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7. Choose a good setting
Something always sparks off a novel, of course. With me, it's always the setting. I think I have a strong response to what I think of as the 'spirit of a place'. I remember I was looking for an idea in East Anglia and standing on a very lonely stretch of beach. I shut my eyes and listened to the sound of the waves breaking over the pebble shore. Then I opened them and turned from looking at the dangerous and cold North Sea to look up and there, overshadowing this lonely stretch of beach was the great, empty, huge white outline of Sizewell nuclear power station. In that moment I knew I had a novel. It was called Devices and Desires.
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She has always excelled at that. Just reading this paragraph brought the setting of that book completely back to my mind, because her words had previously set it so firmly in my imagination.
I'm glad that she's one of those authors whose works I read while I was young, because she helped to set my mental definition of "good writing". I read all sorts of things but I find that I always, in the back of my mind, do a comparison of how successful the author has been in creating the universe that surrounds the action to someone like James. If I find myself immersed in the sense of place, I know that I'm going to have an enjoyable read.