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Editor's Choice

Arvon

Young Writer and the Arvon Foundation are offering you the chance to attend a residential writing course free of charge! The competition asks you to write a story, poem or descriptive piece of writing with the theme of ‘place’.

Here, author, tutor and competition judge James Friel describes the importance of place in a story…

I know of stories without characters and I know of stories where nothing happens, but I don’t know a single story that does not take place somewhere.

Too often, people write a sentence like: She went down the road to the shop.

The writer can see the road and the shop. The reader cannot. The reader will nod, understanding the sentence, but, if the writing continues in the way, bald and unseeing, the reader, eventually, nods off.

Consider instead: She went down Inkerman Street to the chemist’s.

The road now has a name. The character has a real destination. The sentence evokes a world in which realisable characters exist and realisable actions take place. You build a world in just such strokes.

In Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte writes: One may guess at the power of the north wind, blowing over the edge, by the excessive slant of a few stunted firs at the end of the house; and by a range of gaunt thorns all stretching their limbs one way, as if craving alms of the sun

Take away everything but the nouns, verbs and adjectives and the place is still there; power… north wind, blowing… edge… slant… stunted firs… gaunt thorns… stretching… limbs… craving.

A place evoked in just such economic and concrete detail creates a world that holds the character’s story together. It will hold your reader, too.

1. Chose a landscape you know well. See the place in close detail. What can you hear? Close up, in the middle distance, at the very edge of hearing? How does each thing feel to the touch, its temperature, its texture. What can you smell? It will not be just one thing, but a complex layer of fragrances and odours.

2. Now, give your stretch of water to a character: a young woman who has just learned that she is pregnant; she has never been so happy. She stands before it. Do not enter her mind. Do not mention that she is young, that she is pregnant, that she is happy. Describe the place in such a way that the reader knows without being told that she is young, that she is pregnant, that she is happy. You will want very much to tell this information. Trust detail to show the information. This is what Bronte is doing, and you are doing likewise, making a real place for your reader.

For more information on the fantastic competition to win a place on an Arvon residential writing course (worth £575) see the Young Writer Summer Special – out 4 June 2009.