Starting On The Ground Floor

A while back I did a post here on my love of the-map-in-the-front-of-the-book, and my own mapping habits while writing. And much in the same way that Winnie-the-Pooh books inspired me to map, I can credit Dame Agatha Christie for one of my other odd habits: the drawing of floor plans.

I think I own every book Agatha Christie wrote, and I loved when she put in the floor plans of houses to show us what rooms were where, and how impossible it was for anyone to have committed the murder in question.

My own stories didn’t really call for such elaborate measures, but the more I wrote the more I saw the advantage of using a floor plan as a writing tool. As clearly as I saw some scenes and settings in my mind, I could get turned around sometimes, so I got into the habit of sketching out rough plans of houses my characters lived in. Just a few lines on a page, really, so I didn’t have someone walking into a cupboard when they were supposed to be in the kitchen.

In the photo above you can see, on the right, the rough floor plan of Greywethers I drew when I started work on Mariana, back in 1990. 

I’ve done this for all my books since. Like my maps, these are just for myself, to refer to while writing (although I included a floor plan in Season of Storms, because that house was like an insane warren—as you can see from the picture here—and I knew readers would have a hard time keeping track of the rooms).

Nearly all the houses that I’ve set my books in have actually existed. Sometimes, as in the case of “Crofton Hall” in Mariana—Avebury Manor in real life—the floor plans already exist, and a very nice person at the National Trust will send them to you. And sometimes you have to create them. 

Either way, I begin with photographs. If I can get inside, I sketch the layout of the rooms, keeping in mind I may have to change things around a bit for my own story. If I can't get inside, I do an internet hunt for similar houses of the period and look for floor plans, then cobble those together to make my own.

I’ve done a bit of both for the other floor plan at the top of this post, on the left, which is for the new book I’m now working on: Bellewether. The house I’m using for this book is based on Raynham Hall, a museum on Long Island, and after visiting the house and taking photographs and notes, I went online to search for other saltbox houses of the period to find out how to put the central chimney stack where it would be (Raynham Hall lost its chimney to a Victorian makeover, which also rearranged the entrance hall).

The result is a floor plan that perfectly fits what I need for my story. Not only does it give me a visual reference for the movements of my characters, but it shows me where the windows are and when the sun comes in, and what view would be.

If nothing else, my floor plans give me something I can work on when the words are slow in coming, so I can fool myself into thinking I’m being productive.

What’s your opinion of floor plans in novels? Have you ever done one yourself?

Backgrounds

I spent last weekend helping my dh to wallpaper a room. It was really fiddly because we had to match up a swirly pattern of birds and leaves, and a few times we messed up (ok, mostly it was me, but still ...). The whole process made me think about the backgrounds in our novels though and how they can sometimes be just as difficult to get right. Like Susanna said a while back, we might require maps in order to imagine where the characters are exactly and if we can’t find real ones, we have to make them up and draw them ourselves. Also photos of places help, or actual visits to see what it’s like there, and lots of factual reading to make sure everything is correct. Often, I make up family trees for my fictional families as well so that I’ll remember who is who and I spend hours trying to imagine what they’re wearing. It’s all in the background, but important.

For my current wip, I had to do quite a lot of background research, some of which was very boring (dry tomes full of facts I didn’t actually need), but other parts were great fun. The story is set in 1750’s Scotland, so that justified a visit to the Highlands to tour the areas where I’d decided my story took place. And I got to indulge in one of my favourite pastimes, going around ancient castles, since they might serve as models for the one in my novel. What could be better?

I also spent an afternoon at a Highland folk museum where they had built up houses original to the period I was writing about. Seeing these firsthand was invaluable and made me adjust several scenes in my novel which hopefully made them more authentic. Without going there, I might not have realised just how much you reek after just a few minutes of sitting by a real peat fire in a smoky hut or the fact that the doors were so low even I had to bend down to enter (at 5’3” that doesn’t happen much!). And if I’d never seen a real “shieling” hut, I wouldn’t have had known how uncomfortable it must have been for a six-foot-plus male to try and sleep in there.

I’m quite an impatient person and normally I don’t enjoy research much, I just want to get on with the story. I feel as if descriptions of any kind hold me back and prevent me from moving on to the interesting parts, like character interaction, romance and adventure, but I know they’re necessary. So I’ve reached a compromise with myself – I do a little bit of general research first (since I write historicals, I have to know about the main events of the period obviously), then I write a draft version of the story with very sketchy descriptions and after that I finally do the research and go back and complete the background details. This stops me from being jolted out of the flow, which can be so distracting. It also allows me to be more specific in the kind of background research I do, because by the time I’ve written the novel in draft, I’ll know exactly what I need to find out.

This might sound like a chaotic way of working, but somehow, it all comes together in the end. How do you do it? Do you do all your research first or are you impatient like me, leaving most of it till the end?

Please come back on Sunday to hear from Liz.

