As both a writer and an architect (currently in the final stages of training), ‘Place’ is important to me. Not just as a physical location – although that clearly is a reasonable consideration – but also as an atmosphere, a sensation, a space and a concept.
“Home” is a place that spans all of these ideas. I will explore this further in a separate post.
Within my writing, I try to convey both the physical description and the feeling it can create. Trying to bring the scene to life, to transport the reader to the place so that they can inhabit the same place, share the same experience. Whilst we all interpret places, spaces and experiences differently, I try to bring as much of my intention to the readers attention through sight, sound touch and smell (and where sensible taste). Sensation is a significant part of the experience of place.
As such, my writing can tend to be highly descriptive, though hopefully not excessively (and to the detriment) so!
Place offers so much variety as to be an exciting prospect for writers. Not just between locations – a cosy cottage living room is as vastly different to the corporate board room as an open ocean to a wooded mountainside – but also through time. Following the same path on a daily basis may feel like visiting a new place each visit. The mist limiting visibility and making shadowy secrets out of familiar prospects; golden sunlight beaming down to gild those same features; the rich scent of rain damped earth following the dusty nothing of a drought.
Sarah Hall explores this in her entry for the National Centre For Writing “Walking Norwich, the real and imagined’ pamphlet. She notes that ‘Perceptions of place warp, may seem romantic, catastrophist, natal at any given time.’ Continuing to highlight that returning to one place can trigger memories of other places, other times, how visiting parts of Norwich remind her of formative years in Cumbria.
Sarah also highlights how inspiring places can be “Place… offers inspiration, before all the other components of fiction.” She notes that her walks through Norwich’s districts or along the river allow her to imagine dystopian futures, akin to the devastating floods she experienced in Carlisle. For me inspiration sourced from place is frequently fantastical and historical. I visualise the ladies in big skirts arriving for dinner, see the servants bustling about or the market holders shuffling along the cobbles. Or sometimes it’s the elves racing delicately along their tree branch homes, or griffins and dragons basking on ledge-lined cliffs. That is the beauty of place, we all take something different, experience it differently. Place is unique to every one of us, even if we are standing side by side.
With each story I create new places, explore new sensations and delight in the possibility of sharing these with the reader.