Connect With Maps

Connect With Maps

 

“Place in fiction is the named, identified, concrete, exact, and exacting and therefore credible, gathering spot of all that has been felt, is about to be experienced, in the novel’s progress. Location pertains to feeling; feeling profoundly pertains to place; place in history partakes of feeling, as feeling about history partakes of place.” Eudora Welty

As I mentioned in last week’s blog, a bridge is one of the unifying elements in Central Park Rendezvous, set in New York City. The concrete historic site links all four stories, past and present, as a meeting place and as a place to remember.

In the present day story, Dream a Little Dream by Ronie Kendig, it becomes an emotional magnet and map for the two main characters as they attempt to make sense of the letters and what they mean now. The letters provide a map going into history, and the bridge stands as a credible location to ground the present. It enables them to recognize and assimilate the reality of the past mystery that increasingly becomes a key to them personally. The bridge is a place of strength and comfort.

For Amy Cantrell, in Bridging Two Hearts by Michelle Ule, her bridge is multilayered. Crossing her west coast historic bridge is the only way to a new job and fresh opportunities, but to cross it brings on panic attacks as her emotional past threatens to sabotage her hope, literally and figuratively. This concrete and exacting place acts as both metaphor and map as Amy struggles physically, emotionally and spiritually.

Whether the author intended the internal map mirror or not, as a reader I found the juxtaposition of Amy’s struggle alongside Navy Seals in training an added resonant connection. They too were facing deeper commitments, physical danger and learning to overcome their fears.

Amy’s daily journey across her map zone built into her a growing strength to gather together her past and present. To her the bridge became captivity and conflict leading to confidence.

Journal Prompt:

            Your character returns home to visit after a long absence. Regardless of the emotional reasons for the visit, what is the first place she goes to when she can be alone for a few hours? Why? What solace or courage or grief does she attach to that location?

Share: What is one place you go to when you return to a familiar environment?

Connect Maps

Summertime and the maps come out of drawers ready to plot vacation travel. We customize a route connecting the dots of destination and sightseeing. Everyone is anxious to get to our destination, however somewhere along the route we realize we don’t all have the same expectations for when we arrive. We agreed on the surface route, but not the underlying motives.

It’s not always the best scenario for travel relationships but it’s a terrific opportunity to build tension within theme in our novels. As we connect the emotional and goal dots between characters we add stress to plotting the story route.

In her excellent book, Wild Ink, Victoria Hanley differentiates between premise, message and theme. Premise is “often used to refer to the underpinnings of a particular world or milieu.” Theme is “a feature that runs through the novel.” The message “must hold true for that particular novel” and the subplot messages become mirror images that bring the reader back to the main point. Dot to dot connects the emotional route.

The movie Penelope has several excellent examples of sub-text communicating opposing message values in dialogue and in actions. In particular Penelope’s mother, Jessica, keeps telling her that she is not what she looks like, she is not her nose, rather someone waiting to come out. Jessica really thinks she believes it herself. However she also believes that the only way her daughter will be truly happy is to meet society’s expectations of good looks and a good name and only through this map configuration can Penelope’s curse be broken. 

Jessica truly lovely her daughter but she is so fixated on a one-route course that, even after the disfiguring curse is removed, she still suggests more ways for Penelope to improve opportunities by her looks.

Journal Prompt:

Write a brief conversation between your protagonist and someone he trusts completely where he realizes that this person has been undermining all his efforts because ‘it’s for his own good’.

Share: Which has the greater damage—the external situation or the emotional impact?