Maps: A Love Story

Maybe it started with Winnie-the-Pooh, and that map of the wood drawn by Christopher Robin. Or with the map above, from my own loved and battered copy of the Milly-Molly-Mandy Stories by Joyce Lankester Brisley. I'm not sure which book I read first, as a child, but together they made me a fan of the map in the front of the book, and inspired me to make my own maps of the places I write about.

Being an engineer's daughter, I'm hard-wired to love the whole concept of maps — their precision, their detail, their orderly lines. And I like to imagine my characters moving within them; to know where the streets and the trees and the fields are, and where the sun rises.

I don't need to hand-draw my map, if the setting I'm using is real — I just print off a map that's already been made and then mark it to show where the characters live and where certain scenes happen. But if I've adapted the setting, as I did with Avebury in Mariana, or with Gardone Riviera in Season of Storms, I happily get out my pencil and paper and set to work.

Usually no one but me ever sees these. They're filed in the ring binder where I keep all my stray notes for that novel, along with my research. They can either be a close view, like this one I did of Exbury (above) for Mariana, or a wider landscape like the one I drew for my upcoming book The Rose Garden (below), which takes place in a reworked version of Polperro, Cornwall, with an altered coastline and a Beacon and a cave and stream thrown in where none exist in real life.

I'm not sure what it is with me and maps. I don't do outlines for my novels, and I've long since given up the notion that I'm in control of what my characters are doing, so perhaps in the absence of any real structure I find all those orderly lines reassuring.

Or maybe it's all down to Winnie-the-Pooh and the map in the front of the book — an associative reflex, or something.

My son and I just started reading The Hobbit together, and one of the first things he wanted to do was to study the map at the front, showing where Bilbo travels, so maybe it isn't just me...

What do you think of maps? Do you love them, or hate them (or make them?)

Be sure to come back here this Thursday, to read Julie's post.

Settings

the view

I’m in the midst of my summer reading phase. This is something I look forward to all year and it has become a ritual out of necessity because I can’t write during the summer. Not that I can’t write physically but time wise. The kids are home and their friends come in droves. My friends come and the house is a hive of activity, brimming with dirty clothes, and  crowned by endless glorious summer evening meals that last forever... so not really ideal writing time. I look on it as resting time – hah, no really. I read, I watch people and I listen.

But yesterday I was thinking about setting…because I was in one of the most evocative places on earth – Frenchman’s Creek. Just the name produces images even if you have never been there or read the du Maurier book.

On a high bank at the mouth of creek a few Monterey pines stand guard bowing slightly toward the water from their towering height. Tucked in the trees is small wooden clapboard cottage which basks in the setting sun’s light. An old wreck peeks from below the green surface of the creek while the twisted oaks bend beyond the banks touching the high tide as a curlew cries in the distance….you get the picture.

So the setting screams romance, oozes history, magic and mystery. There are tales to be told. It’s almost tangible. Yet the reality of yesterday was more out of a sitcom. Biddy and I encased in wet suits had battled against the out going tide with a brisk wind blowing from the north west straight down the Helford River out to Falmouth Bay. No matter what we did the elements strived to keep us from entering the hallowed waterway. With the wind straight in our faces, it was a herculean effort to keep the kayak pointing straight. Each stroke sent us almost back on ourselves. When we finally reached the entrance, we were forced into the circles and couldn’t seem to cross the mystical barrier.

Of course being fierce determined romantic novelists with a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc to drink on Frenchman’s Creek we were not going to be barred. We fought on until Biddy paddled me straight into a waiting holly lining the bank. That was not enough – no next was a gorse. By the time we navigated under the cover of the majestic oak bowing over the river and tied onto a branch - frankly we were knackered and more than thirsty...but then the next challenge was upon us…opening the wine without overturning the kayak into the rather chilly water filled with circling grey mullet.

However we were rewarded with the sun breaking through lighting our little cave in the arms of the oak. The evening light turned the water from opaque green to glistening blue…peace had descended, the wine was cold and almost sweet to our salty lips…the romantic setting had arrived until some prat in a powerboat ignoring the 6 knot speed restriction came past at full throttle with wake that threatened to capsize us in nanosecond.

So all of this made me think - are certain places automatically romantic or frightening or …and if so what makes them that way? Yesterday Frenchman’s Creek wasn’t romantic – it was beautiful but in truth it was almost slapstick – two women absolutely shattered in wet neoprene trying to stay afloat in a lime green plastic banana drinking white wine. Yet in looking at my description above, I have described it in almost poetic terms.

So as writers do we pick setting to help the purpose of the scene? The gothic feel of a windswept moorland, the frenetic pace of a NYC street…then I asked myself how did we come to make these associations in the first place and would it be more effective to play against the setting rather than with it. Where do we get these feeling and associations – are they from literature and films or is it just our instinctive reactions to the environment? What do you think? How do you use settings? Will Frenchmen’s Creek be the location for the ultimate declaration of love or will it be more akin to my mother’s reaction of horror at the murky water filled with large grey fish and decaying tree branches? Or a comic scene of passion overturned in the frigid waters…..

A Challenge ...write a scene set in Frenchman's Creek and post the results on your blog and leave a link in the comments...

Please come back on Sunday when Biddy will be posting....

Biddy