LET US BUILD US A TOWN. You look at a map, see a dot and a name, and you wonder what the place looks like, and what kind of people live there. (You do that, don’t you?) Well, that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to get a story under way, and we’re going to do it by thinking about a place. And the place is going to get us to character. Well, many characters, we expect. My 1994 novel Louisiana Power & Light began this way. I wanted to write about Monroe, and I did so for months—in my notebook. Just jotting down sights, sentences about flowers and critters, lines overheard. But being a fiction writer, I needed characters to live in the town in order to write about it. I found one on the nightly news—a man who had kidnapped his boy from elementary school. I was off and running. But it all started with place.

I wrote a novel called Requiem, Mass. (2008), and in the novel the narrator/​writer imagines a town where, unbeknownst to himself, he will one day go. He does what we’re about to do. He looks at the map and finds a vacant place and sets down a small town. He calls it Livia. It’s in northwestern North Dakota, so small goes without saying. He imagines the main street: “…a row of empty storefronts, a Rexall drug, a Lutheran church, a line of diagonally parked pickup trucks, a feed store, a boarded-up Rialto movie theater, a gas station/bait shop, and several poplar-lined blocks of Craftsman bungalows, I watched the house catty-corner to Dell’s Diner, the blue house with white shutters and a light on in the kitchen, waiting to see if someone would step out onto the front porch and walk to the steps, stare up into the starry spring sky, and inhale the cool air rushing down from Saskatchewan.” And when someone does, he sets in to writing. Which is what we’ll do.

Okay, you’re going to write about an American town, and it’s in the Southwest or in the Dakotas or in some New England valley or wherever your imagination takes you. This is a town that doesn’t exist on the map—you’re putting it there. It’s unfamiliar to you right now. In fact, you might open your road atlas (which is what my narrator did in the novel) and find an empty spot in the region you’d like to visit and set the town there. Maybe it’s by Stevenson Lake in western Nebraska, thirty-five miles to the nearest town. And it’s called, what? Prague. Settled by Czech immigrants. Or it’s in the Black Rock Desert of northwest Nevada, and it’s called Alkali. Make this a place you’d love to live—you’re going to be spending a lot of time there. See your town. Give it a name. The name may suggest something about the history of the town, about the landscape, the commerce, the hopes of the settlers or their nostalgia for the old country, as in my little town of Prague. The name will become a magnet, you’ll see. Significant details will attach themselves to it. The name of the church in Prague, Nebraska, is St. Vitus, after the cathedral in old Prague, in the Czech Republic. The Czech-American Club holds Saturday night polka dances. And at Nita’s Dumpling House you can order a three-course meal of drstkova, telecí, and kolak for eight bucks. You also want to consider what year it is. To know a place we may need a map, but we also need a calendar. Alkali, Nevada, in 2009, population thirty-five, is nothing like the Alkali back in the thirties during the boom days when the gold and opal mines were running full tilt, and there were eighteen saloons and fifteen houses of ill repute right there on Washoe Street.

Now I want you to walk down the main street and describe it in great detail. If you’d rather drive, go ahead, but drive slowly, pull over occasionally and take notes. Name the businesses, the churches, the institutions. (It’s not the drugstore; it’s Lee Bros. Drugs & Sundries.) Describe the buildings. (And maybe this will convince you to buy a field guide to architecture.) Look at the people on the street. How are they dressed, and how is that different from how folks dress where you live? (And you thought the whole clog thing was over, didn’t you?) What time of day is it? What season? What’s the weather like? Describe the flora, the fauna, the cars or other conveyances. What does it smell like here? If there’s a paper mill nearby, by God you’ll know about it. What are the sounds you hear? If you’re a decent artist, you might want to paint what you see. If you’re like me, however, you’ll have to settle for a rudimentary map. Walk down that street and spend as long as you need to in order to capture it all. Look for the vivid and surprising details. You’re new in town, so you see what the locals are blind to. When you’ve done that, we’ll go on to the next task.

Now I want you to choose one of those buildings you described, and I want you to walk inside. Look around. Sniff the air. Listen. What do you hear? Write it down. Touch the walls. Describe the interior in as much detail as you can. Once again, take your time. What shade of green are those walls exactly? (Make a note to visit the local paint store and take all the color sample brochures. You won’t believe how many shades of green!) Walk into every corner, every room, every closet. You’re looking for the revelations that lurk in details. Every particular tells you something about this town. So do that. Write about this building and the businesses or business inside it. When you’ve finished, we’ll go on to the next step.

