A commercial airline pilot recently described how his job gave him a sense of how large the world really is. He would leave his home in London and drive to the airport among hundreds of other motorists and pedestrians going about their daily business. At the end of the day, he would land in New York or Johannesburg or Ankara and drive to the hotel among hundreds more. Eventually, watching these people pass by and imagining their lives made him aware that the people he’d seen that morning in London were still going about their daily business, just like the people at his destinations. This simple imaginative exercise left him with a sense that the entire planet was full of individuals living out their daily lives.
It’s natural to see the world only in terms of the people you encounter every day. We all know theoretically that there are seven and a half billion more of us out there, going to school in Lagos or heading to work in Asuncion or shopping for groceries in Osaka. We’re just not aware of them. We don’t feel they’re out there the way the pilot did.
It’s also natural to see your characters only in terms of the events of your story, giving them enough background to convey their personalities, making minor characters distinctive enough to be remembered. But you can give your story more depth – make your imaginative world bigger – if you learn to pay attention to the lives that your other characters, especially minor characters, live when they’re offstage.
When you create a minor character, think about who they are when your readers aren’t watching them. What do they do for a living? What are their good and bad habits? Married? Kids? What were they doing just before they entered the scene? What will they keep doing after they exit, stage right? If you can give your readers hints of life taking place beyond the confines of your story, you’ll make your fictional world feel not only larger, but less artificial and more authentic.
I’m currently working on a mystery in which the detective, in trying to get a sense of who the main suspect is, interviews the couple who lives next door to her. This couple only appears once in the book, for a handful of pages, but in that time readers see them arguing over who the suspect was. There’s no real anger or animosity in the argument. They still love and respect one another. They just have different ways of looking at the world and are comfortable expressing them. It’s clear this argument has, in various forms, been going on for years and will continue for years to come – it’s woven into their marriage. This glimpse of their life together stretching on past that one scene makes the couple feel more real, and the writer’s world feel larger.
The need to give readers a glimpse of what’s happening offstage applies to your settings as well. Of course, you know to use telling details to quickly create a setting readers will be able to imagine clearly. Give thought to your setting’s history, as well. How has it developed over time? Are there hints of its past in its present – a bathroom cut out of a closet in an old mansion divided into apartments, painted-over but still visible graffiti on a bridge, or an old factory converted into work-sharing space? Think about your setting’s backstory, work it out in your mind. Even if you don’t write out that history on the page, bearing it in mind will give your settings depth and authenticity. Readers will feel they’ve been there for years before the story began and will still be there years after it ends.
Perhaps the greatest example of this kind of in-depth setting creation is Tolkien’s Middle Earth. Decades before he began to write The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien had worked out centuries of history of the battles between Mordor and Gondor. The Mines of Moria are full of ruined echoes of their glorious past. We never do find out what happened to the Entwives. Granted, he also had the advantage of characters who were eons old, which blurs the line between ancient history and living memory. But even so, one of the main draws of The Lord of the Rings is the sense that the world has been developing in all of its detail for millennia.
When the Fellowship of the Ring are about to enter the Mines of Moria, Aragorn reassures them that Gandalf “is surer of finding the way home in a blind night than the cats of Queen Berúthiel.” In the hands of nearly any other author, this would simply be a throwaway line, and Berúthiel a made up name. Not for Tolkien.
Berúthiel (from the Sindarin, meaning “angry queen”) was a Black Numenorean who married Tarannon Falastur, king of Gondor. Despite hating cats, she had ten, nine black and one white, whom she trained to spy on the men of Gondor. She despised both the king and the sound of the sea – they lived in the seaside town of Osgiliath – and, not surprisingly, produced no children. Eventually, Tarannon exiled her, putting her and her cats on a ship and launching them out to sea. She was never seen again, and her name was struck from the Book of Kings, though apparently not from Aragorn’s family memory – she was a great-to-the-several-dozenth aunt.
Tolkien had worked all of this out when he wrote that one, throwaway line. This is why, as one critic put it, if Middle Earth doesn’t exist, it ought to.
That is how you create a sense that your story is taking place in a larger world.
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About Dave King
Dave King is the co-author of Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, a best-seller among writing books. An independent editor since 1987, he is also a former contributing editor at Writer's Digest. Many of his magazine pieces on the art of writing have been anthologized in The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing and in The Writer's Digest Writing Clinic. You can check out several of his articles and get other writing tips on his website.
I agree that Tolkien created a sense that his story took place in a larger world. I need to learn from Tolkien. His Lord of the Rings gave a sense of place and time through the history he developed. Like that throwaway line with Queen Berúthiel, I got a sense of a world that had been around for eons. Too many world-building novels are in the present and have no relationship to the past.
Few writers are willing to put in the work Tolkien did — I believe he started developing Middle Earth in the mid-twenties, and The Hobbit wasn’t published until 1937. And I can understand how many writers don’t think to put in the work of building an imaginative history that readers will never read. But it does make a difference in the feel of your story.
Cats trained as spies? Cats trained by someone who hated cats? Cats trained at all? Nice premise for a freestanding story, yes?
Tolkien said in an interview that she was one of those people who attract cats despite hating them. I guess she just decided that, as long as they were there, she’d put them to use.
