The importance of a sense of place in my writing by Gill Perdue . . .
Which comes first – character, setting, or plot? Which of these is most important? These are questions which I cannot answer definitively, because for me the three are so intertwined. What I do know is that as a reader, I love to be transported – to another country, another time, or even another house. Remember Manderley – with its silent ‘echoing hall, the uneasy stillness of the west wing, wrapped in dust sheets,’ and in the garden ‘the dripping heads of the azaleas’ the ‘brown and sodden’ petals? In her novel Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier develops the concept of a sense of place to a whole new level, one that operates on a psychological as well as a literary plane and, as a result, Manderley is seared into our collective memory.
I’ve imagined myself in the heat of Kerala in southwest India reading Abraham Verghese’s Covenant of Water. And though I’ve never travelled to India in real life, I felt as though I sweltered in the stifling heat on the train, I winced at the glare of light on water or the sheen of freshly spilled blood in the operating theatre. And wow! The descriptions of food! I found myself compelled to cook Indian dishes – well, okay, order a lot of takeaways – such was the power of Verghese’s food writing. When we are caught up in a story, these places can seem more real to us than our own reality.
Familiar Locations
At the other end of the scale, I set my Shaw and Darmody stories in the less dramatic landscape of suburban south Dublin. The first two stories are based in the fictional village of Clonchapel – which is mostly a combination of Churchtown and Rathfarnham. My characters live in familiar locations and busy themselves in familiar activities – driving to and from work, collecting the child from playschool, popping into the chemist, grocery shopping in the Supervalu. Familiar – boring even. But high-stake psychological drama plays out in the most mundane locations, on quiet streets, in boggy fields, in the carpeted hallways of nice semi-ds. You only need to watch the news to confirm that. For me, the Bottle Tower (a real structure, built as a famine relief project in the 1740s) brought a sense of menace and mystery to If I Tell, my first crime thriller. It towered over my main character fourteen-year-old Jenny. It haunted her. She imagined a princess trapped in the tower, reflecting the very real way in which she was trapped in an unbearable situation.
In the second of the series, When They See Me, we venture up the road towards Terenure and the dramatic environs of Bushy Park. In the sunny playground children swing and slide and shriek with joy. There are shouts and cheers of football matches being played on the pitches, but down in the woods, in the shadows under the bridge, darkness lurks.
Great writers evoke a sense of place in a variety of ways, starting with the use of the five senses – they make us see, hear, smell, taste and feel the power of their words. They can make you hungry or thirsty. I’ve flinched reading about the landing of a blow or the sting of a paper cut. But there are other ways to evoke a strong sense of place. What about the overriding ‘feel’ of a place? The decadence of Gatsby, the misery of Angela’s Ashes, the grit of Roddy Doyle’s Barrytown trilogy?
These writers focus on the details to make us notice things we might otherwise miss – the condensation frosting a glass of champagne, the patch of mould spreading across a mattress, the fast-food wrapper whirling in a gutter. All these place us firmly in a story with the minimum amount of wordage.
The cast of characters bring to life a sense of place. These may not be main characters; they’re only supporting actors – but who are they? Where do they hang out? Is the wind caressing their expensive hair as they manoeuvre their speedboat into a harbour or are they shivering in clothes that are too thin for the weather?
The history of a place also adds to your story’s setting. It creates context and depth. Think of Sheffield’s steel-working history in The Full Monty, how unemployment cast a shadow over the present-day doings of the characters. Or the bleak history of racism and bigotry in the background of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
The Night I Killed Him
My most recent story, The Night I Killed Him is set in the gorgeous coastal town of Dun Laoghaire on the outskirts of Dublin. This setting became a driving force for the story in a way I’d never experienced before. In fact, long before it had a title, I was calling it ‘the Dun Laoghaire book.’ I have close bonds with this glittering seaside town having attended boarding school there as a child, where every Sunday we were marched down to the church near the seafront wearing our blue Sunday dresses. Our music teacher lived in a stunning seafront mansion on a terrace very like Gemma’s and, once a year, we were invited over for tea. This Dun Laoghaire, privileged, genteel and wealthy with echoes of Victorian seaside grandeur, contrasted starkly with my later lived experience of recession-hit Ireland in the Eighties.
In The Night I Killed Him, there is a stark contrast between Corrig Point Yacht Club with its shining yachts and Olympic hopefuls and the dark secrets rotting the fabric of Gemma’s carefully woven life. The wash of the surf, the clinking of spinnakers, the laughter of the privileged, the smell of money itself – the combination of these elements helped me paint a picture of a dramatic setting where anything could happen.
I pay close attention to sense of place because without it, your story drifts – unanchored. But if you do it right, your reader is fully immersed in the world you’ve created. And that’s what we want more than anything.
(c) Gill Perdue
About The Night I Killed Him by Gill Perdue:
The world of beloved influencer, Gemma Fitzgerald, seems ready to implode when the body of her brother, Max – who disappeared 18 years earlier – is washed up on a beach. Everyone thought Max had taken his own life the night of his twenty-first birthday party, but Gemma knows the truth – she is responsible for Max’s disappearance.
With the police bearing down from one side, and her glamorous lifestyle hanging by a thread, it seems the devastating truth is about to destroy Gemma’s life and take her away from her precious little boy.
Gemma has created a dazzling world in trying to forget that fateful night. What if it’s all been a lie?
‘Great writing, gorgeous characterisation and such a plot! I was so deliciously engrossed.’ Marian Keyes
‘I devoured it. So tightly plotted with great characters … it had me on tenterhooks throughout and my nerves were shot.’ Patricia Gibney
‘A compulsive heart-stopping read, that makes you forget to breathe! I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough … a gripping, tense, bone chiller of a book that you won’t forget.’ Sam Blake
‘Absolutely riveting and eminently readable.’ Liz Nugent
‘A writer at the top of her game … I could not look away until the shocking end.’ Edel Coffey
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