Invite Yourself to Tea

I'm sure we all have had it happen before (maybe many times).  You get the news that company is coming, and your mom whips into action.  The floor must be swept, carpets vacuumed, lawn mowed, toys put away, horses brushed, garage organized, bedding washed, and meals prepared.

Or maybe the company is someone who comes over so many times, you barely feel the need to cook a fancy meal.  They are practically part of the family, so you might clean up the floor a bit, and make an extra cup of tea.  And that's it.

And what do you do with your company?  Do you sit in the living room for an hour and catch up on all the latest news?  Maybe show them around the house?  Take them somewhere interesting?  Maybe play a game?

My family usually takes guests to the local state park or the historic settlement closer to town.  If hiking isn't their thing, we might just give them a quick tour of our farm and then sit around and talk.  If the weather is nice, maybe play some Frisbee, or some Daventry-style Croquet.  Maybe we'll ride the horses, or even ask for some help with a farm chore.  It mostly just depends on the people who visit, and what they like to do.  (One family that visits us a couple times a year is really into Dominion, and so we often play some pretty competitive rounds with them when they come.)

But I got to thinking...what would happen if you visited your characters?

Would they clean their house up, or are they comfortable with you seeing the every day dirt and stuff lying around (or is their house always spotlessly clean)?  What would they serve you?  What special places in their town would they want to show you?  Anything important to them (like their favorite bookstore)?

For example, in Words of Peace, Marywyn visits Nahale and Ondore's home.  The visit is fairly unannounced, so their mom doesn't have lots of time to clean up (since it's winter, there's lots of half-melted snow and bark from the firewood by the door, and extra fur coats and blankets piled in the corner).  But she readily welcomes Marywyn (and the other guests), gets her a hot drink, and they all sit down for a warm meal.  Their father reads the Edicts aloud afterward, and everyone is given a comfortable place to sleep.  In the morning, Nahale wants to take everyone to see the museum, even though it's a bit run-down and forgotten.  They end up having a snowball fight on the way, but don't get to see much of the museum, as an important incident happens...

Scenes like this may seem simple and even a little ordinary, but this does two very important things: they give a hint at the world the characters live in, and also tell the readers something about the characters themselves.

In this example, you can learn that Nahale's town has a museum (and likely events in their history worth telling), yet not many find it exciting in the current day.  And since Nahale thought it was worth showing, you can see he has different interests than the general populace, and apparently enjoys history (and snowball fights, lol).  Their parents are not frazzled by much, and readily accept a bunch of newcomers into their home.  They also are not ashamed of being Chosen, but hold family worship as normal, with the addition of their guests.

The trip to the museum could be a bit of an info dump, if some pretty important stuff didn't happen there.  Since I needed them to be doing something when the news hits, I thought, "Why not throw in a touch of world and character building while I'm at it?"

If you can sneak tiny little bits like this into your writing, it will make the characters, the world, that much more real - with the added bonus of not bogging down the story too much.