Strategy # 6 Homespun Locale

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

“You present your story in terms of things that can be verified by sensory perception. Sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch—these are the common denominators of human experience; these are the evidence that men believe.” Dwight V. Swain

 Introduction Local Influence

No sensory observation is considered complete until the fictional character’s emotional response is included. When eating new foods, or hearing new sounds, the concrete details help the reader recognize the character as more real as he reacts to the senses. Just as word choices need to be specific, so do the sensory details need to be definitive, externally as images and internally as personal reactions.

What are the telltale signs that we’ve moved from one neighborhood to another? What makes the restaurant on one street so much better than the next? We also want to make these sensory observations unique.

When we examine the local flavor of a setting we discover a treasure trove of details in attitude and speech, special foods, ceremonial events, public safety, law enforcement and city hall meetings.

Merrie Destefano set her richly layered urban fantasy in New Orleans. Here’s the first question in her discussion guide.  As you think of your ‘local’ setting consider how you would want readers to answer this question for you. What influence would you want to filter down?

“Discussion Questions:

1. Afterlife: The Resurrection Chronicles is set in New Orleans, a city rich in culture and cuisine. It’s the historic birthplace of jazz, a center known for voodoo and Mardi Gras, and it’s also a city that suffered greatly as a result of Hurricane Katrina. How did the setting of New Orleans add to this story? How would you describe the voice in which the author tells this tale? What does it add to the overall effect of the book? Discuss.”  

Share: What style voice will you choose for your story?

Read deep, marcy

Stop by and visit Merrie's website at www.MerrieDestefano.com for a full discussion guide and more.   

Compose Through Metaphor

“Metaphors are the gate-crashers of the spirituality static quo.” Joy Sawyer

 

Author C.S. Lakin has been posting an interesting mini-sequence discussion re theme at www.livewritethrive.com under her category The Heart of the Story. She noticed that the movies she chose for her discussion were huge hits because of their deep underlying themes, which the viewers did not necessarily notice at first glance. Yet because the themes “were so rich and deep” the audience took to them in spite of poor acting. She has inspired me to take on a longer blog sequence on metaphors and examine ways that ordinary images can create impact.

Metaphors are meant to help us see life through a fresh perspective. When they tap into theme and character and setting and atmosphere they have the ability to gate-crash through our pre-conceived clichéd views. Even clichés were at one time a fresh perspective—so innovative in fact that they eventually became overused.

And we don’t need to jettison familiar images. In fact metaphors often work better through familiarity but need to be slightly angled. Sometimes the image must loom large in order to crash through numbed thinking. Other times it only needs to be a soft reflection that catches us up enough to pause and take a deeper look.

Waiting For Midnight, by Merrie Destefano, is a brief collection of short stories and flash fiction that highlights the power of image and metaphor and theme in unexpected ways. By altering the anticipated viewpoint character or the setting we step into the story one side up, but come out the other end as if we were in house of mirrors. 

For example, in her flash fiction piece Breathtaking we immediately identify with the character’s desperate struggle to simply take a breath—to fill out the form—to remain calm instead of anxious in the emergency room—to remember. How many other images of trying to simply breathe pass through our imagination as we struggle along with this person wondering what is really causing his anguish. And then the mirror metaphor shifts.

“No. Not poison. My sweat on the floor, my blood, my skin. It was my own

              designer disease, all brand new and deadly—

              And, unfortunately, highly contagious.”

Journal Prompt:

Take a brief scene from your novel, either in dialogue, or internal monologue, and twist the end into something opposite.

What impact would that have on your character’s situation emotionally, spiritually, or mentally?

Even if you cannot use the shock difference at this moment, is there a way you can introduce the possibility of another outcome?

Share: Did your opposite effect turn into humor or shock?