Strategy # 1 Habitat Highways

Build Your Story: 8 Strategies for Writing Innovative Setting with Impact

Introduction

 

“The tourist may look at a place and think ‘What does it do? What is it like? How much does it please me?’ but the fiction writer must look at a place and think ‘What does it suggest? What does it mean to me? What does it mean to my characters?’” Jack Hodgins

He suggests that in order to achieve this perspective, a writer needs to construct a place—“real or invented”—rather than describe it. By choosing specific details you both impress the landscape on your reader and connect them to the meaning of your world. Think habitat.

“Stare at your world until you discover what it has to offer you,” he says.

There are many ways to develop this focused center in any scene. You can begin from the inside out by imagining the location of your setting visually and finding just the right pieces to fit the emotional core.  Or you begin from a natural habitat and focus on the specifics that define your atmosphere and story questions.

For example a setting on the moors can portray an image of beauty, wildness, danger, freedom and loneliness. An added element might be the choice of dwelling. Is the habitat an ancient stone castle weather beaten with crumbling bricks, a wooden hut, or a modern architectural masterpiece? How would each of these possible homes blend or contrast the physical geography?

A desert, ocean, forest, meadow, stream, canyon and island all have distinct characteristics. Even if your character will be interacting with all kinds of terrain there will still be one that is ‘home.’ One that will quietly represent a direct heart highway, either towards security, or away towards uncertainty.

Too early in your story yet to decide which habitat best suits your purpose? Try this brainstorm. If your character were to transform into her emotional habitat, what animal or bird, flower or tree, body of water, type of wind would she become? Where would you most likely find that setting geographically?

Read deep, marcy

Share: What in your character’s natural habitat could become a danger to him or her?

Building A Story World

Culture (Atmosphere-Part Two)

Mystery writer Elizabeth George says that the details that show a person’s landscape “imprint an impression of a character in the reader’s mind.” The external and internal are achieved through specific and telling details. These are details with a message attached to them, the kind of details that no reader forgets. She keeps a long list of jobs, skills, learning opportunities and day-to-day actions at hand to keep her characters real and grounded in daily life.

I’ve picked out a few from her sample list that would be considered common across cultures and at the same time with completely diverse possibilities. Think of them in relationship to different species too. Here’s a brief sampling of categories she and her students developed: eating a meal, cooking a meal, building a campfire, drinking, doing laundry, getting a tattoo, fishing, moving, building a structure, sculpting, knitting, cleaning, catching a lizard, and going through photographs.

Exercise: Pick an activity that can be both personal and an art form, such as food dishes, or weaving, or photography, and use it to track possibilities through the following culture connections.

Here are three potential culture worlds to explore for communication and atmosphere.

1.         Cross-culture—within the same environment.

2.         Cross-culture—within the same era.

3.         Cross-culture—across time dimension.

Share: Which cross-culture did you choose and why?

Building A Story World

“Physical symbols, whether secular or sacred, are intended to convey intangible truths, moral values, and spiritual values.” David McKenna

Culture (Atmosphere-Part One)

Last week we looked at the ability to communicate person to person. Language and communication within world settings will have a strong influence on the emotional safety or danger for our characters. This is often communicated in and through culture as well where a vast array of influence from the arts: crafts, food, clothing, holidays, celebrations, mores, etc. develop attitudes toward the art expressed, and those who create it. These arts portray the public expression of the people. Music and/or art can become a mirror, reflecting a spiritual alliance. It translates the character’s soul landscape for him. It can also become a bridge of communication across cultures. Sometimes responses come in action, sometimes in desire or longing, sometimes in a symbol. These images often find a ‘voice’ through music or art. When we listen to, or build, our worlds we often find its heart expressed through its art culture.

Or its absence. When we look at our own world history (across cultures) we see evidence of regimes that chose to destroy artistic expression such as slashed paintings, burned books, smashed sculptures, and destroyed architecture.

Exercise: Choose one activity and explain it to someone who has never seen it before.

Share: What was the most difficult to explain?