This week, my family has enjoyed hosting relatives
who are visiting from lands far, far away.
From Florida and Ohio, to be exact.
We did some big touristy things in the first few days which were lots of
fun, but when it came to knowing my local vicinity, I fell short of being the
best tour guide. A few minutes on the
internet acquainted me with some of the offerings of our small town and
immediate area, and tomorrow we’re off to see a giant sequoia grove which I had
no idea was a mere 45 miles away. The smaller,
less traveled roads will turn out to be just as memorable to us, and maybe more
so.
I think the same is true of setting in fiction. Big, exotic locales are not always necessary
to capture a reader’s interest. As long
as the location is believable and fully established, it will play into the plot
and lend authenticity to the story. Sometimes
the setting is the story.
One of the great books that really drew me in as a
child was Blue Willow by Doris Gates.
The story is about a migrant farm family in California’s San Joaquin Valley during
the Depression, and you can almost taste the grit in your teeth from the dry
fields and feel the intense heat pressing your shadow into the dirt. But this
is a simple story of a child’s hope, and you are glad for the refreshing cool
breezes of fortune that lift this family from dire poverty as the story
progresses. Twenty years and 3,000 miles later, we moved to that same general
area and I found some parts of it to be little changed from what she had
described. I was amazed that the author
could so effectively use the dirt and the heat and the poverty to draw out a
beautiful story. As a writer, I would
not have had the insight to see the story in the unremarkable setting. (As a disclaimer, I will add that not all of the San Joaquin Valley is like
this. Much of it is gorgeous and green with the graceful symmetry of well-ordered
vineyards.)
With that said, I consider my own immediate locale
and the possibilities. What am I missing
that would tell a great story in this place where I live and breathe and work? ‘Write
what you know’ can become ‘write where you know.’ I’ve seen my town in all its seasons, in calamity
and near-disasters, through record-setting heat, unexpected snowfalls and scorching
fires. The people lean a certain way and they still say ‘Merry Christmas.’ They’re not afraid of challenge. It’s not known as ‘The Endurance Capitol’ for
nothing. I need to haunt the museums and
seek out the people who’ve kept record of life here for the past hundred years.
I need to sit in on a few city council meetings to get the flavor of the movers
and the shakers, gather brochures from the visitor’s center and discover what I’ve
missed. I need to peel back the layers
of my limited experience in these square miles and find the story worth
telling. Who better than someone who has
lived here for the past sixteen years?
How about you?
Have you considered where you live and breathe and work to have story
potential or do you always look for a setting where the grass is greener?
