Setting and realism
Posted by stevemosby on June 22nd, 2009
I found a nice review this morning. It’s a review of Cry for Help, and it appears in Publishers Weekly here. When I mentioned this on twitter, someone pointed out it was also a starred review, and I – naively, but semi-honestly – asked if that was a good thing. I don’t think I’ve ever been reviewed in Publishers Weekly before.
Anyway, this isn’t just flag up the fact that someone liked my book (although, having not found Still Bleeding in a single Leeds bookshop this afternoon, that alone would be good enough for me), it was the first sentence of the review that caught my eye, and also the curious eyes of a few curious friends of mine.
In Mosby’s powerful thriller, set in what might be Nottingham, England, the police are baffled by an unknown killer who’s been tying up young women and leaving them to die of starvation and thirst.
Nottingham? My first thought was, well, no. It just isn’t. I have a passing knowledge of Nottingham city centre, but only from occasional trips down to Rock City with a couple of mates, usually – as it happens – to see The Wildhearts, before crashing on another Nottingham-based friend’s living room floor. But I wouldn’t dream of setting a book there. Then again, my second thought was … well, I think I actually did go to Nottingham while writing Cry for Help – to see Nine Inch Nails this time, if you’re interested – and so maybe something seeped in there without me realising. And my third thought was that I keep banging on in interviews about deliberately not setting my books anywhere in particular, so that “might” is all it takes. It might be set in Nottingham. In fact, if that’s what you think as you’re reading it, then it is. Although I suppose could is more what I’m after.
But why Nottingham? Not to single out this particular reviewer – whom, it’s entirely realistic to say, I actually love – but the emphasis on realism in crime fiction has always interested me. Fiction in general, I guess, but crime fiction in particular is an absolute bugger for it. I’ve forgotten too much about Cry for Help to be sure, but all I can think is that it’s the mention of Staunton Hospital that did it, as there’s a place called Staunton near Nottingham. At least, I think there is. In truth, the hospital is loosely based on one in Steeton and Silsden near me; I called it Steeton in my working draft, then just knocked the middle out and round. The irony is I did this to stop the story being anchored to something that happened to me in a particular place. And all I can think is someone took the invented name (free, in my mind, from associations) and threw down an anchor somewhere else, to bring the story to rest.
I guess that’s part of the whole reading process: that every reader anchors it for themselves. But I do think it’s interesting that people look for real places in which stories are set. They want to bring a story down to earth: not just so it exists in their heads but so it exists somewhere real, as though these made up people doing their made up things must be doing them in a place that isn’t made up. And in crime fiction, there’s a special emphasis on that. I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s because of the whole crime versus literary fiction debate, where the front-runners seem to earn their medals on the basis of depth of social commentary. And there are certainly a hell of a lot of crime writers who focus on individual cities or areas, to the point they’re indelibly associated with them – and can even be seen as writing about those places as much as the imaginary characters wandering about in them.
(There’s also a special emphasis on police and forensic procedure too. You often hear writers say “You’ve got to get the procedure right – readers are so savvy these days”. And, of course, they’re not. It’s just that tons of crime novels use procedure, and what’s presented there gets absorbed into the overall narrative of crime fiction as a whole. But it isn’t like many readers have done courses in forensics. Reminds me of what Jeffrey Deaver said once: in one of his books he had a SOCO put elastic bands around her shoes to distinguish her prints from the others in a dusty room; totally made-up; sounds realistic; made its way into CSI. And even if readers were savvy, isn’t this insistence on realism leaning dangerously close to the alleged crossword puzzle of Golden Age crime fiction?).
I haven’t really worked out how I feel about all this yet, or even what I think. One of the most difficult bits of Still Bleeding, and I’m using ‘difficult’ in context here, was pinning it down to the UK. I just couldn’t do it any other way without inventing a country name – and given my record I’d only have made one up that already existed. I don’t like pinning it down. But I do occasionally get it in the neck (again, in context). I had emails about The 50/50 Killer saying “there are no woods like that in the UK!!”. Well, I know. It’s not really happening in the UK. It’s just a story: existing solely in the words on the pages between two covers, and then in the images in your head those words create. It’s a story about fairytale notions of love. Hence the fairytale forest. Sometimes, my thinking is even more obscure. In The Third Person, there’s a place called Asiago. It’s a corporate-sponsored recreation of an old fishing village, designed to inspire affection and nostalgia, but it’s ended up going the same way as the genuinely old fishing villages did. It was sort of about how, if you had the chance to relive supposedly happier times, you’d only make the same mistakes again. Asiago is actually a place in Italy. It’s called that in the book because an old girlfriend had a road-sign for Asiago, stolen by her father, on her wall at University, and the association was there for me while I was writing the scene because of what happened between the two of us afterwards. Meaningless for anyone else, in this case. The book’s not set in Italy.
As I mentioned in the Black Static interview, the realism thing genuinely puzzles me because my brain doesn’t work that way when it comes to stories. They’re fiction. All fiction is fantasy by definition. Either it actually happened, or it didn’t, and naming a real place isn’t going to change that. There is no definitive scale there, or not one that I can see, anyway. So Cry for Help isn’t set anywhere in particular. It’s set in a place that doesn’t really exist, which means wherever you want it to be set while you’re reading it. And it’s about a murderer who ties your friends up and leaves them to die from lack of caring – and then blames you for not being there for them the way you always said you would be. It’s kind of a metaphor, I guess. But whatever – serial killers like that don’t really exist either. Even in Nottingham.
