Writing about Place

It’s not just about showing the reader a particular exterior landscape. It’s about giving them a particular interior landscape. ~ Cathy Day, “Teaching Tuesday: Setting”

If you’ve taken a writing course or workshop, you may have been given the prompt, “Where I’m from.” The first time I wrote with those three words in mind, I went back to a place and time in my youth when I was just beginning to notice family dynamics, beginning to identify but not quite understand:

Where I’m from is a two-lane road that winds into a cul-de-sac where the house on Hix still stands. As the front door opens, a long, low creak breaks the silence and makes you wonder, for a second, why we never bothered to grease the hinges.

The house is full of light and seems peaceful. And, it is most days. But down the cold, tile steps of the entryway and off to the left is the kitchen. There, bathed in the morning sunshine, I sit with my mother and her mother and the Sunday paper and watch them cut out coupons.

No one speaks, yet there is heavy presence. Not angry, but resigned. Weathered. Cognizant of something fragile, I eat my cereal with care.

Without my grandmother asking, my mother gets up and refills their cups of coffee.

“Can I get you some breakfast, Mama?” she says.

“No, baby, I’m fine.” Then quiet again, except for the sound of scissors tearing into paper.

It’s funny to see what details come to mind when writing about place (whether you’re interest is fiction or non). There’s so much I could have described: the two-story house with floor-to-ceiling windows, the pasture out back, and the creek beyond. But, it makes sense after I read Cathy Day’s quote above why I might consider more intimate details. I appreciate those kind of details even more, after studying this article by Dorothy Allison on place (published online at Tin House). Allison breaks it down with clarity and power:

[Place] is who you are and what is all around you, what you use, or don’t use, what you need, or fear, or want.

. . .

Place is not just what your feet are crossing to get to somewhere…it is something the writer puts on the page–articulates with deliberate purpose. If you keep giving me these eyes that note all the details–if you tell me the lawn is manicured but you don’t tell me that it makes your character both deeply happy and slightly anxious–then I’m a little bit frustrated with you.

. . . . Place is emotion. . . .

Place is people.

I’m thinking a lot about place these days; I’m writing historical fiction, where the landscape is integral to the story. As I struggle to bring into view the time period and what characters see on the outside–the exterior, I keep thinking about the aspects of the character themselves that will breathe life into their interior landscape as well.

Questions that appear at the end of Cathy Day’s post help, questions which certainly probe a writer about the “brick and mortar” details but ones that help the writer investigate deeper. Such as:

• What are the conflicts between neighbor and neighbor?
• Who is happiest about living or being in this place? who is least happy? (I might add: why?)
• How “modern” is it in comparison to the world around it? Is it behind the times? Or does it have its finger on the pulse of fads and fashions? Do the people here look up or down at any other place?

Click HERE to read more of Cathy Day’s post, and HERE to read the full lesson on place by Dorothy Allison.

What strikes you most about place?

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