Cover of Beyond Blood by Sharon A. Crawford, published by Blue Denim Press.

When writing fiction it is not only important to make your characters and plot realistic, but you need to do the same with your setting. Especially when you combine the setting with your characters and plot. Especially in rooms. Especially in action scenes in rooms.

Remember, you may have the visual in your mind but the reader is reading words, not watching it on TV. Think of police mystery shows, such as Chicago PD where the police are entering a building in force. The characters don’t know what they will find inside – people or structure, but you can bet the writers and director do. It can mess things up if you have a setting that just doesn’t match up with what the characters are doing.

Let’s take that scene mentioned above. As a fiction author, you need to know if there are stairs inside, where they are, if any of them have defects or squeak, how big the rooms are, and what rooms there are and how many levels. Otherwise you might unintentionally have a scene akin to the Keystone Cops.

In Beyond Blood, I had somewhat tight quarters to play out the climax – a medium-sized yacht. I had to know what would be on board, its arrangement, if my characters would all fit and be able to move around as needed (I solved that one by not having them all in one place at once).

But before I did that I had to get on a yacht, so I did. I got a tour of a somewhat smaller yacht and asked the owner/sailor about the terminology. And I read books on the subject.

There is a certain amount of micro-managing by the author once you get your building rooms straightened out. You need to consider any windows, if they face the sun and at what point of day. Is it dark and rainy outside when your characters are inside? You can’t have a character come in out of pouring rain and when he or she is in the living room or an office have bright sunlight streaming through…unless it suddenly clears up.

Then there is the feasibility of your characters moving around in a room and what they can see while they are in action. For one scene in Beyond Blood, I actually stood up from my computer and tried to re-enact the scene to consider room corners and furniture (my desk substituted for the office desk) to see if it would work.

You can also draw room sketches and if you aren’t somewhat incompetent in Math, do the rooms to scale. No, I don’t do the latter. But I did go around in different areas, different cities and towns with my camera to find the perfect house that would work with the Attic Investigative Agency on the top floor for the fraternal twin PIs – Dana Bowman and Bast Overture. This house had to be at leastt 75 years old, three stories, with two balconies and a turret. I found the house in downtown London, Ontario. I believe it is used for offices now) near a park and snapped away. No, I didn’t go inside. I used my imagination and memories for the inside.

But that’s fodder for another post.

Cheers.

Sharon A. Crawford

For something completely different check out when I was interviewed about Beyond Blood and writing on radio station Northumberland 89.7 FM http://bluedenimpress.com/authors/sharon-a-crawford/

All my TV interviews are posted on You Tube. Click on “Video” at the top right of this blog

Check out my website www.samcraw.com for more information about Beyond Blood and my writing workshops. I do update it.

The book cover at the top links to my Amazon author profile and my books. E-copies are also available at my publisher’s website http://www.bluedenimpress.com