A sense of place - CrimeSpace2024-03-29T05:31:19Zhttp://crimespace.ning.com/forum/topics/537324:Topic:52971?commentId=537324%3AComment%3A53012&feed=yes&xn_auth=noHey, I didn't you had a Brazi…tag:crimespace.ning.com,2007-07-12:537324:Comment:546892007-07-12T15:04:26.392ZDennis Leppanenhttp://crimespace.ning.com/profile/TheWarbler
Hey, I didn't you had a Brazilian novel. Excerpted from WHOO??<br />
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<br />
Kell Thomas looked out the window as the train slowed in its approach. At first glance, it<br />
looked like any other logging town in Michigan’s north country. As the train came to a full stop,<br />
Henry (Hank) Bellows woke with a start, “Gibblezark,” he snorted and shook his head, “Where the hell we at?”<br />
<br />
“We’re home, honey,” Kell answered as he reached above his head for his suitcase. “Our new home away from home, we finally got to…
Hey, I didn't you had a Brazilian novel. Excerpted from WHOO??<br />
<br />
<br />
Kell Thomas looked out the window as the train slowed in its approach. At first glance, it<br />
looked like any other logging town in Michigan’s north country. As the train came to a full stop,<br />
Henry (Hank) Bellows woke with a start, “Gibblezark,” he snorted and shook his head, “Where the hell we at?”<br />
<br />
“We’re home, honey,” Kell answered as he reached above his head for his suitcase. “Our new home away from home, we finally got to Seney.” He retrieved his heavy typewriter case from under the seat then stepped back to allow Gil Stankey to exit the train ahead of him.<br />
<br />
Kell sensed a distinct difference, a feeling that he stepping off into the past, to the lawless<br />
days of Tombstone or Dodge City. A visit to the last frontier. He half expected to be greeted by the law and told to drop their ‘hardware’ off at the sheriff’s office.<br />
<br />
“Feel that Hank?”<br />
<br />
“Yeah, we just went back in time. Or we’re out in the Wyoming territory.” Loved THE ZERO.tag:crimespace.ning.com,2007-07-11:537324:Comment:544902007-07-11T16:35:15.807ZSteve Allanhttp://crimespace.ning.com/profile/SteveAllan
Loved THE ZERO.
Loved THE ZERO. my focus on setting depends o…tag:crimespace.ning.com,2007-07-11:537324:Comment:544882007-07-11T16:34:44.247ZSteve Allanhttp://crimespace.ning.com/profile/SteveAllan
my focus on setting depends on its importance to the story. I've written a couple of stories set in New Orleans either during or after Hurricane Katrina because what I had to say was tied into that mess. I workshopped one of the stories and one of the participants told me she knew exactly what street I was describing and asked me how long I lived in New Orleans. I had to tell her that I've never set foot in Louisana, let alone the Big Easy. But I guess I fooled her.<br />
<br />
When I set things in Maine,…
my focus on setting depends on its importance to the story. I've written a couple of stories set in New Orleans either during or after Hurricane Katrina because what I had to say was tied into that mess. I workshopped one of the stories and one of the participants told me she knew exactly what street I was describing and asked me how long I lived in New Orleans. I had to tell her that I've never set foot in Louisana, let alone the Big Easy. But I guess I fooled her.<br />
<br />
When I set things in Maine, I do it out of familiarity; but I only focus on the setting enough to destroy people's impression of what they think Maine is like. I guess I just like pissing in that pool. Last one continued:
Everyone…tag:crimespace.ning.com,2007-07-08:537324:Comment:537162007-07-08T22:06:00.446ZCornelia Readhttp://crimespace.ning.com/profile/corneliaread
Last one continued:<br />
<br />
Everyone knew they were dead. There were no stories of people from these walls being found alive (and still: the dream of amnesiacs wandering suburban hospitals) and yet Remy stopped and looked anyway, and as the walls made this quiet shift from the missing to the dead, he looked at them differently, mentally riffling the faces and pausing on the familiar—a glimmer of recognition and hope—until he remembered that he’d just seen that face on the wall in Washington Square, or…
Last one continued:<br />
<br />
Everyone knew they were dead. There were no stories of people from these walls being found alive (and still: the dream of amnesiacs wandering suburban hospitals) and yet Remy stopped and looked anyway, and as the walls made this quiet shift from the missing to the dead, he looked at them differently, mentally riffling the faces and pausing on the familiar—a glimmer of recognition and hope—until he remembered that he’d just seen that face on the wall in Washington Square, or at St. Vincent’s, and eventually Remy came to wonder if maybe he hadn’t known them all, every one of these people….<br />
<br />
Jess Walter, The Zero 2006 (2001) I just got to teach a time &a…tag:crimespace.ning.com,2007-07-08:537324:Comment:537122007-07-08T21:52:30.753ZCornelia Readhttp://crimespace.ning.com/profile/corneliaread
