h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

You're right - the audience goes along with the tale if it has enough detail to make it sound plausible.

But how much detail? Have you read Donna Tartt's 'The Goldfinch?' It's a good book and full of masses of authentic detail. So much, in fact, that I occasionally thought 'Oh get on with it'. On the other hand, I've read amateur writing where the characters appear to exist in a kind of empty space. The writers need to think 'Is there a table there? Has it got anything on it? A lamp perhaps. Cheap plastic or an antique?'

So how much detail do you need and where do you get it from?

Good question.

I think you put in as much detail as you need to make it seem real. That might vary...in other words, detail, but not obsessive detail.

My personal feeling is: go back and read what you've written from the reader's point of view. See if it makes pictures for you, see if it seems like too much. Maybe get somebody else to do the same. Take advice...

No, I haven't read this book. I've just looked it up, and wow - seems like a very involved novel.

In my own novel, I've described the house at the centre of the story and its immediate surroundings in some detail but then it's based on a real place. The nearby towns are also based on real places, though I've moved things around and changed them.

For other places, I found Google Maps useful. Just choose a place and search round it for restaurants, or antique shops or hospitals. Some have their own websites. Perhaps interiors are the hardest part. OK a rich person can have expensive ornaments, while in the house of a poorer person things might be old, or broken, or dirty. But beyond that, I'm not sure.

What about the objects that stand out because they're incongruous?

For example, when I first went to my parents' new home - they had moved a great distance, and I'd been in Europe for several years - I noticed something.

Although the living room had my mother's usual understated good taste, without kitsch, there was a strange object on a side table: a plaster cast of the 'Praying Hands'. Not my folks' style at all.

I sked about it. And realised what grandchildren do to your decor...