She is Ray

When he found her, she was standing atop Notre Dame's tallest tower, looking out across Île de la Cité.  Here, so late into the night, she blended in perfectly with the shadows.  Had Armand not known that this was where the young woman went to reflect, he might not have seen her at all.

'He's here,' Armand said.  'Zombie Bin Laden is here.'


High above the city of Paris, the air was chill.  Armand shivered in his simple clothes, but he would not have dared to approach her.  It wasn't that he was scared of her, not exactly.  But interrupting Ray's repose was something that simply wasn't done.

For a moment, he wasn't sure that she had heard him at all.  The shadows were unmoved and the moon remained hidden behind the clouds above.  At the very limits of his hearing, the breeze was carrying words to him.  At first, Armand thought she was praying.  He strained to hear, and then realised that she was swearing to herself.

Armand licked his cracked lips and took a deep breath.  'Mademoiselle...I'm sorry to interrupt you.  I know this is your time.  But the world needs you.  Zombie Bin Laden is here.'

'Of course he is,' the girl said in English, her voice perfectly clear.  'I'm here, so where else would he be?'

Ray was fluent in several languages, Armand knew.  He had heard it said that she could quote the classics, understood the principles of particle physics and was a world-renowned munitions expert.  It was a skill set that would make every spy head in every country in the world sit up and take notice.  She was rumoured to have taken the decorated French war hero LeBoyf as her lover.  Glamorous, artistic, academically gifted, Armand could not fathom the speed at which Ray's mind worked, and he did not try.

And yet, there was a sadness about her, as though the weight of her responsibilities was a burden that might some day overwhelm her.  Armand tried to imagine her in a happier world, one where she could knit, chat to her online friends and surround herself with her books.  Instead, she carried the fate of the free world on her shoulders.  All the world's most prominent figures knew of Ray.  The politicians watched her carefully.  The billionaire playboys wanted to date her.  The super-villains wanted her dead.

'What does Zombie Bin Laden want?' Ray said.

'He seeks...an audience,' Armand said.

'Then he should go to the Moulin Rouge.'

Armand felt wretched.  This girl was maybe half his age, and certainly no more than half his weight.  Still, he could not summon the courage to stand between her and the twisted undead villain waiting below.

'He says that he has placed bombs along the Champs-Élysées, and he will detonate them unless you go to him now.'

For the first time, Armand saw a movement, as though she had inclined her head towards him.  He could not summon the words to say more, and as the night grew colder still and the silence lengthened uncomfortably, he heard her say, 'Okay, I'll go down.'

Armand's eyes moistened, but he told himself it was just the breeze.  'Mademoiselle...maybe you shouldn't go.'

'You heard what he said, Armand.'

'Of course.  But maybe the responsibility for dealing with him and his nefarious scheme should fall to government.  This is what the army are for, after all.'

'Since when do governments ever act in the interests of the people?'

'Mademoiselle...'

She turned to him as the moon came out.  She was just a young woman then, sitting on a concrete step atop the world.  Armand was struck by how small she seemed.  Her hair was trimmed short around her ears, giving her an elfin appearance.  Her eyes, like her long leather catsuit, were midnight blue.  Ray's gaze was gentle, knowing, accepting.

Armand took off his hat and held it across his chest.  He could not say more, for fear of bursting into tears.  That she could accept the responsibility and her likely doom so easily humbled him more than mere words could express.

'But first things first,' she said.  As he watched, Ray reached down to her stiletto heels and pulled the zips along the side.  Having kicked her feet out of the shoes, she reached into her pocket and produced a thick pair of socks which she then proceeded to put on.  Armand's forehead creased in confusion.  The socks had a little panda face across the toes.

'What?' she said, seeing his expression.  'It's a cold night!'

Then Ray stepped back into her heels, zipped them up and moved swiftly past him to the staircase.  As she disappeared, he heard her say, 'Once more into the merde, Armand...'

Location, Location, Location

Picture two people having a conversation.  In this theoretical situation, you can see their lips move, but not hear what they are saying.  What are they talking about?  Is their mood upbeat, sombre, reflective?  How do you know?


