I’ve been house-hunting for a vacation home… checking out neighborhoods, eyeing rooms staged with sleek designer furniture, peering into mostly organized cabinets, and milling around patios and lawns. The experience feels voyeuristic and unnatural, but also fun. Of course, as a writer, the experience has made me think about houses and writing, and how they can elevate a story. Plot twists and quirky characters are exciting. But houses have a place in literature too…a big place. Don’t forget that. Below are some of the perks of writing about houses.

1. Houses tell us about a character’s mental state. Think FIFTY SHADES OF GREY and Christian Grey’s OCD closet and drawers.
2. They reveal a character’s financial status and what they value. How can we ever forget THE GREAT GATSBY and Jay Gatsby’s gaudy West Egg waterfront mansion, his immense wealth, and his quest to impress socialite Daisy Buchanan from East Egg, Long Island?
3. They can be a refuge (SAFE HAVEN), a prison (SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY), or a character’s whole world. (THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW)
4. In horror movies, houses are often central to the plot. I’m thinking THE SHINING, AMITYVILLE HORROR, THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE. Where would these scary stories be without their spooky haunting homes?
5. They can make a lasting impression on the protagonist or reader. When Lilly Owens sees the Boatwrights’ garish pink house, she says, “If your favorite color is blue, why did you paint the house pink? August Boatwright laughs. “That was May’s doing.” After reading Sue Monk Kidd’s novel about friendship and family, I wanted to live in a pink house too.
6. Houses in books, as in life, can be a literal crime, as in THE ONLY ONE LEFT by Ricker Sager.
7. They can reveal history like in THE LAST SAFE HOUSE and THE KITCHEN HOUSE, which are about the underground railroad.
8. They can become characters unto themselves. In the picture book by Virginia Lee Burton, which was published in 1942, called THE LITTLE HOUSE, a cottage feels sadness as a city is built around her.

Sometimes, we writers get caught up in pushing the story forward so much so that the houses our characters inhabit can start to feel like props, or just places for our protagonist to move through, so we can write visual descriptions to appease our readers. But anyone who’s been house hunting knows that houses are important. They make us feel and think. They can give us goosebumps or make us grin. They can make us want to curl up into a ball or conquer the world. Us? Characters are people, too, albeit imaginary ones. If we want our characters to live and breathe on a page, we must write about their houses.

Thanks for reading this post! What is your favorite fictional house? What do you think about pink houses? I ‘d love to hear from you!