It’s not enough for a writer to know what he intends telling his reader: he needs to be aware of background details and information about characters and location that may never be made public.
I think it was Humphrey Bogart who told one of his leading ladies that when she made an entrance on screen from a doorway it wasn't enough to be aware that she was walking in from another room; she should know exactly which room it was, how long she'd been in there, what she'd been doing and why she had decided to come out at that precise moment.
In the same way, you should always know more about the characters and the situation you are writing about than you tell your reader. If two characters meet on the stairs or in the street, what have they been doing before? and where are they going now? Your reader doesn't necessarily need to know this, but it will make the scene feel more complete if you have this background information.
Knowing more about the protagonists of your writing helps you keep on track and makes sure that what you tell your readers is convincing.
Although my poetry is frequently inspired by events in my life and written in the first person, the poems are not usually spoken in my own voice: I try to extrapolate the experience and view it from the point of view of a different character. However, the fact that I do base it on personal experience means I need to be sure and have a clear idea of the narrator, or my own ego may slip in and take control: reality may get in the way of art.
Make it (not) real
In order to do this, I build up a detailed mental picture of the narrator, filling in all sorts of background and personal information. This invention of a general background has become a habit and even when it isn’t conscious, I often find I know much more about the characters than I include in my poems.
I once asked for suggestions for a title for a poem which featured two cats. One of the readers - who, like many poetry readers, confused the narrator with the writer - said "It might help if we knew what your cats were called."
I was taken aback: certainly the trigger point for the poem was inspired by my own cats' behaviour, but in the writing, it had grown far beyond them. When I thought about it, I was surprised to find just how far it had gone: I knew quite a bit about the felines in question: they were both tabbies, from the same litter, a neutered male and female, and their names were Mulder and Scully. None of these details appeared in the poem, and it certainly didn’t describe my own pets.
Unless you still write your drafts in a notebook, or take your laptop out and about, you probably do most of your writing in a single location. But the action of your writing almost certainly takes place outside, in the real (or imaginary) world. How can you hope to create the right atmosphere for a mystery novel set in Hong Kong, a romance set in Elizabethan England, and a political essay, when they are all written in the exact same situation?
Create an atmosphere
In a local writers’ group hints and tips sheet, one of the members suggested that it's a good idea to write to music. Not just any music, but music - or recorded sound effects - that are relevant to the text you are writing. Either music which evokes the right atmosphere, or which might be listened to by one of the characters.
I think you can take this creation of atmosphere a lot further as it's not only sounds that can help you to visualise the scene or character you are writing about.
If your story is set at the beach, how about having some pebbles, sand or shells on the desk? If it's set abroad, then try and get a postcard and some coins or souvenirs of the place you're writing about. A map of the area may give you ideas, as well as helping you to avoid errors. Flowers might evoke a season, perhaps - photos if fresh ones aren't available
Personal details
And what about glasses, a scarf or other accessory that might belong to one of the characters, perhaps a bottle of the heroine's favourite perfume…
Incidentally, if you smelled that perfume in a crowd, would you look around for your heroine? And if she was there, would you recognise her? Do you know when her birthday is? And would she rather be given chocolates or flowers for her birthday? If you can feel that your characters are real, and fully visualise the location where the action takes place, you stand a much better chance of making your reader believe in them.
Don’t include everything
The fact you yourself know certain information doesn’t mean your reader needs to know.
Of the 'promises to keep' mentioned in the poem Stopping By Woods On a Snowy Evening, Frost is reputed to have said "If I had wanted you to know what the promises were, I would have told you in the poem." That doesn't mean he didn't know himself, but he presumably didn't think the readers' ideas should be limited by his ideas.
Similarly, in the Spanish short story Dos Palabras by Isabel Allende, the “two words” of the title are integral to the plot, but she never tells us what they are. I’m sure that Allende herself knew perfectly well what they were, though, and when I finished reading the story I was convinced I, too, knew which two words she had in mind.
Just enough; not too much
The writer needs to have extensive information about his characters and their motivations. He doesn’t need to give all this detail to the reader, though. That would be like writing every “um” and “er” into the dialogue and describing whole rooms that our protagonists only pass through on their way elsewhere. The trick is to give the reader enough detail, while being sure of the rest ourselves. If we can do that, our writing will feel more rounded and the reader is likely to interpret it in the way we intended.
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