In every scene, the writer’s opportunity comes at the point of change. A person doesn’t notice the street he walks down every day. But when they knock down the house on the corner, and a new vista is revealed—that’s when your character notices, and that’s when you can describe. Landscapes, streetscapes, objects, are dead in themselves. They only come alive through the senses of your character, though his perceptions, his opinions, his point of view.

Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self-…, loc. 871