Indulge me for a few minutes while I engage in a brief exercise. (Yes, it's a writing thing.)
On Thursday, I had lunch with a few other writers and book lovers, organized by the fabulous River Jordan. My critique partner/Wonder Twin was there, along with this very nice writer/professor guy (whom I have known for quite some time now), as well as a few new faces (incredibly interesting Brad, bubbly adorable Tomi, sweet lovely Gloria - all of whom were great company). We gathered at the Capitol Grille, the restaurant in the Hermitage Hotel in downtown Nashville.
Thank God for the Internet.
I'd never been there, but I'm thinking this is definitely not the kind of place that you can schlep in wearing your faded jeans and WILL TALK BOOKS WITH ANYONE t-shirt. No. (Picture Julia Roberts walking into the Regent Beverly Wilshire for the first time in Pretty Woman.)
So I find and peruse the website. Valet parking. Dress code. Doormen in those uniforms. FIVE. STARS.
I am not - not, I tell you - a 5-star hotel/restaurant kind of gal. I'm way more comfortable in said jeans and t-shirt than I am in a dress. But dress I did (blouse and skirt and sandals, quite appropriate, I discovered), and let the buff guy in the black slacks and golf shirt park my Honda, and let the doorman direct me to the restaurant (to the right and down the stairs, miss), and proceeded to enjoy a lovely lunch (quite reasonably priced, actually) with old friends and new. I even used my knife and fork (although admittedly did eat my dainty chips of the fish-and-chips special with my fingers, as everyone else who had it did too).
I felt so uptown, tipping the valet when he brought my car back. But I tell you, I couldn't get those nylons off fast enough when I got home.
Saturday, hubby had a rehearsal with the Nashville Praise Symphony (of which he has been a member since its inception in 2002 - pardon my pride moment there). Our youngest and her friend went with me to help serve lunch to the orchestra members. We set up tables, set out the food, poured drinks and cleaned up afterward. A couple of the other wives rounded out the serving team. As I stood back and observed the crowd (a sometimes unnerving habit of mine), I couldn't help but marvel at the stark contrast between the two days.
It's quite a study, really.
Thursday: Suits and skirts, valets and doormen, tips and tablecloths, and one stunning art deco men's room (yeah, you're supposed to see it, even if you're not men - JT took me in there). A relatively quiet, conservative atmosphere. Me, being served, even pampered a little.
Saturday: Jeans, t-shirts, shorts, golf shirts. Big Baptist church choir room. Lots of activity and fellowship. Me, serving other people.
As a writer, I can look at the two scenes as described above and picture them in my head (the fact that I was present for both aside). Can you? And can you see the differences beyond what I've listed here? You can picture it, can't you?
These are the kinds of things we think about when we're setting a scene. With a few notable but rare exceptions, not every story takes place in exactly the same setting, scene to scene. Right? Wouldn't you, as a reader, be bored to tears without a little variety (as I said, notable exceptions notwithstanding) within the story? The most exciting aspect of this is that every reader has his/her own imagination that fills in whatever gaps we writers might leave (purposely, because less is more), and may see each scene just a tiny bit differently than someone else sees it.
Character and plot are important, obviously, but you have to have setting to complete the triangle. How exciting would James Bond be if you couldn't see where he was? Or Lucas Davenport? Jack Reacher? And Taylor Jackson? I'm admittedly a bit biased when it comes to Taylor, but JT does an outstanding job of describing Nashville in her series. She insists the city is a character in and of itself, and it is, especially the way she draws it.
It would be interesting to see a list of books that you (gentle readers) consider great that take place all in one setting. I'm sure there are some out there, and I'll beg your forgiveness that I don't know any off the top of my head. But feel free to contribute your picks in the comments section. Or, if you want to expound on any that do incorporate setting well, please don't hesitate to list those too. We'd all like to see what you see.
Wouldn't we?
9.20.2010
9.02.2010
I have an idea ...
It's the age-old question, the one every writer on the planet has been asked at least once (if not a bazillion times) - where do you get your ideas for your books? And every writer on the planet has pretty much the same answer, albeit in many, many different forms. The simple answer, at least from where I'm sitting, is ... from life itself.
For instance, after I dropped our youngest off at school this morning, I took the back way home, and at a stop sign I pulled up behind an SUV that had a Northern Arizona University sticker on the back window, along with an NAU Alumni license plate frame. (Having been born in Arizona and having spent part of my Air Force Brat childhood there, whenever I see anything from or about Arizona, it captures my attention.) My first thought was, I'm going to have to hit the Interweb when I get home and find out where Northern Arizona University is, exactly. (It’s in Flagstaff, in case you’re interested.) My second thought was, how did an NAU grad end up in Tennessee?
