What I have learnt is that when I am writing, I need to know the place I am writing. I have to have a picture of it in my head. Where I went wrong was letting the place in my head change.
In the first draft of Cassandra, the characters did things in the space they lived in, they moved about, and they saw things and interacted, but in my head, the house changed and the surroundings changed too many times, and the setting became inconsistent. I had to stop. Reread everything and drew – with a pencil – the definitive version. Whatever contradicted the definitive version had to change.
The final setting is a hybrid of the house I grew up in. It has red carpet and the paddocks, but the back veranda is different and the plan is different. But when I picture the characters celebrating a birthday in the dining room, that is the dining room I am in. It does not matter if the reader pictures it differently as long as I am consistent with what is in my head.
I wish I had just decided from the outset that it WAS my old house and farm. I would have saved myself a lot of time rewriting and re-envisioning
More recently, I set a story in a high school. The high school is one I visited 15 years ago. The brick wall the characters sit on is the one I sat on in my high school. The specifics of these places are not important. What the reader needs to know if there is a brick wall, it is a rural, small town school, it is dusty, hot, windy, and it smells like cow poo.
Deciding on which place to ‘picture’ before I started writing has been an important lesson and one I recommend. It is bizarre to me that even years later, when I re-read a story, I picture the place in my mind exactly how I did at the time. Think of a place you know (or meld a couple of places). Picture the characters there. Write them there. Don’t change your mind!
Finalist Best Fantasy Novel 2017 Aurealis Awards
Is the future set like concrete or a piece of clay we can mould and change?
On a remote farm in Queensland, Cassie Shultz feels useless. Her perfect brother Alex has an uncanny ability to predict the weather, and the fortunes of the entire family hinge on his forecasts. However, her gift for prophecy remains frustratingly obscure. Attempts to help her family usually fail.
After meeting with her new genius neighbour Athena, Cassie thinks she has unlocked the secret of her powers. But as her visions grow more vivid, she learns that the cost of honing her gift may be her sanity.
With her family breaking apart, the future hurtles towards Cassie faster than she can comprehend it.
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I hear you out on this one. The best scenes I’ve written are those that I’ve already gotten a clear picture of in my mind.