We’ve talked about character.  We’ve talked about plot. We’ve even had a contest to see which of those you readers thought most important.  And while plot had its supporters, character waltzed into first place. I agree with the placement of those two important aspects of a book.

Today, I’m going to talk about a third, very important, foundation for your book.

If you ask a person in real estate to list the three most important things in selling a piece of property, they will recite the long-held dictum:  location, location, location.

That’s selling property.  What about selling a novel? We’ve already agreed on two of the important items: character and plot.  The third one might well be location.

I’ve had writers tell me that the location came first and the novel sprang forth from that.  That hasn’t happened for me.  But, I do not underestimate the importance of location.

Imagine Casablanca, instead being set in and named Jonesboro.  I suspect Humphrey Bogart would have left.  Even placing it in London, as much in the middle of the war as Casablanca (if not the jumping off point for Europeans), would have changed the character and feel of the book.

Suppose Edna Ferber had set her book Giant in the Ozarks. She could hardly have given us the vast contrast between where Leslie came from (a rolling Virginia estate with plenty of trees) to Bick Benedict’s giant ranch, flat as a table top, and not graced with any trees.

On the other hand, would Jory Sherman’s Pulitzer Prize nominated book The Grass Kingdom have been as riveting without the brasada, the mesquite labyrinth? The brasada took on the role of a character in and of itself. Location added to the gripping story.

How would it have changed To Kill a Mockingbird if Harper Lee had set the story in Chicago, for instance?  Or Dallas?  Even a large Alabama city, rather than the sleepy Alabama town, would have changed the nature of the story, particularly in Scout’s relationship with Boo.

Jules Verne’s vivid imagination could easily have written “20,000 Leagues Above the Earth” about an atomic plane capable of flying around the earth six times without landing. But he chose to make it 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.  The location (submarine rather than airplane) determined the book.  Would it have been as exciting with an atomic airplane as it was with the atomic submarine?  It might have been.  But it would have greatly changed the story.  The location determined the story.

Place your story in a small east Texas town in the middle of the Bible belt and it just has to be different than if you set the story in the middle of Hollywood.  You can write the synopsis of your book and list your characters.  But until you pick the location, the final texture, the final feeling, the final nature of the story won’t be set. A dirt road will play differently than a cement road.  A frame house under a century old oak tree will elicit different emotions than a brick house with formal foundation plantings.  Put a boy on a stream bank with a cane pole and you have a different story than if you have the same boy standing in a bass boat in the middle of a huge lake.

Don’t choose your location casually. It is a very important character.

(James Callan’s latest two books are Cleansed by Fire, set in a small east Texas town, and Murder a Cappella, set during the International singing competition of the Sweet Adelines in San Antonio.)