Pulling Down The Walls - Creating My Setting

Writing fiction means creating a world for your characters to live in whether it’s modern-day New York, 1930s Berlin or a fantasy world you have created. Immersing oneself within your setting can be fun, challenging and key to the authenticity of your story. I love imagining myself within my historical space when I am writing and am quite in awe of fantasy writers who have to build a completely invented world. In this post I am going to talk about the setting for Tower of Vengeance and how it was the starting point for the book – quite literally the plot was built around the setting.

In the summer of 2012 as we celebrated Elizabeth II’s Jubilee and the London Olympics, I was offered the opportunity to volunteer at the Tower of London through my membership with Historic Royal Palaces, the charity which runs the Tower. As a Visitor Services Host, I would often get in early on a Sunday, just before the public were allowed in, and I would share my breakfast with my favourite raven by Tower Green. That quiet time was a rare blessing when I could just be alone with my imagination. Spending so much time within the walls of this incredible building which spans a thousand years of history gave me pause for thought. What better place to set a novel? Of course, I would not be the first – after all there are three tragic queens buried under the altar in the Tower’s chapel, St Peter ad Vincula, who alone have inspired thousands of words.

However, there are countless stories that echo around you as you walk, stand or, in my case, sit in the shadow of the White Tower (Visitor Services Volunteers have their own sentry box situated across from Tower Green). I could feel the voices of the past whispering to me on the summer’s breeze, in the fluttering snow of winter, cackling amongst the falling autumn leaves, and muttering in the pitter, patter of spring showers. But where to start? Whose story to listen to and whose story needs to be told? And when you do find that voice then you need to assess your setting. Because the buildings around you span centuries so metaphorically you have pull down the walls, strip back the stones until you reach the period you need to be in. There are records to be plundered – old maps, recreated plans, histories, chronicles – as you rebuild your world. And don’t forget the people that work at historic sites such as this – as a long-standing volunteer I already knew the right members of staff to question, to mine information from and to gain access to places the public don’t get to see.

I transported my setting back to the thirteenth century – I would have loved to have gone back further but I struggled with my hook (more on that another time) but perhaps there will be a prequel one day! As the walls came crashing down, I built new buildings within the Tower – alehouses, stables, blacksmiths, storerooms, a different chapel (which I later destroyed) and I planted a kitchen garden, an orchard. I flooded Water Lane allowing the Thames to regain old ground and I filled up the now empty moat populating it with filth, dead animals, and threw things into it. I heard workmen hammering and shouting as the Wakefield Tower rose up again under its original name and watched horses canter through a different entrance.

But at its heart lies the White Tower around which all revolves as it has for centuries and I gave it newly painted walls, hung huge expensive tapestries, lit fires, lugged furniture into its cavernous rooms, cleaned out its garderobes and threw in some rats. And when my world was complete and smoke rose from the alehouse chimneys then I was ready to populate it with characters who were patiently waiting for the ravens to cry ‘Come in’.