Where do my characters live?

Writers have to get the details right in order to create what John Gardner called “the continuous dream.” This means if I choose a location that is near a highway, I have to get the exit numbers right, the scenery as the driver pulls onto the roadway from the ramp. When a character begins speaking, his language—grammar, vocabulary, inflection—should match what we know about him or her. Details matter.

One of the features of story invention I spend time thinking about is where my characters live. Unless I have a specific home in mind for an important character, I can’t feel the story growing because the character has no context. I have to know where each character lives. This means research.

I'm not the only one who seeks the perfect setting. Agatha Christie's And Then There Were Nonecan't be set in any house. "Crimson Shadow," the opening story in Walter Mosley's Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, introduces Socrates Fortlow and his two-room apartment, in a location that defines the story. Where a character lives matters.

I haunt open houses, review real estate sites on line, and study my friend’s homes. Not everyone I know lives in a place that would be suitable for one of my characters or a story, but I occasionally find one. When Chief of Police Joe Silva moved to Mellingham, he was a single man committed to a new job in a small town. Instead of buying or renting a house, he at first rented a condo, until he got a sense of the new community. This put him in touch with a landlady, an elderly woman who lived upstairs and knew everyone in town. For Joe’s new home, I chose the two-family home owned by a friend of mine. Before I began using it, however, I asked her permission.

In Family Album, the home of a particular character is important to the plot, so I chose for that person a home that I recalled from my youth. It has been renovated and expanded beyond recognition for some, but the original structure gave me what I wanted, and I could use it without worrying about infringing on someone else’s right to privacy.

In the Anita Ray series, I faced a similar problem. I stayed at a family-owned and operated guesthouse in Kovalam, South India, and returned over fifteen years later to find it greatly altered and expanded. But the core was still recognizable to me, and I remembered well how it had been. Nevertheless, I drew a diagram of the two main floors, numbered the rooms, and made minor adjustments to the original building. This was the home Anita lived in throughout the series, beginning with Under the Eye of Kali. For traditional family homes, such as the one in The Wrath of Shiva, I used traditional Nair homes I’d visited throughout Kerala. Since these followed a standard design, I didn’t worry about using them. An important location surrounded by heritage trees appears in When Krishna Calls. 

For Felicity O’Brien’s home in Below the Tree Line, I adapted a late seventeenth century farmhouse. These homes also follow a standard design, so I wasn’t using anything unique or unusual. Tall Tree Farm has a farmhouse, a barn, and various small outbuildings that are really just sheds.

In my current work-in-progress, a suspicious death occurs in a Victorian house in a seaside setting. The death and its aftermath require a house with certain features—two staircases, an old cellar with a dirt floor, and rooms that flow. I found the perfect location nearby, and toured it during an open house. So far, as the story progresses, I haven’t had to make any adjustments to the structure, and I can move on to the homes of some of the other characters in the story. Once I have a solid location, one I can also move around in, the possibilities of the site become clear, and the story develops additional, often unexpected dimensions.

To visit Felicity O’Brien’s home, go here.

To visit the other series, go here.

And to learn more about Susan and her books, go here.