The place, or setting, where a novel takes place can be quite important to the reader.  It might be a place s/he always wanted to visit, and about which s/he wants to read.  Or,  it could be a location where the reader used to live; perhaps it has sentimental value.  Maybe it’s a mysterious, or even sinister, place.  The setting can have an effect on the characters’ behaviour or attitudes, because a place can have a distinctive culture.  And, of course, the setting can influence the plot.

My first two novels are set in locations with which I’m familiar.  Fishing in Foreign Seas takes place in Sicily and in three other US cities where the principal characters live.  My wife and I have a summer home in Sicily; we’ve been going there for many years, and some of its beauty, history and amazing culture are on display in the novel.  Caterina, a young Sicilian woman from a traditional background is very different from Jamie, an American man from a well-to-do, northeastern family.  Nonetheless, they fall in love, marry, and she moves with him to the States.  Boston (where I’ve visited many times) and Philadelphia (where I grew up) are their first two destinations.  Boston and Philadelphia are very different than Palermo, near which Caterina grew up.  But these ‘old’ American cities have enough of an ‘old world’ feeling and culture about them that Caterina does not feel entirely out of place.  It’s when they move to Atlanta that the trouble starts.  To be fair to Atlanta, the troubles have more to do with Jamie’s constant business travel than they do with the location.  But Atlanta is a modern city, and Caterina, as a foreigner, did not always feel welcome there.  My older daughter went to university in Atlanta, and her younger sister used to live there.  Neither of them felt out of place in Atlanta, but neither of them grew up in rural Sicily near Palermo.

Sin & Contritionis set primarily in Pittsburgh, and some of the characters move to New York City and Washington DC.  I’ve lived in all three cities: they’re very different in their styles and cultures.  In fact, Aspinwall, which was home to four of the characters and Fox Chapel, home to two of the characters, are neighbouring suburbs of Pittsburgh.   I’ve lived in  both communities.  Aspinwall is a working class area, while Fox Chapel is a well-to-do neighbourhood.  Yet all six of the characters attend the  same schools.  In fact, Pittsburgh is a kind of social melting pot.  New York City, where the two characters from Fox Chapel end up living, represents – for many people – the pinnacle of financial success.  And it’s Washington DC, where Gary, the poor boy from Aspinwall makes his mark as a US Congressman.

Efraim’s Eye,my third novel, which will be out this summer, follows a slightly different pattern.  It is a terrorist thriller with a romance between two of the central characters.  It is set in London (where I’m living now), and where the act of terrorism is to be carried out with great loss of life planned.  Londoners remember ‘7/7’, the day in 2005 when four suicide bombers attacked the London transport system, killing 52 and injuring over 700.  Much of the story takes place in Morocco, which my wife and I visited on holiday several years ago.  Morocco is a magical, mystical place – home to a mixture of Islamic and ancient north African culture.  It is in Marrakesh where a charity is being swindled to finance the act of terrorism and where the lovers make their discovery.  But to add to the tension of the plot, the terrorist travels to Pakistan, Afghanistan, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Chechnya to gather his bomb-making materials.  I have been to none of those countries, and I’ve had to do considerable research about each place to make it real and to demonstrate the effects each place has on the characters.

(Efraim’s Eye has been published 24 September 2012.)

Some of my readers say that I am too detailed in my descriptions of places in my novels.  I understand their point, and  I try not to ‘guild the lily’ in my descriptive passages, but I think it’s important to the reader to feel that s/he is actually there!

For more information about my novels see www.williampeace.net.

Characters are an essential ingredient in any novel.  But what are the attributes of a character we like to read about?  It seems to me that there are several possibilities:

• There are characters with whom we, as the reader, identify: we feel that he or she ‘is a bit like me’.
• There are characters who are different and who stimulate our curiosity: we think, ‘I wonder how it would feel to be like him/her’
• There are characters for whom we feel sympathy: ‘there, but for the grace of God, go I!’
• And, of course, there are characters whom, for various reasons, we decide we don’t like, and we keep reading about them hoping that they will eventually be punished in some way.  We will probably be quite disappointed if these ‘bad characters’ triumph at the end.

 I have the impression that it is quite fashionable, nowadays, to write and read about deeply flawed characters.  The one that springs to mind is not a modern character, but he is a good example: Heathcliff, the central figure in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, a novel which was published in 1847.  The only redeeming feature about Heathcliff, in my mind, is that Catherine Earnshaw falls in love with him.  But, throughout Wuthering Heights,Heathcliff’s attitude and behaviour toward the other characters is reprehensible.  Heathcliff becomes a tragic figure with whom I, for one, have very little sympathy.  Still, it has to be said that he plays a dominant role in the novel, bringing misfortune to most of the characters around him.