I just got to teach a time & place class at the Book Passage mystery writing conference last weekend with the most excellent Katharine Wall. The thing I enjoyed most about our prep for it was picking out a few of my favorite quotes in which establishing setting in terms of both is done really well. For me what makes these work is the choice of specific, concrete, and unexpected/non-ordinary details--the discrete, finely observed bits of sensory data that recreate/evoke the original…
I just got to teach a time & place class at the Book Passage mystery writing conference last weekend with the most excellent Katharine Wall. The thing I enjoyed most about our prep for it was picking out a few of my favorite quotes in which establishing setting in terms of both is done really well. For me what makes these work is the choice of specific, concrete, and unexpected/non-ordinary details--the discrete, finely observed bits of sensory data that recreate/evoke the original experience in the mind of the reader:<br />
<br />
I looked around at the pilot. He was a short little man, his cap backwards on his head, wearing an oil stained sheep-skin coat and big gloves. Then the plane began to move along the ground, bumping like a motorcycle, and then slowly rose into the air.<br />
<br />
We headed almost straight east out of Paris, rising in the air as though we were sitting inside a boat that was being lifted slowly by some giant, and the ground began to flatten beneath us. It looked cut into brown squares, yellow squares, green squares, and big flat blotches of green where there was a forest. I began to understand cubist painting.<br />
<br />
Ernest Hemingway, “A Paris-to-Strasbourg Flight,” The Toronto Daily Star, 1922<br />
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Up to the farmhouse to dinner through the teeming, dusty field, the road under our sneakers was only a two-track road. The middle track was missing, the one with the marks of the hooves and the splotches of dried, flaky manure. There had always been three tracks to choose from in choosing which track to walk in; now the choice was narrowed down to two. For a moment I missed terribly the middle alternative. But the way led past the tennis court, and something about the way it lay there in the sun reassured me; the tape had loosened along the backline, the alleys were green with plantains and other weeds, and the net (installed in June and removed in September) sagged in the dry noon, and the whole place steamed with midday heat and hunger and emptiness.<br />
<br />
There was a choice of pie for dessert, and one was blueberry and one was apple, and the waitresses were the same country girls, there having been no passage of time, only the illusion of it as in a dropped curtain—the waitresses were still fifteen; their hair had been washed, that was the only difference—they had been to the movies and seen the pretty girls with the clean hair.<br />
<br />
E.B. White, “Once More to the Lake,” 1941<br />
<br />
Then, bumping each other with our hips to make room, the three of us would press together in front of Mrs. Silver’s full-length mirror to comb our hair and practice looking cool. We wore our hair long at the sides, swept back into a ducktail. The hair on top we combed toward the center and then forward, with spit curls breaking over our foreheads. My mother detested this hairdo and forbade me to wear it, which meant that I wore it everywhere but at home, sustaining the distinctness of two different styles with gobs of Butch Wax that left my hair glossy and hard and my forehead ringed with little pimples.<br />
<br />
Unlit cigarettes dangling from the corners of our mouths, eyelids at half mast, we studied ourselves in the mirror. Spit curls. Pants pulled down low around our hips, thin white belts buckled on the side. Shirts with three-quarter length sleeves. Collars raised behind our necks. We should have looked cool, but we didn’t.<br />
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Tobias Wolff, This Boy’s Life 1989 (1950s)<br />
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There were victim walls like this every few miles in the city now. They sprouted up in parks and at hospitals, on schools and on subway platforms—anywhere people could think to tape up pictures. As soon as one photo went up, people rushed from their apartments and houses to fill the entire wall with pictures. There could be no single photograph of the missing; every wall had to be covered, every space filled. And as a survivor, you had to stop and look at the pictures because that was what was required of you. Of course, these people weren’t missing people anymore; they were dead people now. i need some distance to reall…tag:crimespace.ning.com,2007-07-08:537324:Comment:535262007-07-08T16:25:41.334ZAnne Frasierhttp://crimespace.ning.com/profile/annefrasier
i need some distance to really describe a place. i have a much harder time describing the familiar. i think it might be because when i look back at a place the high points jump out and are easier to grab. "yes, this is what i really remember most about this location."
