Landscape
Landscape includes interior and external sites, emotional
connections, literal space, and geographic background. It includes the climate,
weather, topography, and amount of daylight. Each of these areas has the
capacity to silently boost the sacred connection between reader and character
by allowing the reader to identify with the literally tangible, yet subtle
details.
For example, in the movie The Count of Monte Cristo, Edmund Dantes spends many years in
prison. The site of his confinement is the Chateau d’if, a historical fortress
built in the 1500’s. This landscape is cold, damp, rocky, and dark—a mirror
image to Dante’s emotional life. Even when a landscape is confined to one room,
or is a silent backdrop, we can use its natural attributes to influence our
scenes and their emotional impact.
So how does this translate to practical application? We
begin a piece at a time and build the world from emotional resonance. We not
only draw out our physical locations, but doodle out the emotional impact they
have on our characters. We brainstorm each setting’s location, even if only as
a brief two-minute list. If you see something that triggers an emotional
reaction, but you’re not sure how to use it, then put it in the resource pile
for later.
When you read for research, pick out the parts that intrigue,
comfort, challenge, or frighten you. And temporarily leave the rest behind.
Keep a list going as to where you found that information, so if you need to
return for more details, you’ll find it easily. It’s a banquet laid out before
us and we can’t possibly eat it all at once. So we pick out the best parts
first, in case we get full. The parts that stir our hearts, the parts that we
react to emotionally, become our map routes, our mirror reflections, and our
atmosphere internally.
Externally, we discover our connections through landscape,
as Elizabeth George explains it. To her landscape is “the broad vista into
which the writer actually places the individual settings of the novel, sort of
like the canvas or other medium onto which a painter has decided to daub color……when
we discuss landscape we’re also talking about…the emotions that are evoked by
the setting.” She continues, “Landscape is the total place experience in a
novel.”
Build Your Story: What literal climate, weather, topography, or
daylight can become an emotional mirror for your character’s internal struggle?
Read deep, marcy
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