June 22nd, 2009 at 9:16 pm
Quite enjoyed that, thank you.
June 22nd, 2009 at 10:04 pm
I’m glad, thanks. My old blog was full of waffly rants of this ilk. More – no doubt – to come…
June 23rd, 2009 at 11:02 am
You rant waffly in a charming and interesting way. Bring on the waffle, I say.
June 23rd, 2009 at 11:18 am
I completely agree with your sentiments Steve. I, too, have always deliberately obscured the setting of my stories (both geographically and chronologically) because I *want* to create a sense of fantasy, of other. Like you say IT’S A STORY, of course it’s made up!
I understand that some people can find it annoying when certain things that wouldn’t happen in real life do happen but you have to suspend disbelief when entering into a fictional world – and regardless of how realistic a writer makes that world it’s STILL fiction. Yes I notice that whenever someone is using a computer on TV or the movies they NEVER use the mouse and yes that is unrealistic but who gives a shit? I understand that it’s more visually dramatic to have a person smashing away on their keyboard and I’m happy to go along with it.
How many books have we all read where the writer has spent an inordinate amount of time and energy researching specific little things then feels that they absolutely MUST get those details into the book – to the detriment of the flow of the story? But it’s like they’re saying “fuck, I’ve spent all this time researching this stuff, it’s not going to waste, see what I know!”.
It’s a story. Not a lecture.
June 23rd, 2009 at 12:54 pm
Perhaps you need to put a notice next to the disclaimer about peopleindicating that the locations in described in the book are not intended to completely accurate and can’t be located on a GPS device
June 24th, 2009 at 10:01 am
I should emphasise again, not wanting to seem churlish, that it’s not this particular reviewer, and I’m not sure there’s anything wrong with it as such. It just seems curious that location is deemed so important, especially in contemporary crime. Even if a city is made up, it still tends to ‘exist’ somewhere real – Yorkshire, say – and I find it interesting that people’s first instinct is to wonder ‘where is this thing set?’. Is it about visualisation? Specific social commentary? Really not sure.
And Simon, you’re right, of course, about the research getting in there. Trouble is, when you deal with a real place, you often need to. I heard a writer once, can’t remember who, bemoaning the fact he’d got an email saying “you got the gate on the wrong side of that street”. Obviously, the reader is never wrong, as such, and their reaction to the story is an instant, undeniable one, but there almost seems to be a bit of cognitive dissonance going on there. I guess, with reading, there always is.
Roger – sounds like Our City, Our Music had an effect on you! Sorry I missed it. Hope it was good fun.
June 25th, 2009 at 9:21 am
I think setting the plot in a specific place in the real world can make the action and danger more immediate and the overall effect of reading the book more exciting. The same goes for getting the details right. When I’m reading something gripping, I don’t want to be distracted by something trivial. It’s fair enough to say “it’s fiction, get over it”, but part of the writers art is making you forget that.
June 25th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
Almost forgot:- think how excited people get when they see somewhere they recognise on the telly.
June 26th, 2009 at 10:38 pm
I’m in the ‘fortunate’ position that I do recognise SOME of the places which probably inspired certain imagery from your books, but I always find it fascinating when people create new/virtual places from the ether, an amalgamation from lots of sources or when I visit places where more ‘grounded’ books are actually set, so I guess it works both ways.
June 28th, 2009 at 6:35 pm
It’s an entirely valid point, JK. Although when it comes to recognising a place on the TV, I’d say it’s slightly different, as the location is obviously there right in front of you. The events, though acted, did take place somewhere you know, and I think the excitement comes from that, rather than from the story being set there. (After all, it generally isn’t set there).
Whereas, as a reader, it’s all happening in your head. I agree: anything that distracts the reader is a bad thing, which is why it’s important to get the ‘real’ stuff as right as you can – or, at least, not blatantly wrong. So if you’re setting a book in a real place, you kind of have to get the details as right as possible. Because if you aren’t going to be accurate, why set it in that place at all? This is simplifying things, I appreciate, but, as you’re a physicist, it would probably bug you if someone ballsed up an equation you know. If they’re going to use something real, they should get it right. But it would be different – maybe? – if they totally made something up. I’m tempted to say it would be misconstruing the nature of fiction to start thinking of that as right or wrong at all, although a particularly tenacious physicist might be thrown out of the story as a result.
I guess, for me, it’s more about believability, and that’s going to vary depending on what you’re talking about and who’s reading it. But a fair point about the added danger and excitement. I hadn’t really thought of it in those terms, and will now … do so.
June 29th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
There’s a certain joy to be had as a physicist in the DVD age when one can pause a film and peruse the nonsense fictional physicists and mathematicians scribble on blackboards. Mostly, I just let that pass, albeit with a vague professional interest. I don’t mind if the science is wonky if the story or characters are compelling, or there are interesting ideas involved, or the action is sufficiently frenetic.
Reading is different though as you have to absorb every word as it comes in. If the fictional world is similar to but not quite identical with the real world then I experience a strange kind of interference between the two. I guess that’s what you mean by cognitive dissonance. The way a person goes about describing a place (or anything for that matter) is interesting because they have to evoke in a finite number of words a scene of potentially infinite detail.