I just finished Gibson’s Zero History. One of the locations in the novel is a fictional private hotel called Cabinet with an address at Portman Square in London. Before we found a house in Montague Square, my parents and I lived in a flat at 15 Portman Square – it had an old rickety cage style lift and a porter who always smelled of pipe tobacco.
There was a building, right next to the block of flats I’d lived in that always intrigued me. It used to be, a long time ago, Courtaulds. Then I guess it became a private club, because it has no plaque or nameplate. I walked around the square twice and became convinced that this HAD to be ‘Cabinet’.
It got me thinking about how very important setting is to my writing and the way stories emerge. If you could open up my head and see the thought contents of my brain visually represented, you’d see an endless projected slide carousel of places I have seen that have intrigued me.
What surprised me was that he had chosen an occupied building. And then I wondered why I found that surprising? But for me, the buildings / spaces need to be empty. It’s almost as if, once they are deserted, I feel free to appropriate them into the storyspace and populate them with my characters. In fact, I think my penchant for taking pictures of architecture is grounded in a desire to record the place so I can go back in my mind, and write a story there.
So here, below are a few of the places I’ve stolen from the world, and stored in my heart, waiting to find the perfect characters to move in:
Have you got places that make stories for you? Share them!
It’s funny. Most of the places in my stories either don’t exist, or are non-place spaces, or generic cities or rooms, except for a very few specific locales. Your richness of place is one of the many things that make your writing so compelling. It’s something that’s inspired me to look at places-n-stories in a new way.
The idea of using places as an inspiration is something that I haven’t really tried (well, not since grade 7 Composition class) but I think I will. Thanks
I have difficulty with locations. I live with a terrible fear that if I make up a property in an existing town, some sleuthing reader will find out and trumpet my lies to the world. I mean, what’s that about? I’m a sleuthing reader myself, and I’ve never felt the urge to look a place up to check its authenticity!
Alternatively, I make up entire places. I have plans of rural French villages drawn up, showing the locations of all the key spots. If I’m making up, it has to be accurate! And then I just site the mythical place somewhere vague.
Most of the time, though, the setting is left blank – it’s a house, and I’ll have detailed plans for the house, but no concept of where that house might be. One story I wrote featured the banisters in the plot, and I had to get the layout exactly right in my mind’s eye. Because I assume the reader will be doing what I do, and rebuilding it all in his/her head. So it has to work.
Those are great photos, by the way. The boys and I LOVED Cordoba.
Oh! But fiction is fiction. It’s perfectly fine to start from a real place, and then tweak it and craft it into something slightly different as needs must. I never worry about that. But there’s a great essay by Umberto Eco: The Author and his Interpreters http://www.themodernword.com/eco/eco_author.html
The French Colonial Palace image seems particular intriguing.
What dramas must have occurred there!
If only the walls could talk…but they can, can they not?
Please do tell what they have to say.
i haven’t been through the entire body of your work available here and elsewhere, but does my memory serve me right that you have written few, if any ghost stories? looking at these photos and how you have captioned them, i suddenly thought what a wonderful thing a series of RG ghost-stories would be – set in these utterly lovely places. your talent for creating atmosphere almost screams for it. but this is just my imperfect memory wandering hand-in-hand with my daydreams, so i ask you to forgive me if i’ve missed something – it happens all the time.
as for settings, i have no problems with setting anything anywhere, regardless of who may or may not be actually resident/using the place. as you said, fiction is fiction. i tend to do a little of both – often starting with a place or feature that has caught my attention, and then just making the rest up as i go along. and as often, i will be very vague on details and layouts. i admit, that’s mainly through laziness, but it also happens to be the way i usually read – taking the story as a whole and payng little attention to the surroundings – except to get a general, visceral feel of the setting. i tend to both read and write on instinct and feel, rather than anything concrete. i guess with the writing, it allows the reader to read as i do, or to add details as they wish. but that’s merely a happy (ish) accident of my general writerly and readerly laziness… *shame*
I think I’ve only ever written one.
Atmosphere plays a big part and the combination of a building and the people in it set my imagination running: A hooker bar in SE Asia with it’s Vietnamese 20 year old girls hanging over sweaty 50 year old westerners (Beach club, KL). A colonial building turned into a bar packed with people, but with the photos of it’s heyday on the wall (Singapore waterfront / Raffles hotel – and the Continental, Saigon). Even a modern glass and steel office building with it’s smart and desperately ambitious people can create the atmosphere to fire the imagination (WFC, Shanghai); but the old, slightly tired, building and matching occupants are the best.
I use places I’ve lived in myself, mostly. Or friend’s homes. Usually in London or by the sea. I loathe seaside towns but they really spark my imagination.
I think seaside towns, out of season, are particularly full of untold stories.
First, I must say that these are the most interesting captions I have seen on any photos in a long time, so thanks for combining whimsy and eeriness so intriguingly.
Second, I am with you on the importance of the set. It is interesting that you seek out the empty places though. This never occurred to me, but I understood it once you said it.
Third, I have been wanting to just comment on something, somewhere, so I picked this post because it was right in the front; factually, I have been reading bits here and there as the mood strikes. The mood has to be right. I like little sips, and I don’t want to get drunk, but I have been enjoying your work.
Cheers, Rick
Thank you muchly. I have a morbid turn of mind. Hehe
I was trying to think of something witty to say about your captions and photos-because they are terrific. But it’s all already been said. Besides..I’m not a writer. *grin* I’ll leave that to you.
Well, writer or not, I thank you for the compliments.