I love placing a character in a space I’ve visited. To visualize them sitting in a chair I admired for it’s fabric or smile at the scent of orange blossoms tickling their nose – they start to breathe on the page and become authentic. Routines and rituals pass time, people run in circles and characters are imagined, but life comes alive in the details.
So while my favorite editor is running her red pen over my latest manuscript’s 60,000 words, I’m jetting to San Francisco to check that the yellow fabric on the chair mentioned in chapter 32 is just right.