Picture them at the top of a penthouse suite above a vast metropolis.  Not just anyone can afford to travel to big cities, and access to penthouse suites is generally reserved for those with the deepest pockets.  So, we immediately know something about our characters before we have heard them speak a word - possibly they are relatively wealthy, are here by accident, or are here as a result of nefarious design.


Now picture them walking through a tribal village on the fringes of a desert.  How are their mannerisms, their appearance, different in your mind from those in the first example?  Immediately we can see that the topic of their conversation is likely to be different from the characters in the first example, even though we can't hear what they are saying.

This example teaches us that setting in stories can be a powerful tool for a skilled author.  Want to write a romance?  You need a setting where romance is feasible to your readers.  There's a reason why Mills and Boon tend not to set their stories in dank catacombs or sewer systems.  If you are writing a noir detective novel, your gumshoe's office had better be a dingy office with heavy blinds (intense sunlight doesn't help capture the mood.)

So in much the same way that the first impression of a character can be defined by their appearance, their name or their actions (often all three), the first impression of the mood of your story is defined by the setting.  This gives you the chance to employ the reader's senses to pull them into your narrative.  A good writer can capture the autumnal shades of New England, stand besides you as you listen to the bond traders calling to one another on Wall Street, or make you wrinkle your nose at the smell of Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market.

Of course, many authors embrace their setting, creating entirely new worlds from scratch with a quick shift in their imagination.  Many readers will be familiar with the geography of Terry Pratchett's Discworld, or know that Rivendell is an Elven outpost in Tolkien's legendarium.  My friend Lesley Smith is set to shortly release the first book in a new fantasy series, 'The Changing of the Sun'.  The new worlds from her imagination feature their own unique calendar system complementary to Earth's, and necessitate a small band of heroes setting out across a desert in order to secure their survival from a forthcoming cataclysm.  In her novella, 'The Whispers in the Desert', the rawness of the desert bursts forth into lush cities built around water, and the characters feel natural in their environments.

Just setting an alien story on a alien world isn't enough to guarantee a devoted reader base.  The worlds we create must have their own logical consistency to be believable - unless the intention is to make them deliberately nonsensical, as is done to great effect in Lewis Carroll's 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'.  Assuming that we wish readers to believe our setup, we must understand a few of the basic tenets of world building.  People unite into countries and develop their own shared sense of values.  Cities form for reasons - those of necessity, trade, religion or geopolitics.  This isn't to say that new authors should be afraid to create, but readers will be more inclined towards places that are logically consistent.  World building is a topic that deserves a longer post in its own right, and I may decide to explore this in more depth in future.

Writers who prefer to focus on characters may find it easier to use existing locations, and with good reason.  Modern romantic fiction (particularly that within the 'chick-lit' subgenre) tends to focus on character, and for that reason it makes sense to use an existing location that readers know or aspire to visit.  Popular locations for such books include Paris, city of light and love, London, with its long cultural history and New York, with the perpetual glitz and glamour that comes with being a regular fixture in Hollywood movies.  One need only mention the names of these cities and shopping, cocktails, high fashion and classy debauchery all spring instantly to mind.  For readers looking for a path less wandered, there are many exotic joys in writing set in Asia, Africa or South America.

You may not be from exotic locales or well-known places but you may still wish to set your story in a location that you know and love.  Literature has many examples of books that have made otherwise anonymous locations into world-famous destinations - probably the most famous is Victor Hugo's 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame', which turned the humble cathedral on Île de la Cité into one of the most famous religious buildings in the world.  One of the central themes of the novel is that way that mankind passes ideas down the centuries through art and architecture, and in doing so, Hugo makes Notre Dame a character within the novel.

Setting, as the Hunchback makes clear to us, is about far more than the building, country or world your novel is set in.  Setting also gives us our sense of time, and can be used as a lens through which to view societal and cultural norms.  Much of the conflict in classic novels comes from characters with minority backgrounds who generate conflict simply by existing within these spaces - think Tom Robinson from 'To Kill a Mockingbird'.

We've seen ways to use locations to drive your stories, and even how you can you can use your stories to make somewhere close to your heart known to your readers.  We've also seen that setting isn't just a backdrop, it's a powerful tool for anchoring your characters in a particular place and time, simultaneously allowing us to explore their motivations and create the conflicts that drive the narrative.

Where will your next story be set?