Place can be described and
brought to life, brilliantly, in ways you might not readily imagine.
Too much physical description can be as misplaced as too little. If the depiction of the setting does not bring with it the culture and the spirit of the people, we will not know who the characters are.
The history of the original inhabitants is crucial.
From The Age of Innocence by
Edith Wharton:
“The Beauforts house was
one of the few in New York that possessed a ballroom (it antedated
even Mrs Manson Mingotts and the Headly Chiverses); and at a time
when it was beginning to be thought provincial to put a 'crash' over
the dining room floor and move the furniture upstairs, the possession
of a ballroom that was used for no other purpose and left for three
hundred and sixty four days of the year to shuttered darkness, with
its gilt chairs stacked in a corner and is chandelier in a bag; this
undoubled superiority was felt to compensate for whatever was
regrettable in the Beaufort past.”
“New York has always been
a commercial community and there are not more than three families in
it who can claim and aristocratic origin in the real sense of the
word...
The van der Luydens, direct
descendants of the first Dutch Governor of Manhatten who stood above
all of them had faded into a kind of super terrestrial twilight..
They divided their time between Trevenna their place in Maryland, and
Sutercliff, the great estate on the Hudson which had been one of the
colonial grands of the Dutch government of which Mr. Van der Luyden
was still a patroon."
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So what do these passages
say about place? The topic is not, by any means, limited to the
physical description. If a writer were to leave it at that and not
describe the character's social standing, then
we would not know who they are.
If you take a look at the
south, you may think that the fertile soil and temperate climate
would produce happy stories of people who are totally at ease. This
is not always the case. Can anyone tell me why? The culture and the past are
somewhat at odds with the lush setting; it is that contrast and the
brutality of the change forced upon it which have yielded the greatest stories. The expression, 'may you always live in changing times,' has particular appeal to writers.
William Faulkner created the
fictional Yokaipatawa county where:
“Life was created in the
valleys. It blew up into the hills on the old terrors, the old lusts,
the old despairs. That is why you must walk up the hills so you can
ride down.”
In Absalom Absalom, Thomas
Sutpen is a character who sought to wrest his mansion out of the
muddy bottoms of the north Mississippi wilderness. He was a man,
Faulkner said who wanted sons and the sons destroyed him.
Some stories have shifts in
the settings and the description of that shift, or explanation, can
imbue great tension in the action. I have chosen a passage from
Alexander Dumas, The Count of Monte Christo:
“Meanwhile through a gully
between two walls of rock, following a path worn by a torrent, which,
in all probability human foot had never before trod, Dantes
approached the spot where he supposed the grottos much have existed.
Keeping along the coast and examining the smallest object with rapt
attention, he thought he could trace on certain rocks, marks made by
the hand of man. Time, which encrusts all physical substances with
its mossy mantle, as it invests all things moral with its mantle of
forgetfullness, seemed to have respected these signs, traced with a
certain regularity and probably with a design of leaving tracks.
Occasionally these marks disappeared beneath clumps of myrtle which
spread into large bushed laden with blossoms or beneath parasitical
lichen. Edward had to move branches on one side or remove mosses in
order to retrace the marks which were to be his guide in this
labyrinth...”
“At last after fresh
hesitation, Dantes entered the second grotto. The second grotto was
lower and more gloomy than the first; the air that could only enter
by the newly formed opening had that mephitic smell Dantes was
surprised to find in the firs. He waited to allow the pure air to
displace the foul atmosphere and entered.
The treasure, if existed was
buried in this corner. The time had at length arrived; two feet of
earth removed and Dantes fate would be decided. He advanced toward
the angle and summoning all his resolution, attacked the ground with
a pickaxe. At fifth or sixth blow the pickaxe struck against an iron
substance. Never did funeral knell, never did alarm bell, produce a
greater effect on the hearer. Had Dantes found nothing, he could not
have become more ghastly pale. He again struck his pickaxe into the
earth and again encountered the same resistance, but not the same
sound.
'It is a casket of wood
bound with iron,' thought he."
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How many movies, comic
books, and cartoons have recreated that scene? It has become a expected
now, but that was the original.
The most profoundly
beautiful description of a setting, would induce nothing but
a big yawn if a desperate situation did not immediately follow.
Alfred Hitchcock used to say, get your character's in a pickle so we
can watch them work their way out. He was a great one for using a
setting dramatic in and of itself to help this concept along.
Consider this example of the
technique from another master, Charles Dickens. This is from Great
Expectations:
“Ours was the marsh
country down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles
of the sea. The first most vivid and broad impression of the identity
of things, seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw
afternoon towards evening. At such a time, I found that this bleak
place, overgrown with nettles was the church yard; and that Philip
Pirrup, late of this parish and Georgiana wife of the above, were
also dead and buried; and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the
churchyard intersected with dykes and mound and gates with scattered
cattle feeding on it was the marshes; and that low leaden line beyond
was the river; and that distant savage lair form which the wind was
rushing, was the sea; and that small bundle of shivers growing afraid
of it all and beginning to cry was Pip.
'Hold your noise,' cried a
terrible voice, as a man started up from among the graves at the side
of the church porch. “ Keep still you little devil, or I'll cut
your throat.”
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Descriptions of settings
can indicate what kind of story you are about to read. The ability to
weave that through the opening pages can be what
distinguishes the classics and the prize winners.
Here at writingnorthidaho, we are always interested in what our readers like to know. Please drop us a line and let us know what you think.
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