Some of the work that goes into a story happens a long way from my desk.
I recently visited Rome, Lisbon, and the Azores, and what stayed with me was the atmosphere of each place. The landscapes, the streets, and the history all contributed to the experience. You can look at photographs before a trip and recognize a place when you arrive, but being there gives you a different understanding of it.
As a writer, I hope to carry more of that understanding into my stories.
Places That Stay With You
Over the years, my travels have also taken me to London, Barcelona, Paris, and Caribbean destinations including Curaçao and St. Croix. Each trip adds something to the collection of places I can draw from when I sit down to write. Sometimes that connection is direct. Other times, it may be a small detail or an impression that finds its way into a scene much later.
St. Croix, for example, appears in The Cost of Killing. The novel also includes an unnamed Caribbean island where George and Linda Avail retreat. Having visited the Caribbean gives me personal experience to draw on when imagining those surroundings, even when the location itself is fictional.
That matters because a setting has a job to do in a thriller. It can give a character room to breathe or make them feel exposed. A place that seems peaceful to one person can feel threatening to another, depending on why they are there and who might be looking for them. In a revenge thriller like The Cost of Killing, even an island retreat can carry the tension of unfinished business.
History, Streets, and Suspense
My recent travels have made me think more about how to develop that sense of place.
History is part of it. Walking through an old city, you are seeing somewhere that existed long before your visit and has changed through generations of people living and working there. Streets and buildings have purposes beyond whatever catches a visitor’s eye. Remembering that can help me write settings that feel inhabited, with lives continuing around the characters and their immediate problems.
The landscapes matter, too. The shape of the land influences what you can see, where you can go, and how you get there. Streets create their own possibilities and limitations. Those are useful things to notice when writing suspense, where a character’s surroundings can affect their next decision.
Bringing That Awareness to The Grift
As I work on The Grift, a future novel in the Derrick Driver thriller series, I want to bring more of that awareness to the page. I want readers to have a stronger sense of where the characters are and how it feels to move through those places. That means choosing details that belong in the moment and letting the characters experience their surroundings as the story unfolds.
I do not yet know which impressions from this trip will find their way into the book. That is part of the pleasure of writing. Something you noticed while traveling may stay with you until a scene gives you a reason to remember it.
For now, I have come home with more places to think about, more details to draw from, and a renewed interest in giving the world around my characters a stronger presence.
The next step is putting that on the page.
Until next time,
K.A. Brown
A Question for Readers
Has a place you visited ever reminded you of a scene from a book, or made you wish someone would set a story there?