Howdunit

I might set a piece of short fiction in a place I’ve only visited briefly. That initial stunning response to a place can trigger an idea for a whole story. I’ve set work in Alaska, Tanzania and Finland on the basis of the first excitement, of feeling that I have an understanding for a place in a single moment. We’re immediately aware of the difference, the smells, the sound, the sense of being an outsider, and that instant impression is invaluable. One never sees a place in exactly the same way again. Once we’re used to it, the impact is gone. A novel is rather different, however. I think a novel needs a longer knowledge. The imagination needs time to simmer.

We come back to the human geography when we talk about researching a place that’s new to us. Of course, drive around the area you have in mind for the setting of your book; take photographs and look at Ordnance Survey maps. Pick out small, interesting details in the landscape and the built environment that make the area special. As with character, it’s the small specifics that bring a scene to life. But meet the people. Hang out in cafés and shops, lurk in the library, use the public transport. If you have questions, ask them. Most people will be fascinated to hear you’re a writer and nearly everyone likes talking about their lives.

We think it’s entirely natural to talk to experts about police procedure and forensics. When it comes to place, the experts are the people who live there, and they’re easy to get to know with just a little effort. It’s impossible to write with any authenticity if you don’t understand a region’s anxieties and preoccupations. In a village café in the Northumberland National Park, much of the conversation will be about sheep. In Shetland it might be about fish, or fiddle music, or the extortionate price of the ferry. In a city it might be school closures, or theft or vandalism. But you won’t know until you listen. None of this detail might come into your book in a hard, indigestible chunk, but it will be there in the confidence with which you create your characters and in a greater ease when you’re driving the plot.

Of course, the easiest thing is to set your work where you live or have lived for some years, and I’ve taken this route, which feels at times like cheating. This has its dangers too, though. We can make assumptions about the places we know well; a region can change and we can have an impression of it that might be stuck in the past. We don’t approach it with the same clear-eyed vision that we do a place new to us. And we can be so close to a place that we blur the line between fact and fiction, introduce real people and real issues without quite realizing.

I make no apology that my fiction can be escapist. I love the fact that people can lose themselves in my stories and the world that I’ve created. We all need times of escape. I want there to be a certain authenticity, though. I want readers to believe in my characters, in the relationships I describe, the ways families might fracture or hold together, the communities in which a murderer might grow. And in my opinion, I have to understand place before I can attempt that kind of reality.

Writing in 1986, Robert Barnard, who had spent most of his adult life lecturing in Australia and Norway, said that when he was writing his early novels he felt so out of touch with his native Britain that he eventually moved back home. He had felt that ‘at least the British people in my books would start talking as British people do today. He believed that visits to a country, even your own, only allow you to skim the surface of local life, and that ‘package-tour mysteries … are always less than satisfactory’. He gave examples of books written by three Detection Club members, Agatha Christie ( A Caribbean Mystery ), Ngaio Marsh ( When in Rome ), and Ruth Rendell ( The Speaker of Mandarin ) and concluded in Colloquium on Crime : ‘Better to invent your own country as in [Christianna] Brand’s Tour de Force .’

But you really do not have to be confined to your homeland or to invent a country unless you wish to. Christie’s personal experience of archaeological digs in the Middle East, for instance, strengthens books such as Murder in Mesopotamia . Ngaio Marsh was equally at home writing whodunits set in Britain or her native New Zealand. Many authors have shown that it is possible to write novels which carry the flavour of authenticity despite being set in a country where they have never lived. Michael Ridpath explains how it can be done.

The Icelanders have a saying: ‘ Glöggt er gests augað ’, which means: ‘A guest’s eye sees better.’ It’s an answer to two important questions. How can a writer write about a country in which he is not a native? And why should he?

To take the second question first. ‘Write what you know’ is good advice, especially for a writer writing her first book, but it is one of those rules of writing that is made to be broken. Novelists enjoy writing about worlds that are not theirs, just as readers enjoy reading about them. In theory, authors could just stick to their own areas of experience, their own backgrounds, people who are just like them. It is easier to write a novel in a setting with which you are intimately familiar. But why renounce enthusiasm for foreign people, countries and landscapes? Why not harness it? The same impulses that encourage an author to tackle a particular subject: curiosity, excitement, affection, even love, are exactly those ingredients that give a novel its heart, that make it stand out from the rest.

I started my career writing financial thrillers, many of which took place overseas in places like Brazil, South Africa and Wyoming. Each one of these locations required a massive amount of research, which was only useful for one novel. So when I was searching for a setting for a new detective series, I decided to pick a foreign country and stick with it over several books. In choosing Iceland I completely ignored the ‘write what you know’ rule. I had only visited the country once, on a book tour ten years before, but I had been fascinated. And I was still intrigued by the place.

Now we come to that first question: how can a writer write about a country he doesn’t know?

The answer involves reading, talking, visiting and recording, mostly in that order.

I usually start with a couple of general books about a country. In the case of Iceland, I read a wonderful memoir by Sally Magnusson about a trip to Iceland with her famous father Magnus. For my Brazil novel, I found an excellent book entitled The Brazilians by Joseph Page. Don’t underestimate the benefits of a close reading of the ‘Basics’ and ‘Contexts’ sections of good guidebooks, like the Rough Guide and the Lonely Planet series. At this stage you are trying to get an overview of the country and a list of more books to read.

This list should include memoirs, biographies and novels. You want to get an idea of the society and culture of your chosen country. You want to meet its people and to understand them. You are not really looking for facts, but you are looking for details. When you eventually write your novel, it is these little details which will make the location come alive. This is so much more than descriptions of town or countryside. It is habits, speech patterns, etiquette, furniture, superstitions, seasonal traditions – anything that is different from your own country, especially if it elicits a spark of interest in you. It will probably elicit the same in your readers.