Developing a Sense of Place (Part 1) (September 2007)
Developing a Sense of Place (Part 1)
by Philip Martin
Director, Great Lakes Literary, LLC
“Every story would be another story, and unrecognized . . . , if it took up its characters and plot and happened somewhere else.” – Eudora Welty
What do great stories do? They take you to another place.
Place obviously is where everything in a story happens: characters, plots, suspense, turning points, and such. But it is more than just a platform for stage action.
For emerging writers, the role of place may be almost invisible, as water to a fish. But place influences stories far more than many realize. Before I became an editor, I was a folklorist, doing field documentary projects, writing several books on regional culture, and running a small museum of traditional folklife. I saw the truth in what a great writer, Wendell Berry, said: that if you don’t know where you are . . . you don’t know who you are.
Place is not just where stories happen. It creates character. It patterns our actions. It becomes a desire: to be home, to achieve a sense of belonging, to save home from intruders. Consider the role of the southern plantation, Tara, to Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind.
Think of the great novels you know and love. If you have any doubts, go to your bookshelf. Pull out half a dozen favorite books, and see how they start. As I’m sitting here, I’m looking at The Yearling, by Marjorie Rawlings, a touching story set in the Florida backwoods; the Navajo mysteries by Tony Hillerman (Native sheepherders & deep canyonlands); the gothic novel Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier, with its eerie mansion Manderley; and any number of classic works of literary fiction such as the novels of Ernest Hemingway, Sinclair Lewis, John Steinbeck, and others.
Consider the role of Hogwarts in the Harry Potter series. From the first volumes, Hogwarts played a tremendous role in the story, gathering the young protagonists – Harry and his friends – into its curious and often-changing halls. It became the place where magic was learned and friendships formed. It stood for what must be saved: the ideals of the Hogwartian school, where magical powers were taught for the sake of good. It provided the thread for the multi-book series, each installment following Harry and friends through another year.
If Hogwarts had not been so unique – if you removed that creative element – the fantasy story, despite its endearing characters and complex plot, would nonetheless have been more commonplace. In many ways, Hogwarts was the core of Rowling’s new vision. We journey with Harry in each book from the ordinary world to this enchanting castle in the mist . . . and are thrilled to be transported to a fantastic but somehow believable place.
Place also plays a key role in nonfiction stories. As the setting of any newsworthy event, Where is one of the essential questions, the Five Ws of journalism (Who, What, Where, When, Why?). These elements are intricately linked. Consider how Place, the Where of the story, can play an active role in defining the elements of Who, What, even Why.
Stories that lack a “sense of place” are ordinary (and seldom advance from the depths of the slush pile). The setting are generic . . . the same as those found in every other (unpublished) story. In a word, they are a McSetting. (Note to McDonald’s corporate lawyers: before suing me, consider I’m using the reference here to indicate uniformity, a lack of surprise . . . a good thing perhaps in fast food, a bad thing in creative fiction or nonfiction.)
Stories with a strong sense of place, on the other hand, come alive. They fulfill that desire of the reader to be transported, for short time, to someplace else.
Let’s begin to look at some basic techniques for creating Place in your stories. The first step, the one I’ll cover in this article, is the basic task of introducing a place to readers.
Step 1. Introduce the Place to Your Readers.
Technique #1: Describe a place as an insider knows it.
Think of your own home. What stands out most when you know a place very, very well?
Charlotte’s Web is a wonderful fantasy in a rural setting, delivered in the beautifully simple prose of journalist and essayist E.B. White. In the book, most conversations between Wilbur the pig and Charlotte the spider take place in a barn.
This barn, introduced in a chapter of the same name, is described with a lyrical passage. Note how it is written from the point of view of someone who knows the barn intimately, through all seasons and over time.
The barn was very large. It was very old. It smelled of hay and it smelled of manure. It smelled of the perspiration of tired horses and the wonderful sweet breath of patient cows. It often had a sort of peaceful smell – as though nothing bad could happen ever again in the world. It smelled of grain and of harness dressing and of axle grease and of rubber boots and of new rope. And whenever the cat was given a fish-head to eat, the barn would smell of fish. But mostly it smelled of hay, for there was always hay in the great loft up overhead. And there was always hay being pitched down to the cows and the horses and the sheep.
The barn was pleasantly warm in winter when the animals spent most of their time indoors, and it was pleasantly cool in summer when the big doors stood wide open to the breeze. The barn had stalls on the main floor for the work horses, tie-ups on the main floor for the cows, a sheepfold down below for the sheep, a pigpen down below for Wilbur, and it was full of all sorts of things that you find in barns: ladders, grindstones, pitchforks, monkey wrenches, scythes, lawn mowers, snow shovels, ax handles, milk pails, water buckets, empty grain sacks, and rusty rat traps. It was the kind of barn that swallows like to build their nests in. It was the kind of barn that children like to play in. And the whole thing was owned by Fern’s uncle, Mr. Homer L. Zuckerman.
