Walking into Stories.

Many writers walk to invent their stories. Dickens apparently

 wrote most mornings and walked every afternoon. 

 I think his characters and their senarios walked with him, ready for their creation by pen the following morning. 

I've used this method for years. It doesn't matter if the surrounds are urban or rural, but naturally it's nicer if there are trees and birds. The most important thing is that I am on my own. When I walk with others, I'm bound to chatter. When I walk alone, I chatter to my characters, and they chatter back. In this way, stories develop through my feet. 

I've walked my way through dialogue, scene-building, description, interior monologue, action, development of plot. Holding it in your head is the hard part - I've been known to race back on the home stretch, my hands itching for the keyboard.

 A more recent development has been to walk into my stories. I know where I want to set my scenes, of course, and some of them are fairly imaginary, some of them set exactly in that place. Either way, I like to wander round, explore actual sites, and, even better, I can take other walkers with me; someone who knows the story a bit and can help you chew the fat over, so that, as we walk, we chat about the interweavings of plot and character with landscape, throw ideas at each other and iron out problems.

My son Joe is a great walking buddy. We explored the Somerset moors and the Somerset Levels (which are slightly different places in actual fact, although easily muddled; it's all low-lying, reclaimed from marsh, boggy, peaty and full of beautiful wildlife). At that time I was writing In the Moors, the first Shaman Mystery, and we were looking for a good place to hide bodies. Now, we laughingly call these 'murder walks'
On them we search out the best place to dispose of bodies, the best place to commit the crime, the best place to hide from the cops...whatever is required, really. Actually seeing the landscape enhances the final descriptions from guesswork to atmospheric reality and the process of making sure things can really happen - all the hows, whys, thens and theres - becomes accurate and simplified. Luckily, there was no one near to hear our conversation;

 'How about digging a hole at the edge of a marsh?'

 'Easily spotted. How about just dropping them into the huge pools of water that were once peat bogs?'

 'They'd bob up, wouldn't they?'

 'Well, look at those ancient willows over there, in that rhyne. You can see right down into the roots. That would hold a body down. Stop it floating...' 

And so, the scene where Sabbie Dare walks the levels in increasing darkness, until she finds the shallow grave of the little stolen-away boy, was born. The zig-zag route she took, taking bridges over the rhynes and ditches between the boggy fields, the balancing act as she navigates the deep black pools, even the ancient, 'old man willow' who holds the secret of murder, was all there on our walk.

The Shaman Mystery Series is mostly set in Bridgwater, Somerset, UK. My friend Sue was born in Bridgwater, and knows the town far better than I. We've had several great trips down, a couple of them staying for the weekend so we could explore properly, chat to the people, wander the streets, work out which shops are in which centres, getting the 'feel' of places like the library, the town hall, and (most importantly!) the police station. Some years ago, we went down for the November Carnaval and the late-night squibbing event that fills the opening pages of the second Shaman Mystery - On the Gallows (called in it's US edition 'Unraveled Visions').

Squibbing in Bridgwater

For that second book, I needed to visit Hinkley Point power station, and the forsaken coastline beyond; we walked the coastal path to see the sunken forest and the strange cooling tower that stands out to sea. In my head, this is where a body would be found, and the story how how a character found it, all came in start reality as we stared out, against the high, chilly wind.

On the Gallows is to be released in Kindle ready for Christmas reading this year (we may need Christmas reading!). The next blog on this site will be the new cover reveal, so keep a lookout for it!

Such a walking buddy has to be trustworthy...and a bit of a writer themselves, if possible, but mostly any good friend with a pair of lace-up boots would do. In this way, we've marched through forests, along coastlines, been blown off mountains and squelched into bogs.

I once walked all around a Killarney lake and ended up with a love song which, foolishly pen and paperless, I had to carry in my head all the way back to where we were staying. 

With our ability to escape from our own houses being limited a lot of the time at the moment, walking at least is allowed, even if we can't always enter private or even public buildings. If you're in the middle of planning your story, give it a go, take a walk.