a writer write about a country in which he is not a native? And why should he?
To take the second question first. ‘Write what you know’ is good advice, especially for a writer writing her first book, but it is one of those rules of writing that is made to be broken. Novelists enjoy writing about worlds that are not theirs, just as readers enjoy reading about them. In theory, authors could just stick to their own areas of experience, their own backgrounds, people who are just like them. It is easier to write a novel in a setting with which you are intimately familiar. But why renounce enthusiasm for foreign people, countries and landscapes? Why not harness it? The same impulses that encourage an author to tackle a particular subject: curiosity, excitement, affection, even love, are exactly those ingredients that give a novel its heart, that make it stand out from the rest.
I started my career writing financial thrillers, many of which took place overseas in places like Brazil, South Africa and Wyoming. Each one of these locations required a massive amount of research, which was only useful for one novel. So when I was searching for a setting for a new detective series, I decided to pick a foreign country and stick with it over several books. In choosing Iceland I completely ignored the ‘write what you know’ rule. I had only visited the country once, on a book tour ten years before, but I had been fascinated. And I was still intrigued by the place.
Now we come to that first question: how can a writer write about a country he doesn’t know?
The answer involves reading, talking, visiting and recording, mostly in that order.
I usually start with a couple of general books about a country. In the case of Iceland, I read a wonderful memoir by Sally Magnusson about a trip to Iceland with her famous father Magnus. For my Brazil novel, I found an excellent book entitled The Brazilians by Joseph Page. Don’t underestimate the benefits of a close reading of the ‘Basics’ and ‘Contexts’ sections of good guidebooks, like the Rough Guide and the Lonely Planet series. At this stage you are trying to get an overview of the country and a list of more books to read.
This list should include memoirs, biographies and novels. You want to get an idea of the society and culture of your chosen country. You want to meet its people and to understand them. You are not really looking for facts, but you are looking for details. When you eventually write your novel, it is these little details which will make the location come alive. This is so much more than descriptions of town or countryside. It is habits, speech patterns, etiquette, furniture, superstitions, seasonal traditions – anything that is different from your own country, especially if it elicits a spark of interest in you. It will probably elicit the same in your readers.
Here are some examples of the kind of details I mean. In Iceland, people always take off their shoes when entering someone’s home; Icelanders refer to everyone by their first name – even the President; and there used to be no TV broadcast on Thursdays. And when an Icelander hits a bit of unexpected good luck, he exclaims ‘beached whale!’, because what could be luckier than a massive store of meat, oil and blubber showing up on your doorstep one morning? I love that. All this needs to be written down. You need to record the small stuff; the big stuff you will remember.
This is also where you will find the ingredients for the characters who will people your novel. You will absorb their attitudes and thought patterns, but write down their backgrounds, their education, their professional careers.
Personally, I like to read some of the literature of the society I am writing about. Literature is particularly important in Iceland: it replaces the historical architecture the country lacks. The sagas are medieval stories, many of them set in the settlement period of 874 to 1100, when Norsemen farmed and squabbled. Independent People by the Nobel laureate Halldór Laxness is a novel about a tough independent farmer named Bjartur at the beginning of the twentieth century. Both these sources inspired story ideas, and both helped me understand the Icelanders better. Many Icelanders are Bjartur at heart: if you understand him, you understand them.
Read crime fiction by local authors. Good crime fiction shines a light on society, and different crime novelists illuminate their own countries from different perspectives. Reading about crime, you learn about the police and investigation procedures. But there is a difficulty: you can become inhibited in planning your own novel by a fear of stealing plots from the locals.
Finally, you should consult more ephemeral written sources such as blogs and magazines in the English language, which are easily found on the internet. Seek out some you like, read them regularly and note down useful details. For information on Iceland, I regularly read a Facebook page by Alda Sigmundsdóttir, the Reykjavík Grapevine and the Iceland Review. Every country has its English-language media and bloggers.
Which brings us to language. It clearly helps if you are fluent in the language of the country you are writing about, but it is not absolutely necessary. If you speak English, there will always be plenty of information written in or translated into that language. Nevertheless, it is a good idea to teach yourself a smattering of the language. I have tried to teach myself Icelandic, and I even spent some time learning Portuguese when I was writing about Brazil. It makes research easier, it makes travelling around the country easier, and it brings you slightly closer to the country you are writing about.
Having read a lot, it’s time to talk. You need to find natives of the country you are writing about, and you need to ask them questions. Finding these people is surprisingly easy. People love to talk to novelists: well over half the individuals I approach, most of whom don’t know me from Adam, are happy to talk to me. When I started I only knew one Icelander – the publisher of my first financial thriller – but that was enough. I asked him who he knew that could help me. I asked my friends and contacts in England if they knew any Icelanders. If I read about an Icelander based in London (where I live), I got in touch out of the blue. They were all willing to talk to me. Later, when I travelled to Iceland on a research trip, I put together a list of contacts of contacts to speak to.
You have to be very specific in these conversations. If you are not careful, an hour can be frittered away discussing politics or economics or the merits of different airlines. A good technique is to sketch out an idea of a character in the book you are planning to write – a rural priest, say, or the son of an Icelandic fishing captain – and ask what that person would be like. This works especially well if the person you are speaking to is from a similar background to your character. In this case, by talking about an invented individual, your interviewee is more likely to tell you about their own experiences or those of their friends than if you asked them directly personal questions about themselves.
Once again, you are looking for details, details, details, and you have to write them down.
A police contact is important. It’s possible to manage without: many highly successful crime writers are happy to make up police procedure as they go along. But if you are the kind of person who likes to get details right, you need to know what the country’s investigating procedure is. Most countries do not follow the same legal systems that we see and read about in Britain and the US, which means that their police investigations proceed very differently.
Finding a police contact is not as hard as it seems. You will find that someone knows someone who knows a policeman. Failing that, you can always wander into a police station and ask. If you are brushed off, go to another police station and try again. If police officers are bored, they will talk to you. I have tried this in America, Scotland, Greenland and, of course, Iceland, mostly with success. It’s worth waiting until you have a good idea of the crime you are writing about, so you can ask your police contact specific questions about it. These you really do need to write down in as much detail as you can. From experience, when you are actually writing your novel, you are likely to wish you had asked just one more question about the procedures for arresting and interviewing a suspect.
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