Note how the passage is crafted with clear, effective language. White starts with short sentences. Then he builds slowly, introducing the sense of tired, sweet patience. We encounter the diverse scents, as we begin to image the place fully. We learn who shares the space: cat, cows, horses, sheep.
There is almost no visual description until the second paragraph, when the big doors are thrown open. Then we see some details: the repetitious organization of the stalls, the clutter of objects here and there. Finally, it is summed up as a warm place where animals and children can find a cozy place to spend time.
Technique #2: Describe a place as an outsider encounters it.
What does a person see and feel when he or she arrives somewhere as a newcomer, to see a place for the first time?
Here is the beginning of a story, Skellig (American edition, 1999), by British author David Almond. The cataloged summary reads: “Unhappy about his baby sister’s illness and the chaos of moving into a dilapidated house, Michael retreats to the garage and finds a mysterious stranger who is something like a bird and something like an angel.”
As the story begins, we approach the family’s new home through the eyes of the young protagonist, Michael, as he recalls how a real estate agent had given a tour, letting them peek first in the cluttered garage, then leading them through the rundown house itself.
We called it the garage because that’s what the real estate agent, Mr. Stone, called it. It was more like a demolition site or a rubbish dump or like one of those ancient warehouses they keep pulling down at the wharf. Stone led us down the garden, tugged the door open, and shined his little flashlight into the gloom. We shoved our heads in at the doorway with him.
“You have to see it with your mind’s eye,” he said. “See it cleaned, with new doors and the roof repaired. See it as a wonderful two-car garage.” He looked at me with a stupid grin on his face. “Or something for you, lad – a hideaway for you and your pals. What about that, eh?”
I looked away. I didn’t want anything to do with him. All the way round the house it had been the same. Just see it in your mind’s eye. Just imagine what could be done. All the way round I kept thinking of the old man, Ernie Myers, that had lived here on his own for years. He’d been dead nearly a week before they found him under the table in the kitchen. That’s what I saw when Stone told us about seeing with the mind’s eye. He even said it when we got to the dining room and there was an old cracked toilet sitting there in the corner behind a plywood screen. I just wanted him to shut up, but he whispered that toward the end Ernie couldn’t manage the stairs. His bed was brought in here and a toilet was put in so everything was easy for him. Stone looked at me like he didn’t think I should know about such things. I wanted to get out, to get back to our old house again, but Mum and Dad took it all in. They went on like it was going to be some big adventure. They bought the house. They started cleaning it and scrubbing it and painting it. Then the baby came too early. And here we were.
Notice how few details are given. The garage (described more fully in the next chapter as Michael explores it on his own) is described only by comparison: rubbish dump, etc. The house is seen only through the pathetic story of the man who died there.
The initial imagery, with its focus on emotions and lack of visual details, is true to a boy’s perspective, which is unlikely to note architectural features like a Victorian gingerbread cornices or what type of hardwood the floor is made of.
The place is seen therefore only in Michael’s reaction to it. This sets up the story to follow, as Michael explores the garage and discovers an odd creature, barely alive, a creature that strangely connects to the story of Michael’s infant sister in the hospital.
Technique #3: Be selective in details.
Know what to leave out. Both of the two master passages above use a controlled selection of details. As Jane Yolen wrote in her instructional guide, Writing Books for Children:
Remember, too, what you don’t put down can be as important as what you do. Lao-Tse in his Tao Te Ching wrote that in a vessel of clay, it is the emptiness inside that makes it useful.
As with character, the fewer things that are pinned down, the more readers are free to flesh out the picture themselves. This can result in a fuller picture, paradoxically, than a detailed description delivered by the author.
Also, when fewer initial details are given, the reader realizes that those being given are significant, chosen by the author for a purpose. This is one of the core tricks of good storytelling, one that quickly engages the reader’s interest.
I’ve often used the following passage to discussion good writing. Notice how Tolkien’s The Hobbit begins with a description of place. Tolkien, a master of the art of story, starts with three simple points: a hobbit hole is not a wet hole nor a dry hole, but a comfy one. His limited choice of details, as he leads us into the well-appointed hole, presents the character of the inhabitant long before we meet Bilbo Baggins.
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.
It had a perfectly round door like a porthole, painted green, with a shiny yellow brass knob in the exact middle. The door opened on to a tube-shaped hall like a tunnel: a very comfortable tunnel without smoke, with panelled walls, and floors tiled and carpeted, provided with polished chairs, and lots and lots of pegs for hats and coats – the hobbit was fond of visitors.
