Northern Island Novel World-Building Board — Kelsay

A novelist's world-building board for a fictional northern island: places, cast, winter weather, objects, a history timeline and the Draft 3 plan.

Updated

This board is the working bible for a novel set on Kelsay, a fictional island west of Shetland, across the winter of 1983 to 1984. It began as a folder of photographs and grew into the place where every fact about the island is settled once, so the chapters stop contradicting each other. If you are putting together your own novel world building board, the order here is worth copying: place first, then people, then weather, then the objects that carry the plot, and only then the plan. The island section is a contact sheet of six photographs, all overcast and all winter, so the place reads as one coast in one light. Beside it sit a palette taken from those photos and a note of distances: how long the walk is from the pier to the lighthouse, which house is cut off at high water. Writing those numbers down early saves rewriting whole scenes later. People are kept as a table rather than portraits. Each line gives a name, an age in the year the book is set, a house and the one thing that person wants, with a kitchen, a shop door, a lighthouse lamp and two old school desks standing in for faces. A short note on names records how the islanders actually address each other. The weather section holds a looping video of swell, a field recording of a gale and a set of rules for the nineteen days the island is cut off, down to sunrise times and the day the boat turns back. Objects get their own column because two of them, a notebook and a load of wrecked timber, carry the plot between decades, and an arrow ties the notebook note to the photograph of the wooden kist it is found in. The last two columns are the desk: a one-page plan for the next draft, a timeline of the island's history with what each event left behind, a checklist worked against that timeline, the itinerary for a research trip, and a saved article on the evacuation of St Kilda with a note on the single detail borrowed from it. Alternates from the recce sit in a nested B-list so the main board stays readable. Photos by Barnabas Davoti, Serinus, TNP, Michał Robak, Erik Mclean, Keith Proven, Jill Burrow, hubbugaye, Rockwell branding agency, Sandra Seitamaa, Monica Oprea, Taiye Salawu, LUCAS VEIGA REIS, Mike Sheilds and Ave Calvar Martinez on Pexels. Sound: "Killiney Hill Storm Floris 20250804 1537" by Karlunun (CC0) on Wikimedia Commons.
Detailed close-up of lichen patterns on a weathered stone surface, showcasing rich textures.

A × visual grid — The island (5 images) — view it on the board above.

Explore the serene beauty of a rocky shoreline with seaweed and ocean views.
A weathered shed near urban development in Abuja, Nigeria.

Who's on Kelsay, Jan 1984

  • Name
  • Age
  • House
  • Wants
  • Ingrid Halcrow
  • 38
  • Setter, her father's croft
  • To sell up and be off by New Year
  • Tam Isbister
  • 61
  • Haven
  • One more winter on the boat
  • Ruth Laurenson
  • 44
  • The Schoolhouse
  • Keep the school open for one boy
  • Davie Tulloch
  • 9
  • Hamar
  • To see the light lit by hand
  • Aly Rendall
  • 52
  • The Row, Ness light
  • Not to be the last keeper
  • Jean Moar
  • 70
  • Shop + post office
  • To hear everything first
Peaceful sheep grazing on a lush cliff with an ocean backdrop under a cloudy sky.

▶ Swell at the Ness (plays on the board above)

Magnus's notebook

Blue school jotter, 40 pages, pencil throughout. First entry 31 Jan 1953, the night of the Ellen Rae; last entry 1979.
- Lists, never sentences
- Tide times in the margin of every page
- Pages 22 to 24 cut out with a knife, not torn
Ingrid finds it in the meal kist in Ch. 3, under the blankets. It is the only object in all three parts.

Kelsay timeline

  • Year
  • What happened
  • What's left of it
  • 1841
  • Census: 212 people, 38 crofts
  • Roofless houses at Quoys
  • 1868
  • North end cleared; 14 families leave
  • Field dykes under the peat
  • 1891
  • Herring curing station opens at Strand
  • Gutting floor, rusted chains
  • 1909
  • Ness light first lit
  • The Row, keepers' cottages
  • 1953
  • Ellen Rae lost off the Ness, 31 Jan
  • Rafters at Setter; the notebook
  • 1984
  • School shuts; Ness light automated
  • The book starts here
Weather coming in
Weather coming in
Charming white cottage by the sea in Kearvaig, Scotland under cloudy skies.