i need some distance to really describe a place. i have a much harder time describing the familiar. i think it might be because when i look back at a place the high points jump out and are easier to grab. "yes, this is what i really remember most about this location." I really struggle with settin…tag:crimespace.ning.com,2007-07-08:537324:Comment:535102007-07-08T16:07:36.488ZChrista M. Millerhttp://crimespace.ning.com/profile/christammiller
I really struggle with setting. I set my novel in the NH town where I lived for 11 years as a teen/young adult. Still, as Sandra pointed out in her blog, there are truisms about a place that teens don't notice. I have very general random observations about these places I haven't lived in for 10 years, like the change in demographics to reflect people who work in Boston but live further and further away. Along with the fact that development has tried to accommodate them, and thus pushed out…
I really struggle with setting. I set my novel in the NH town where I lived for 11 years as a teen/young adult. Still, as Sandra pointed out in her blog, there are truisms about a place that teens don't notice. I have very general random observations about these places I haven't lived in for 10 years, like the change in demographics to reflect people who work in Boston but live further and further away. Along with the fact that development has tried to accommodate them, and thus pushed out lower income people (college students, blue collar families, etc.).<br />
<br />
Still - my protags are cops working a stressful murder case. How much of this stuff would they really think or talk about? In real life, sure, they'd be worried about the city council and the budget and whether they'd get a new contract... but I tried inserting a few elements to reflect that sort of thing, and they were sooooo awkward. Then I went back and re-read some Julia Spencer-Fleming. Somehow she can literally do driving directions and make them seamless - along with small-town political stuff.<br />
<br />
So it's not the details necessarily - it's the making them seamless that I think is my problem! Though visiting is a good ide…tag:crimespace.ning.com,2007-07-08:537324:Comment:534452007-07-08T10:59:57.716ZOlen Steinhauerhttp://crimespace.ning.com/profile/olensteinhauer
Though visiting is a good idea, I don't think you have to be somewhere long in order to write about it. Whenever I research a location, I take notes and lots of photos, but in truth I use very little of what I've recorded, other than those practical "driving directions". Usually, if you've spent a couple days soaking up a town, a couple (because that's all that's needed) details will present themselves. Also, if it's a well-known place (Paris, London, etc), it's not a bad idea to see if the…
Though visiting is a good idea, I don't think you have to be somewhere long in order to write about it. Whenever I research a location, I take notes and lots of photos, but in truth I use very little of what I've recorded, other than those practical "driving directions". Usually, if you've spent a couple days soaking up a town, a couple (because that's all that's needed) details will present themselves. Also, if it's a well-known place (Paris, London, etc), it's not a bad idea to see if the cliches of the place can be inverted and proven wrong. That brings things into pretty good focus.<br />
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I think your traveling as a kid will only help this. I seldom stayed in the same place, never put down roots, and it's those very similarities you begin to see in all cities that help you to pick out the one or two details that set it apart. Focusing on the people is an excellent way to go about it.<br />
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Also, within your story the ONLY thing that matters about a city is how your character relates to it. If s/he's jetlagged and can't see the beauty of the Hungarian Parliament building overlooking the Danube, then so much the better. Focus on the dirt. As a reader I sometimes choos…tag:crimespace.ning.com,2007-07-07:537324:Comment:533002007-07-07T19:45:20.339ZVicki Delanyhttp://crimespace.ning.com/profile/VickiDelany
As a reader I sometimes choose books for their setting more than anything else. It can be hard to locate a strong sense of setting in a big city, and authors so sometimes settle for a description of street names. I was in Boise, Idaho, for Murder in the Grove, and on our way out to a signing at a bookstore in a mall, someone said that except for the hills in the distance, we could be in any town in America. I added any town in North America, because the suburbs of any Canadian city are just a…
As a reader I sometimes choose books for their setting more than anything else. It can be hard to locate a strong sense of setting in a big city, and authors so sometimes settle for a description of street names. I was in Boise, Idaho, for Murder in the Grove, and on our way out to a signing at a bookstore in a mall, someone said that except for the hills in the distance, we could be in any town in America. I added any town in North America, because the suburbs of any Canadian city are just a mess of one big box mall after another. My own new series takes place in a small town in the interior of British Columbia. and I'm spending the summer in Nelson B.C. (I am from Ontario) just trying to capture that bucolic, small town, laid back feeling that is the Kootenays. I've met some super nice people at the city police, and they've been helping me with policing details for the books. Last night I went out on the streets with the beat constable for a couple of hours. He explained to me how different small town policing can be from the cities where they're in the car running from one call to another. In Nelson they take the time to walk the streets, pop into bars and see and be seen. I think that's the sort of detail that can really add to a novel's sense of place. Ya'll are turning my head.
T…tag:crimespace.ning.com,2007-07-07:537324:Comment:532172007-07-07T14:02:44.475ZDavid Terrenoirehttp://crimespace.ning.com/profile/Terrenoire
Ya'll are turning my head.<br />
<br />
Thank you for such nice words Margot. It's always gratifying when a reader takes the time to tell you she appreciates what you've spent so much of your life creating.<br />
<br />
And Jordan, I have a money back guarantee on BAPM. You don't like it, I'll buy it back. That's a promise.
Ya'll are turning my head.<br />
<br />
Thank you for such nice words Margot. It's always gratifying when a reader takes the time to tell you she appreciates what you've spent so much of your life creating.<br />
<br />
And Jordan, I have a money back guarantee on BAPM. You don't like it, I'll buy it back. That's a promise.