This month, I’ll be writing about creating and developing settings in your novel. I’m writing a post on how to develop a home base for your protagonist, so I’m asking: what is your favorite literary home? I’m torn between 221 Baker Street, a hobbit hole in the Shire, and the alpaca farm in Ohio where my teen detective Rae Riley lives with her father, grandmother, and brothers. If you could make a home in any book, where would it be?
A few years ago, JPC Allen Writes had a theme for the entire year, “The Journey of a Book”. For 2026, I’m doing a variation of that on how to write a novel. I’m working on my fourth novel and I’ve discovered it takes me about a year from when I write the first words until I hand it off to my editor. So I will cover the basic and not-so-basic concepts involved in novel writing. I also want to ask readers what novel writing tips do you want? Articles on pacing? Or creating believable character flaws? What about how to find settings that advance the plot? Please let me know it the comments what would help you to finish a novel this year.
If you love to bake and cook during the holidays, and love to write as well, here’s a writing prompt for you: use the five senses to describe … your Christmas kitchen.
My husband is a fantastic chef, and I’m the baker. So my Christmas kitchen is a bakery. Here’s a list of things I notice while whipping up my family’s favorite Christmas treats.
SIGHT: Shiny silver mixing bowl. Sprays of white flour or sugar on the burgundy counter. Brown or tan batter. Oily film on cookie sheets. Glowing screens on stove. Black wire racks.
SMELL: Cloves, cinnamon, chocolate.
TASTE : Quick tastes of sweet chocolate or batter.
TOUCH: Heat from the oven. Rumpled sugar and flour bags. Smooth utensils handles.
HEARING: Swish as flour or sugar is poured into a measuring cup. Sound of spatula mixing batter. Conversations. Laughter. Banging batter off utensils.
Now I can take those observations and work them into a story. Like working ingredients into the batter!
*****
I viewed the wreckage as my niece and nephews sat beached on the couch and watching Charlie Brown and Snoopy figure out the true meaning of Christmas with the smug smiles of kids who’ve eaten way, way too much sugar and know it.
Flour and sugar sprayed on every horizontal surface. My silver mixing bowl dull under a coating of flour. Tan batter from the apple bread smeared across the counter with few stains clinging to the backsplash, a reminder of when Noah and Ollie dueled with batter-covered spoons.
Myla hopped off the couch and dashed over to me. “Did we make enough cookies for Christmas dinner?”
“We have a dozen chocolate spritz cookies and ten gumdrop cookies.” I wiped back my bangs and warm chocolate came off my fingers. “That’s not nearly enough for the whole family.”
Myla stared at the two plates of cookies. “I thought you said we needed to make six dozen.”
“You guys sampled a lot.”
Noah twisted around, looking over the back of the couch. “Mom and Dad aren’t coming to get us until after lunch tomorrow, right? Could we bake some more tomorrow?”
“Could we?” Ollie echoed, plopping down beside his brother.
When I reviewed which writing prompts and questions have been the most popular, the ones where I asked you to use your five senses to describe a setting have been by far the most viewed.
So I’m giving those prompts a holiday twist and asking you to use the five senses to describe your favorite Christmas decoration. My favorite is my mantel. I love pulling together a variety of decorations to make what is basically a work of art.
So here’s my list of some of the many things I put on display, using my five senses.
SIGHT: A lot to work with here. The garland is, surprisingly, pine green. The lights in the garland are multicolored. Red candles. Transparent hurricane shades. Many shades of red from Santa Claus’s coat to the ribbon on Rudolph’s neck. A color photo. A pencil sketch. Dull brown of the iron stocking hangers.
TASTE and SMELL: Nothing for those senses, unless my garland was made of real pine.
TOUCH: Another bonanza of sensations. The iron stocking hangers were cold when I got them out of the bin in the basement. Smooth hurricane shades and candles. Soft fur or cloth. Smooth plastic bricks. Bumpy, cool plaster figurines. Smooth glass or porcelain. Feathery fake birds.
HEARING: Not much for this sense except the crackles, crunches, and squeaks as different materials rub against the garland. Although I did find out that Rudolph is musical. I pressed a spot on him, and his song came out in a static-y, off-key way, like the battery is just starting to lose power.
So how could I works these sensations into a description? Read on!
“I need someone to decorate the mantel,” my boss Sandra said. “The box for it is …”
“I’ll do it!” I raised my hand.
The mantel in the old house that was now an antique store sat above a fireplace in what must have been the parlor a hundred years ago. And the man who’d visited us five times in five days without buying anything was hanging around in there again.
“The box is in the basement,” said Sandra.
Not my favorite place in the old house with its rickety steps, stone walls, and smell of dead air, but I got the box and spread the prickly fake garland on the mantel.
The man, maybe forty, was frowning at a roll top desk.
I placed a smooth hurricane shade on the mantel.
He moved over to a wall covered in paintings and photographs with more stacked against the wall on the floor.
What did he find so interesting in this room?
The antique iron stocking holders chilled my hands as I spaced them on the mantel.
Now he was examining a velvet settee.
As I nestled the smooth, glass blown ornaments in the garland, the man seemed fascinated with every object in the room. No, not quite. He didn’t look at anything in the center of the room. Just the items set against the walls.
The man appeared to look at each of the paintings leaning against each other. But he actually seemed more interested in the wall behind them.
I lifted a Santa doll to the mantel and then lowered it.
Was the man more interested in the room than the antiques? But why?
As the year draws to a close, my theme this month on JPC Allen Writes is reposting my most popular posts. But before I do that, I wanted to ask readers: what do you want me to repost? Would you like a tip on developing characters or some other kind of writing advice? Or a book rec? Or one of my writing prompts from Monday Sparks? Let me know so my reposts can be the most valuable to you!