Technique #4: Pan in from a distant shot to a closer perspective.
In describing a place, it helps to create a sense of motion, to help reader enter the space, as Tolkien has in the example above. A good technique is to move from a general or distant view (the hobbit hole) to a closer examination of some feature of interest (the round green door with a brass knob in the middle).
Here’s an dramatic example by the great Jack London, from the beginning of his novel White Fang. It begins cinematically with a distant, fly-over shot, then it catches a bit of motion in the scene, and zooms in to examine that curious item in more detail:
Dark spruce forest frowned on either side the frozen waterway. The trees had been stripped by a recent wind of their white covering of frost, and they seemed to lean toward each other, black and ominous, in the fading light. A vast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness. There was a hint in it of laughter, but of a laughter more terrible than any sadness -- a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the Sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility. It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. It was the Wild, the savage, frozen-hearted Northland Wild.
But there was life, abroad in the land and defiant. Down the frozen waterway toiled a string of wolfish dogs. Their bristly fur was rimed with frost. Their breath froze in the air as it left their mouths, spouting forth in spumes of vapor that settled upon the hair of their bodies and formed into crystals of frost. Leather harness was on the dogs, and leather traces attached them to a sled which dragged along behind. The sled was without runners. It was made of stout birch-bark, and its full surface rested on the snow. The front end of the sled was turned up, like a scroll, in order to force down and under the bore of soft snow that surged like a wave before it. On the sled, securely lashed, was a long and narrow oblong box. There were other things on the sled -- blankets, an axe, and a coffee-pot and frying-pan; but prominent, occupying most of the space, was the long and narrow oblong box.
Technique #5: Use a variety of senses.
I’ll just refer you here to the above passages. Notice how often they use more senses, including a sixth sense of intuition, besides just that of vision. Like the best memories, they are based as much on a sense of space, of mood, of smells and sounds, of things missing or curious.
Technique #6: Be original, be surprising.
This of course is good advice, and frustratingly hard to explain how to accomplish it. How do you create details that are fresh, original in combination, surprising? I can only point to good examples to set the standard. Here is an achingly beautiful beginning to a wonderful novel, The Piano Tuner, by Daniel Mason (2002). Note how he builds this impressionistic first glimpse of the place where the story will take place, focusing on the sun and heat, and ending this prologue with an astonishing image.
In the fleeting seconds of final memory, the image that will become Burma is the sun and a woman’s parasol. He has wondered which visions would remain – the Salween’s coursing coffee flow after a storm, the predawn palisades of fishing nets, the glow of ground turmeric, the weep of jungle vines.
. . .
Yet above these visions, the sun rises searing, pouring over them like a gleaming white paint. [Those] who interpret dreams in shaded, scented corners of the markets, told him a tale that the sun that rose in Burma was different from the sun that rose in the rest of the world. He only needed to look at the sky to know this. To see how it washed the roads, filling the cracks and shadows, destroying perspective and texture. To see how it burned, flickered, flamed, the edge of the horizon like a daguerreotype on fire, overexposed and edges curling. How it turned liquid the sky, the banyan tree, the thick air, his breath, throat, and his blood.
. . .
Now this sun hangs above a dry road. Beneath it, a lone woman walks under a parasol, her thin cotton dress trembling in the breeze, her bare feet carrying her away . . . . He watches her, how she approaches the sun, alone. He thinks of calling out to her, but he cannot speak.
The woman walks into a mirage, into the ghost reflection of light and water that the Burmese call than hlat. Around her, the air wavers, splitting her body, separating, spinning. And then she too disappears. Now only the sun and the parasol remain.
I hope these techniques will help you think of ways to introduce the Place in your story.
In a follow-up article, I’ll talk about subsequent techniques to use to develop a deeper sense of place. To look ahead to that, I’ll quote a few words by one of the great writers about place today, Barry Lopez, winner of the National Book Award. He summed up some essence of what we wish to feel about a place when he wrote: “Many of us, I think, long to become the companion of a place, not its owner.”
Is Scarlett O’Hara simply the owner of Tara, or is she in a more complex relationship with her home? In all the examples above, place is far more than just a physical space to be inhabited, let along owned. It is something that we interact with on a deep emotional level.
To be a better writer, in all your note-taking, imagination, outline, research, drafts, and revisions, look for ways to develop a sense of place. Think of how to make the place someplace that a reader would want to visit and linger in, to enjoy having become an invited companion, for a while, of that special place that anchors your story.
Copyright 2007 by Philip Martin, director of Great Lakes Literary, LLC, and series editor of The New Writer’s Handbook, an annual anthology. All rights reserved. For permission to reprint, contact the author at www.GreatLakesLit.com. Any brief quoted passages from published works are used for the purpose of literary criticism.
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