![]() Place as anchor: A specific location, such as a meeting place, facilitates exchanges of dialogue and provides familiarity for the reader if it is used on multiple occasions. The grasslands lay in a deep violet haze and to the west thin flights of waterfowl were moving north before the sunset in the deep red galleries under the cloudbanks like schoolfish in a burning sea and on the foreland plain they saw vaqueros driving cattle before them through a gauze of golden dust.ģ. In the following extract from All the Pretty Horses, the cowboy protagonists take in the natural beauty of their surroundings, and my reaction as a reader is visceral-my eyes sting, my throat tightens: I think Cormack McCarthy is a master at this. Sensory perception: Help your reader feel as though they experience place alongside your characters, so give them more than a purely visual interpretation of the scene-let them feel it, smell it, hear it, taste it. Responses to place will vary depending on, for instance, the time of day, seasonal weather conditions, or the character’s mood at any given moment.Ģ. Let the reader appreciate fully rounded descriptions of place from the characters’ point of view. Your characters will each see the same world differently. Character development: The places you choose to write about may be real, fictional, or an imaginative fusion of the two. Here are 5 suggestions for you to consider when drafting your next piece:ġ. The skills required to write successfully about place are as essential to the fiction writer as they are to the poet and creative nonfiction writer. He was not the first to use cartographic drawings to sell a book, and I am not suggesting that you must practice illustration or that your characters should follow a map in their story, but if you develop place to a significant degree in your narrative, the reader might enjoy the opportunity to dive a bit deeper and dwell in the mystery of a graphic depiction. When he finished Return of the Native, he posted his sketch to the publisher and insisted it be included in the printed volume. ![]() In fact, Hardy drew his own as a way of managing his complicated plots. As any fan of Thomas Hardy knows, a map can be a helpful device for the reader to keep track. Maps have become familiar paratextual material believability is enhanced by geography. Treat places like personalities, learn to love them, see them clearly in your mind’s eye, dress them, give them conflicting characteristics, and put them through hell and back. Sometimes it is difficult to find an entry point, so look for a detail in the big picture and expand from there. ![]() ![]() Spend time on the page to accentuate difference. Then it can be adapted for the story, embroidered, and renamed under the creator’s pen. Writing place is most successful when the author has had personal experience of it. When place is more than a backdrop, it takes on a symbolic role that can be portrayed in a variety of ways, from the naming of place to its architecture and weather. When place is an essential part of the story, it should be as authentic and whole as any protagonist. Writing place in fiction is a skill worth developing. Place can be home, or somewhere you visit, or somewhere you’re traveling through. I am often asked, ‘What is place writing?’ As a field of study, it is frequently linked with the more familiar genres of nature writing, memoir, travel writing, and autobiography. ![]()
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