Excellent post! Thank you for tips, especially for creating a deeply drawn setting. As a person who struggles with description, I had to basically learn a new way of thinking when creating the setting for the cozy mystery I’m working on, as setting is really another character. Now that I have all this backstory for my characters and setting, I am having trouble figuring out what to use, how to use it and where to put it! Obviously I’m not going to use it all in the story, but finding that balance is proving to be an new challenge. I feel a little better after reading the tidbit about Tolkien. Maybe I’m not as bad off as I think. :D
I work with a lot of clients who are so focused (naturally) on their characters and story that they neglect their settings and background. But one of the skills you need to succeed as a writer is the ability to pay attention to the stuff that doesn’t interest you.
As to finding the right balance, other factors come into play as well. Including more backstory will also slow your pace. If you focus on one particular aspect of your character’s history, your readers will probably assume it will play a role in your plot. You’ve got to find the sweet spot that makes all these different factors work their best.
I think this is why I keep finding parallels between writing and baroque counterpoint. For both to work, you need to hold several different threads in your head at the same time.
I was aware about backstory slowing pace, but something you gifted me with is mentioning that which backstory I choose to reveal can affect readers perceptions of the story/plot. While I may have been unconsciously aware of this, I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone (book or person!) explain this directly, but it makes perfect sense. That definitely will help with the choices I make. I’m drafting the first couple chapters right now so am definitely in setting up mode. Thanks for the writerly Christmas present!
Well, my job here is done, then.
Oh, of course! You’ve discussed this parallel before, but now I can visualize a musical staff with the notes of baroque counterpoint all doing their thing; each measure is a scene in a narrative, and the moving lines of notes create different chords/interactions in each measure/scene…..of course! (I’ll have the Bach Bouree from Suite in E minor running through my head now, informing my characters.) Thanks, Dave!
Oh, of course! You’ve discussed this before, but today I can visualize a musical staff holding a baroque passage, with each line of notes doing its thing; each measure is a scene, and the moving lines of notes/characters create different chords/interactions within each measure/scene. Wow! (Now I will have the Bach Bourée from Suite in E minor running through my head for the rest of the day, informing my characters.) Thanks, Dave!
(PS: This responds to the discussion of music at the end of earlier post; I tried to position it there but it wouldn’t go.)
Excellent.
Actually, there is another way to view the connection between counterpoint and writing. But I think there is an entire article in it.
Watch this space.
Love the reminder that minor characters need to be fully human too. Just because we, the readers, only get invited into their lives for a scene or a moment, it doesn’t mean they don’t have complete lives before and after that brief encounter. It’s another good example of how there’s so much material the author needs to know (and have written) that will never find its way into the final book …
I think with any profession, you can get so caught up in the things that drew you into it in the first place that you forget that you also have to work hard at the boring stuff.
I’ve heard it said that mediocre musicians play with fewer mistakes because they only play pieces they know well. Good musicians are constantly making mistakes because they’re constantly pushing themselves past their comfort level.
Dave, I remember reading the LOTR back in high school and being overwhelmed by the depth and breadth of the story. I quickly became an Appendix Nerd! Later, I learned that Tolkien’s vision began in his childhood. He had a grand passion for words and stories and how myth underpins the present. For me, his genius lies in his devotion to these passions. Because he built such a cohesive world, that sense of bigness and oldness bleeds through every sentence. I write YA Fantasy so I’ve spent a lot of time writing out histories and events that will never show up in the books, as Barbara mentions above. But if one of those events gets referenced by a character, I need to know the context it comes from. Doing this over the last bunch of years has caused my story to expand in ways I’d never have imagined when I began. Hard work, frustrating sometimes, but satisfying. Thank you for a wonderful post!
I’ll confess, for some years in high school and college, I wrote letters to friends using the Feanorian alphabet. And you’re right about the context. Even if readers aren’t aware of the facts, they’ll feel that they’re there.
I learned to speak rudimentary Quenya!
I think we all owe a debt of gratitude to Stephen Colbert for making Lord of the Rings geekery respectable.
“Every writer making a secondary world wishes in some measure to be a real maker, or hopes that he is drawing on Reality: hopes that the peculiar quality of this secondary world (if not all the details) are derived from Reality, or are flowing into it.”–J.R.R. Tolkien
I love everything about this Tolkien quote, including his use of the capital R in “Reality.” One of my fondest wishes as a writer is to, in some measure, be a “real maker.”
Thanks, Dave, for the reminder and the shot of inspiration. Here’s to seeking to create that “peculiar quality” to which the professor refers.
That is a delicious quote. And I suspect it is the driving force behind a lot of writers.
Garrison Keillor, for instance.
“The reason you tell lies about a wonderful place is that you believe if you get every detail right, absolutely right … that if you get it absolutely perfect, you will be lifted up out of this life and you will be set down in that
wonderful place you’ve told lies about and all your lies will become true.”
But who is the black cat with the arresting allure? He/she is welcome to join our black cat community on Instagram @blackcatsofig where many of our feline members are published writers.
Sadly, she is a random internet cat I found on Flickr under Creative Commons.
I agree. She is a beauty, though.
This reminds me of the “Thursday Next” series by Jasper Fforde: The protagonist finds a way to travel into books, where she meets the characters of famous novels and talks to them “offstage”. It turns out that some of them are really fed up with their roles :-)
I hope the characters in my WIP are not as grumpy when they are not “on”! :-)
And this reminds me of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, the Tom Stoppard play.
I hadn’t made that connection, thank you.
Tolkein called it adding “shimmer” to his stories. I love that image, ghostly stories from the past clustering around what it happening in the present. Like counterpoint, yes, but also like all the connotations from our particular culture clinging to a word.
I agree, “shimmer” is a wonderful image.