Think like a tourist

 This week I’ve gone back to revisit the novel I started for my MA major project in 2009.  It’s interesting reading it back to see how much my writing craft has improved since then.

In the second chapter of the original manuscript I had an investigatory team going down to a planet covertly to investigate suspected atrocities.  They find them, but the trouble is that I’m showing that scene through the wrong character’s eyes.  

In the original manuscript I had my female main character watching a livestream of the action on the planet from a starship in orbit.  This meant she had no agency with regard to the scene, and it had to be changed.

Now I’m going to write that scene, which is brutal and shocking, from the viewpoint of my male main character.  He is down on the planet and in the audience watching this so-called ceremony.  This does two things: it allows me to describe the city through his eyes, and it also gives his reactions to the brutality going on there.

In my original version my male main character landed with a team of male investigators and entered a city.  But when I looked at my original draft I saw that I’d done what I often do.  I’d failed to describe the setting in enough detail.  And because this is an unfamiliar planet, both to us and the characters, that won’t do.

I need to treat the description of the setting as if my characters were tourists noticing everything,  It’s sort of what they are.  They’ve been sent to investigate the doings of the dominant religion by the human alliance, but because the planet they’re on is an independent colony they can’t just barge in there.  They’re working covertly, which means they’re not meeting up with local contacts and need to find their own way around.

This is a good device for describing a landscape.  Because it’s unfamiliar to my characters, they notice all the details.  Which means I can pass on their descriptions to the reader.  I’m only half way through re-writing that second chapter, and already I’ve added a lot more detail.  I’ve added a landing scene in the pre-dawn gloom, which allows me to describe the members of the team, and make clear their differing skin colours.

Describing the scene as if they were tourists also allows me to describe some key features of a major setting, the men’s temple at Corrado Cornalis.  I’ve added in more details of a curious narrow walkway traversing deep pools which leads to a landing stage at the river entrance to the temple.  I have the advantage of knowing the whole story in advance, and I know this setting appears in an important trial for the men leaving the temple.  So I beefed up the description at the beginning.

Writing like a tourist is forcing me to stop and think about what my characters can see at every turn.  It’s forcing me to do the thing I find hardest: invent all the tiny little details.