Ute Carbone
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Inside the Writer's Garret

On writing and life, with a little chocolate thrown in from time to time.

Remember your Place

9/4/2019

6 Comments

 
Picture
Writing a book is a complicated process. Like a good stew, there are a lot of ingredients that go into the mix.  We often talk about character, which is arguably the most important element of story. Without good characters, you have cardboard cutouts going through motions. In other words, not anything worth reading. We talk a lot  about plot too. It is, which is, in many ways, the easiest of the elements of a story to define. There's no doubt that having something for those great characters to want and/or to overcome makes for a worthwhile read. A third essential element, place, is often hidden in the background. Like the onions in the stew, it is seldom talked about, but vitally important if you want to tell a tasty story. The sense of place is, I believe, one of the most underrated and often underutilized parts of story writing.
Place itself can be a character—think of Jack London’s To Build a Fire, where the protagonist isn’t a someone but a something. The story is rooted in the artic and surviving the elements is what moves the character forward. The stakes are extraordinarily high: overcome the elements or die.   Change the setting to New York City, or to the rainforest in New Guinea, and you lose the storyline. Not that you couldn’t write a story about survival in the city or in a jungle, but it would be a far different story from the one London wrote.
Of course, place isn’t always as obvious in how it informs a story as in To Build a Fire.  I think of the small Maine town that Olive Kitteridge inhabits, or the down-on-its-heels mill town that is Empire Falls. The characters in these stories are deeply embedded with a sense a place, even if the place is in the background and the influence it has not blatantly obvious. Place is still essential, and as with London's story, remove or change the place and you irrevocably alter the storyline. 
To ignore the where of your story is to leave a large chunk of it on the cutting room floor. There is tremendous potential in space and time. Used well, it becomes more than a backdrop for story, it becomes an active ingredient, an integral part of a character’s makeup.  Sometimes, it even becomes a character itself.
When writing, I think long and hard about my character's  challenges and how they will meet those challenges. And I  also give a lot of consideration to  where they live in time and space.  
Does setting inform your WIP? How? If not, can you enrich your story by adding this important ingredient?
6 Comments
T. Powell Coltrin link
9/4/2019 10:45:44 am

You are so right that a story has many ingredients. I just hope I get the right ones and my dish (or story) is edible.

Teresa

Reply
Ute Carbone
9/4/2019 11:38:46 am

I'm sure it will be tasty, Teresa! Just don't forget the salt, err, sense of place. :)

Reply
Tyrean Martinson link
9/4/2019 12:24:00 pm

Setting definitely informs some of my WIPs. It should inform all of them, but sometimes I write about character development dilemmas which are less about place and more about characters interacting and reacting with each other.
One of my current WIPs is set in Portland (the food truck square, Powell's bookstore, and the general atmosphere of the city play a small role in my characters' lives), and another one (currently under revision) is set on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington because the main character has a connection with the land and sea (it's a super-powered fantasy).

Reply
ute
9/11/2019 04:29:57 pm

I It's true that not all books have place front and center, but I'll bet you still find those connections--living in Portland is different from living in LA or living in Texas. I love the idea of connecting with the land, especially a beautiful place like the OP.

Reply
CD Gallant-King link
9/4/2019 03:51:10 pm

If the work demands it, setting will be very important part of the story, often a character itself. It certainly is in my novels.
In short stories, however, most of the attention is usually on the characters, so the setting is just that - a setting for the real meat of the story to take place.

Reply
Ute
9/11/2019 04:33:00 pm

Yes, short stories are a different form. They are much more centered on a single event, or a single group of characters. Novels give you space and breadth, so you need to build a world. Even so, there are some great stories where place is front and center, either as a character itself, or as an important connection to who these characters are.

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