Maybe you thought you were alone, but now you notice that there’s another person here besides you. This person is troubled, you think. Why do you think that? Something in the way she stands? The look on her face? Write about her. Or maybe there are several people here. It’s a bank or a restaurant or a bar or a hardware store. If so, your job is to choose one of these people, the one who seems troubled, preoccupied, and describe him or her and what he or she is doing. Give the person you’re writing about a name and address. The address must be in this town. (Now you’re going to have to go out and look at the street signs.) Imagine what’s going through his or her mind. What does this person want? What’s stopping him or her from getting it? If you aren’t sure, walk right up and ask. You are an author in search of a character. You want to write this person’s story. There has to be trouble, big trouble, in his life. Write about that before you continue. Give the person a voice and let her tell you her story. Buy her a coffee, a drink, sit down where it’s quiet, listen to her, and write it all down.

All right, so now you have a town and a person in that town who’s troubled. And if you’re lucky, you’ve learned about several other characters involved in your hero’s life. She told you how her husband’s been cheating on her with their daughter’s fifth-grade teacher, let’s say. Her daddy, the judge, never trusted his son-in-law Phil anyway. What you want to do now is to follow your central character home. You’ve given her an address, remember. Now describe the house, the trailer, apartment building, whatever it is. Walk around—you’re alone. No one’s home. Describe the yard and its maintenance or dilapidation. Look closely. Does the home tell you anything about the character? What does it tell you? When you get done with the exterior, we’ll go inside.

Now we’re in the house. Look around in each room. (Might as well draw a diagram of the house.) What’s there? What’s missing? In the kitchen: any pet food bowls? Has it been cleaned up or is it messy? Dishes in the sink? Dead coleus on the windowsill? Describe the kitchen. (Last night I went to a dinner party. The hostess and I shared last names though we are not related, and she had in her kitchen a glass-front refrigerator about seven feet tall and fifteen feet wide.) Open the fridge and see what’s inside. Who’s on a diet or who needs to be? Batteries in the vegetable drawer? Check way in the back for the half-empty bottles of things that never get used. (When I grew up we always had the same bottle of green label Brer Rabbit molasses on the top shelf of the Hotpoint right next to the can of bacon fat and the bottle of Karo syrup. I liked the label of the rabbit in a red jacket carrying a plate of pancakes. But my mother never seemed to use the molasses. Maybe once she made gingerbread, and I’ve forgotten.) What else is unusual in the fridge? Medicines? Might they have something to do with the character’s problem? Check the freezer, too. Frozen fast-food burgers still in their waxy paper? What’s that about? Open the junk drawer. We all have one. Bottle openers taken from restaurants? String, twistees, measuring tape? Go through the drawer. Being a fiction writer is being an archaeologist. You’re looking for clues to these people. (Interesting—people! Who lives here besides our hero: husband Phil and their daughter Phyllis? [Phil wanted a boy.]) Look through the cabinets, under the sink and all. There’s a pile of mail on the kitchen counter. Go through it. Let’s see who our character owes money to, what magazines she reads, who is corresponding with her. Now go nose around in the bathroom. Check the medicine cabinet first. Prescription drugs? What else? What kind of soap is there? Shampoo? Creams? Be just as thorough in the living room, the den—open the desk drawer—the dining room and bedrooms. Let yourself be surprised by what you find here. Not every detail will spark your brain, but some will. Look from floor to ceiling, and look closely. Check in the closets, too. If there’s a cellar or an attic or a garage, go there. What has your hero or this family stored in these places? What are they saving from their pasts and why?

You’ve been here awhile, but it’s only now, as you’re getting ready to leave, that you notice Post-it notes stuck to the walls, to the fridge, the ceiling, mirrors. Stop and read them. What do they say? They seem rather cryptic, don’t they? What do they have to do with this character’s problems? Her developing story? Who wrote them and why? Follow the tangent for a few minutes.

Begin to write the story. What does he or she want? Why does she want it? What’s stopping her from getting it? How will she struggle? Will she get what she wants? And in writing you’ll be getting to know her.

John Dufresne is the author of seven books, including the New York Times Notable Books Love Warps the Mind a Little and Louisiana Power & Light. He teaches in the Creative Writing Department at Florida International University and lives in Dania Beach. Learn more at JohnDufresne.com.