I write by seeing the scene in front of me and recording what I see, so the descriptions in my books are informed by the scenes and scenery that I’ve stored in my memory over a lifetime. Do you have sections of description in your work in progress that you’ve lifted from real life? Share it in the comments.
Mine is the ferry crossing that begins the novella I’m currently writing. My regency protagonists are on a scow — a flat-bottomed coastal sailing boat — on their way to an island off the coast of Wales. I sailed as a teenager. I’ve also had the vicarious experience of sailing in historical movies and video trips. But disembarking from the boat on the beach at the other end? That part of the journey was loosely based on a trip I took a couple of weeks ago, when my beloved and I took a water taxi along the coast of the Abel Tasman National Park. Above is one of the photos I took, and below is what I made of it in the story.
A speck in the distance grew as the minutes passed. The scow tacked, and tacked again, but each oblique passage brought a clearer view – a rock resolving into a mountain that, as they approached still closer, developed a flat plain that spread out from one side.
The other passengers crowded back on deck to watch, mostly in silence, as the three-man crew scurried from one task to another, speaking to one another in unintelligible trills and verses. Philip’s manservant was watching them rather than the island, frowning a little.
“We are nearly there, Rene,” Philip told him.
“A long walk from the harbour to the house, Mr Taverton,” Rene countered. “If you can call this a harbour.” The boat glided along a small u-shaped indent in the coast, craggy rocks either side and a tiny beach at the head of the bay that sloped up to the rough grassy fields.
Turning at the sound of a rattling chain, Philip saw the anchor winch turning rapidly, chain and then rope uncoiling under the supervision of a seaman.
“Why has he let down an anchor?” The speaker was a small lady, whose fashionable redingote did not hide delectable curves. “Are we to wade to shore?”
“We are continuing towards the beach,” Philip pointed out. In the village, while he waited, he and the other two men had exchanged names and speculated on what might be ahead of them, but the three ladies had kept to the little parlour set aside for their use. Still, the little lady had spoken first. Should he introduce himself?
“If I may, Sir, mademoiselle…” Rene’s interruption was tentative.
Philip nodded his approval and Rene continued, “They will ground the boat as close to dry land as they can, and then use the anchor to winch themselves off again, when it is time to leave. I saw this many times in my village when I was a boy.”
Even as he spoke, the scow nudged gently into the sand a few yards from where the waves washed and retreated. Two of the sailors ran to fetch along a cleated plank that had been tucked along one side of the deck.
“Now, mademoiselle, you shall see how to reach the shore dry shod,” Rene said.
The lady turned to smile at the manservant before returning her attention to the makeshift gangway now being created from the bow of the boat. Philip caught his breath. Sparkling eyes shone from a heart-shaped face framed by dark blonde curls that had escaped the confines of her bonnet and that gleamed gold where the sun caught its threads.
For a long moment, until he wrenched his eyes elsewhere, they focused on lips he would have given a year of his life to touch, to kiss. She was lovely. She was also a lady, and therefore not for Philip Taverton, unemployed tutor and secretary whose origins were far more humble than his present appearance might indicate.
The plank was laid. One by one, the passengers disembarked, two of the females accepting a steadying hand from a sailor who walked in the sea beside them. Not his lady. She waved away the support and strode boldly down the plank followed by a more plainly-dressed girl of around the same age whom he took to be her maid.
