Step Three - Location

Locations often become additional characters in your novel – they can become incredibly important to the reader, often generating emotions and feelings that might usually be reserved for your main characters. Imagine a building facing demolition or a forest about to be felled, your reader may well invest a huge amount of their emotions into willing them to survive. You need to know your locations intimately, you can share this with your readers.

Make a note of all the locations in your novel; break your locations down from big to small -  country, city, street, outdoor space, room and chair in the room. You may have only one location in your novel – perhaps a hospital ward or mountain. Again you can break this down from the vastness of the mountain to the confines of a crevice.

Write out location profiles including:

• Physical description
• History – when created, did it have an important role in significant events
• Importance to main, or other, character
• Distinguishing features
• Consider how your location is effected by the weather
• Has the location undergone any changes – even minor ones
• The purpose of the location
• Reasons for and barrier to the success of the location.

Once you have detailed location profiles you will be able to write about these with feeling and give each one a purpose.

Next week we will consider plot.

Happy writing.