Names

Surnames from the old Shetland rolls: Halcrow, Isbister, Laurenson, Tulloch, Moar, Rendall. After Ch. 1 nobody uses a full name:
- Ingrid is 'Magnus's lass' to anyone over sixty
- Tam is 'the skipper', Jean is 'the shop'
- Aly is 'the keeper' until the light goes automatic, then just Aly
Houses are named, never numbered: Setter, Quoys, Hamar, the Schoolhouse, the Row.

Draft 3 — still to do

[x] Tide times for Ch. 4–9 from the 1984 tables
[x] Peat cutting in May, not March: fix Ch. 2
[x] Cut Ruth's sister and the Aberdeen chapter
[ ] Check every Part Two date against the timeline
[ ] Settle where the Ellen Rae went down, with Lena
[ ] Rewrite the 1953 chapters as notebook lists
[ ] Walk 9 miles on Foula into wind and time it

St Kilda, Scotland
Ellen Rae timber
Ellen Rae timber

Off the main board for now. The dykes, seaweed and tin sheds go back in if the Strand chapters return to Part Two; the sheep and the shore cottage are for nobody yet.

The 19 days

3 to 21 January 1984. Rules so the chapters agree:
- Wind never below force 6; force 10 on days 4 and 12
- Sunrise 08:58, sunset 15:21, less under cloud
- Snow twice, both times sideways
- Day 8: the boat tries and turns back at the Taing
- Phone line down days 11 to 17
- No blue sky until Ch. 22, and then for one page

What to take from St Kilda

Not the story, the last morning. 29 August 1930: each family left a Bible open and a small heap of oats on the floor, and shut the door. Kelsay doesn't empty, but the school closing is that morning in small:
- Ruth leaves the register open on her desk
- Davie's coat peg keeps his name
- The mailboat is the only clock anyone keeps

Kelsay in December

  • Haar grey — #8d9396
  • Peat bank — #4b3a2b
  • Sea off the Ness — #3d5561
  • Dyke lichen — #a8a57a
  • Harled white — #dcd7cb
  • Lamp in a window — #c88a3f

Draft 3 — the plan

The book in a paragraph

Ingrid Halcrow comes back to Kelsay in December 1983 to clear her father's croft and sell it. On 3 January the weather shuts the island for nineteen days. In the meal kist at Setter she finds Magnus's notebook, which starts on the night the Ellen Rae went down in 1953 and stops in 1979. By the time the relief boat lands she has stopped packing, and the school has closed anyway.

Three parts

Part One, Shut In (Ch. 1–9): December to day 8, when the boat turns back at the Tai

Distances

Settle once, then never change:
- Kelsay is 9 miles by 3, nothing taller than a fence post
- Haven pier to the shop: 4 min
- Haven to the Ness light: 9 miles by the road, 3 h on foot into wind
- Setter to the Schoolhouse: 25 min
- Quoys is off the road, by the shore at low water only
- Walls, Shetland: 30 miles east. Relief boat 3 h, 5 in a swell

The Ellen Rae

Coaster, 410 tons, Bergen to Belfast with sawn timber. Lost off the Ness 31 Jan 1953: 11 crew, 3 ashore alive. The planks come in at Strand for a month and half the byres on Kelsay are roofed with them. Ingrid sees 'E.R.' stamped on the rafters at Setter in Ch. 2, eight chapters before she knows what it means.

♪ Gale on the Ness — 1:08 · 0 BPM · M4A (plays on the board above)

Includes a nested board (open it from the canvas above)

▶ Ch. 6 — Setter window (plays on the board above)

Storm lantern, Setter
Storm lantern, Setter
Strand mooring chain
Strand mooring chain