a person to fall from grace—socially and then, often, financially as well.
Character Development
All of this has great bearing on character development. I typically develop my protagonist first. In the case of Assumptions, I began with Henry. While I knew I wanted the main character to be kind yet complicated—a relatively decent person, but not entirely innocent—it was the setting of late-Victorian London that greatly helped inform what actions Henry and the society in which he lived would have considered right or wrong. The knowledge of what would have been considered improper or even illegal helped me decide what exactly Henry’s secrets ought to be. I wanted part of his complexity to be that he felt conflicted about his secrets, with him viewing them as moral failings and yet ill equipped to alter his situation. Again, the mindset and social mores of Victorian Britain informed the character: one of the things Henry rakes himself over the coals for would not even be considered a sin today, much less a crime. (Another, however, assuredly would be.)
My next step is to figure out what kind of character would make a good foil or antagonist. In Assumptions, this needed to be someone good at ferreting out secrets who would still be a credible threat to the protagonist. In a classist world where hearsay could lead to ruin, this had to be someone with social standing equal to or higher than Henry’s—and the motivation to expose such secrets, or at least to threaten as much.
Soon, I found myself coming up with all kinds of reasons why Richard would seek to blackmail Henry. This helped me to develop Dick’s past, which further cemented the character—including his temperament, strengths, and flaws—in my mind. From that point, it became an inevitability that he would eventually come into conflict with Henry, simply based upon what drove them—their natures and their pasts. All I had to do was figure out a way to get from the book’s opening to their first meeting, as well as what the circumstances of the latter would entail. As the characters mixed about as well as water and oil, the plot flowed organically after that; their actions toward and reactions to each other naturally drove it forward.
The Cultural Mindset of your Setting
In my works, major supporting characters also get full development, particularly if they have a meaningful relationship with the protagonist or antagonist. They, too, are subject to the social mores and cultural mindset of the setting. Henry’s friend, John, for example, never drinks in public but only in private, whether with very close friends or alone. Although alcohol was by no means illegal in the Victorian era, drunkenness was frowned upon. Because John wishes to be taken seriously and to be able to hold his head high in society, to anyone outside his inner circle, he appears a teetotaler. This contrast between the way one acted in public and the way one conducted oneself in private was very typical of the time period, and is a running theme throughout the book.
Time and locale are also useful for logistical purposes. If a character wakes up in a morgue—as Henry does—where would he find himself in the city? Say he flees. Where would he be likely to end up? Whom would he encounter? If I keep to a tight, third-person perspective, what would Henry likely see, smell, touch, or hear on his way? The answers to all these questions will be different depending on the part of the city in question.
In short, characters drive the story, and it is the interplay between the characters and their particular time and place that shapes them, that dictates what is and is not an acceptable way for them to react or comport themselves, and what taboos will spell trouble for them if they dare break them. Trouble, of course, is just another word for plot. Setting is a gold mine for it.
Happy prospecting.
(c) A. A. Sekhon
Website: https://assumptionsbook.wordpress.com/
About Assumptions by A. A. Sekhon:
He awoke in a morgue in London.’
Experience the late Victorian era through Assumptions, a thriller novella with a flair for mystery, intertwined with characters who embody all the complexities of human nature.
What secrets await within the shadows of propriety?
Henry is an esteemed physician, a single, handsome, and wealthy member of elite Victorian London society, a dedicated and compassionate giver to his friends and the needy—and he has just woken up in the morgue.
Richard is an irredeemable cad who will make decided use of his practised skills of manipulation and theft to discover Henry’s deepest, darkest secret and reveal him to society as a fraud.
Assume nothing.
In a world driven by gossip and hypocrisy, lies and suppressed desires, can any man truly hope to simultaneously avoid temptation and embrace his true nature? Perhaps, in a cage such as this, indulging one’s God-given free will to make morally dubious choices is the only way to find peace…
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