 I find it difficult to invest emotionally in writing about deeply flawed characters.  In my two thrillers (one about to be published; the other just finished) there is an evil central character, but he is just evil.  I haven’t tried to develop excuses for his nature; I have only tried – in one case – to provide reasons for it.  Perhaps I am unforgiving, but I feel that anyone as bad as that doesn’t deserve to be made into a tragic figure.

 In Sin & Contrition, there are two characters that most readers dislike, but in each case there are at least a few redeeming things about them.

There is Bettina, the daughter if immigrant parents, who is determined to do better in life – socially and financially – than her parents.  She works hard to become the owner of a chain of lingerie shops, having never graduated from university.  She doesn’t marry the man she loves; instead, she keeps him as her lover, while otherwise remaining loyal to her husband.  She ignores her children, who manage to cheat their way into university and success.  She abandons her Catholic faith to join a more socially prominent church.  She argues with her brother about the care of her aging parents.  Still, she remains loyal to her friends, and she does repent some of her misdeeds.  She’s honest about some of her flaws, and one senses that she has limits to how far she will go.

There is Gary, the son of a working class mother and an absent father.  He has a bullying disposition, and he wants to make a name for himself.  He puts himself through Penn State, and has a disastrous affair with a fellow student.  Gary embarks on a career as a state politician, meets and marries a woman from a good family, but he is unable to resist starting an affair with another state representative.  His wife leaves him; he sinks into alcoholism, but, once rescued, he exercises restraint, is re-united with his wife and is elected to the US House of Representatives.  But he refuses to provide funds to the father who abandoned him, and is unable to face his mother’s dementia.  One feels that Gary will always be Gary, but at least he has learned from his mistakes, and he becomes a reasonably useful and honest citizen.

 (For more information about my novels see www.williampeace.net.)

Time is an important dimension in the writing of fiction.  Usually, the story we’re reading took place in the past, and it’s generally written in the third person: “S/he said . . .”, “S/he thought . . .”, “S/he did . . . ”  But it can also be told in the first person: “I said . . .”, “I thought . . .”, “I did . . .”  It is possible, I suppose, to write a novel in the second person, past tense: “You said . . .”, “You thought . . .”, “You did . . .”  The trouble with writing is the second person is that it is quite limiting: it puts another person (whoever “You” is) between the author and the other characters.  Inevitably the reader will feel that “You” is acting as a filter of the events, and the reader will want to get rid of “You”, so that the author can report events, first-hand.

Novels can, of course be written in the present tense: “I say . . .”, “I think . . .”, “I do . . .”  This construction has the advantage of being completely personal and focused on the central character.  Also, the story seems to unfold in real time, so that cause and effect are more immediately clear.  (It is possible, I suppose, to introduce flash-backs in a novel that is written in the present tense, but the author has to be very careful not to  lose the reader.)  Novels written in  the third person, present tense are quite rare: “S/he says . . .”. “S/he thinks . . . “, “She does . . . ”  They are rare because the author assumes a God-like position, reporting on all his characters in real time.  This stretches the readers credibility, as would a novel written in the present tense, second person.

Novels written purely in the future tense (“S/he will say . . . “. “S/he will think . . .”, “S/he will do . . .” are pretty much impossible, because it raises the inevitable question from the reader: “How does the author know what this character will say or do?”  Novelists tend to get around this problem by what one might call a ‘flash-forward technique’.  This technique involves specifically telling the reader ‘what follows takes place in the future’.  For example in Fishing in Foreign Seas, the book begins with a Prologue, which is signed by the ‘author’ in June 2029, and it closes with an Epilogue signed by the ‘author’ in November 2029.  In between these chapters, the story unfolds between May 1992 and December 2004.  This construction allows the principal characters’ daughter, born in 1994 to write the story about her parents in 2029.  Who, but a daughter, would know all these secrets about her parents?

When one is writing a fast-moving story involving several influential characters who are in separate locations, one has to be careful about getting the sequence of events down perfectly.  This is particularly true where several characters have a mistaken view of what has happened.  For example, in my fourth novel, which involves the drugs trade in Afghanistan and Iran, a father and son are in Iran at the same time.  But in a rapidly-evolving series of events, neither of them knows what has happened to the other, and both are dependent on external (and inaccurate) sources of information.

Flash-backs are, I think, a very useful way of letting the reader gain an understanding of a particular character’s motivation without the specific intervention of the author.  In this regard, I am particularly fond of reporting a character’s dreams about a past event.  In Efraim’s Eye, Efraim’s dreams help explain both his motivation to be a terrorist and his attitude toward women.  And Naomi’s dreams cause her to seek shelter with Paul, which leads to their love affair.