And there it is. It sprouts from a tiny seed of wonder into a full-blown barrage of questions. Was this person originally from Arizona? If so, where? How did s/he end up at NAU? What did s/he study there? What brought him/her to Tennessee? Is s/he married? Does s/he have children who might be going to school with mine? What does s/he do for a living now?
These are the kinds of questions you ask yourself, as a writer, when you're creating a character. Where did s/he come from? Where is s/he going? What makes him/her tick? Once you have your character in mind, then you get to wonder things like, what kind of job does this person have? What if s/he's, I don't know, say ... a cop? Or a private investigator? A lawyer? Which leads to more questions: Is s/he going to work, placing the SUV in this exact spot in front of me so that I could begin to wonder about all these things? What does this job have in store for this person today? What if this lawyer's most important client just discovered a dead body in his house ... and it isn't anyone he knows?
And there's an idea for a story. Admittedly not a great one, but maybe now you see my point. Ideas for our books take root and grow from the tiniest, sometimes most innocent, innocuous thoughts. And they grow, and grow, and eventually you have 95- to 100,000 words expanding on that single, tiny thought.
Our kitchen has a bay window that overlooks our back yard from second-story height. To the south of the window, off the hallway that leads to the garage and the other levels of the house, is a deck. Attached to the deck rail on the north side is a hummingbird feeder, which is strategically placed so that I can see it from - you guessed it - the bay window in the kitchen.
I love to sit here at the table and watch the hummingbirds. I watch the field birds (cardinals, finches, chickadees, jays, and the occasional woodpecker or oriole) eat from our bird feeders, which are smack in the middle of the back yard. I watch McCartney and Calliope (our English shepherd and miniature beagle, respectively) play and romp and chase each other all over the place. In the fall, I watch the deer come out of the woods to graze the long, flat rectangle of grass between the back of our yard and our neighbor's. And I sit at my kitchen table, watching the birds and dogs and deer and thanking God I have the ability and intelligence and insight to do this, because it brings me to a place of peace and relaxation so that my mind is free to ponder on the things I have observed, those things from whence my ideas for writing come.
What about you other writers? Do you answer this question - where do your ideas come from - in the same way? Do you look at life and say, what if ... ?
For instance, after I dropped our youngest off at school this morning, I took the back way home, and at a stop sign I pulled up behind an SUV that had a Northern Arizona University sticker on the back window, along with an NAU Alumni license plate frame. (Having been born in Arizona and having spent part of my Air Force Brat childhood there, whenever I see anything from or about Arizona, it captures my attention.) My first thought was, I'm going to have to hit the Interweb when I get home and find out where Northern Arizona University is, exactly. (It’s in Flagstaff, in case you’re interested.) My second thought was, how did an NAU grad end up in Tennessee?
And there it is. It sprouts from a tiny seed of wonder into a full-blown barrage of questions. Was this person originally from Arizona? If so, where? How did s/he end up at NAU? What did s/he study there? What brought him/her to Tennessee? Is s/he married? Does s/he have children who might be going to school with mine? What does s/he do for a living now?
These are the kinds of questions you ask yourself, as a writer, when you're creating a character. Where did s/he come from? Where is s/he going? What makes him/her tick? Once you have your character in mind, then you get to wonder things like, what kind of job does this person have? What if s/he's, I don't know, say ... a cop? Or a private investigator? A lawyer? Which leads to more questions: Is s/he going to work, placing the SUV in this exact spot in front of me so that I could begin to wonder about all these things? What does this job have in store for this person today? What if this lawyer's most important client just discovered a dead body in his house ... and it isn't anyone he knows?
And there's an idea for a story. Admittedly not a great one, but maybe now you see my point. Ideas for our books take root and grow from the tiniest, sometimes most innocent, innocuous thoughts. And they grow, and grow, and eventually you have 95- to 100,000 words expanding on that single, tiny thought.
Our kitchen has a bay window that overlooks our back yard from second-story height. To the south of the window, off the hallway that leads to the garage and the other levels of the house, is a deck. Attached to the deck rail on the north side is a hummingbird feeder, which is strategically placed so that I can see it from - you guessed it - the bay window in the kitchen.
I love to sit here at the table and watch the hummingbirds. I watch the field birds (cardinals, finches, chickadees, jays, and the occasional woodpecker or oriole) eat from our bird feeders, which are smack in the middle of the back yard. I watch McCartney and Calliope (our English shepherd and miniature beagle, respectively) play and romp and chase each other all over the place. In the fall, I watch the deer come out of the woods to graze the long, flat rectangle of grass between the back of our yard and our neighbor's. And I sit at my kitchen table, watching the birds and dogs and deer and thanking God I have the ability and intelligence and insight to do this, because it brings me to a place of peace and relaxation so that my mind is free to ponder on the things I have observed, those things from whence my ideas for writing come.
What about you other writers? Do you answer this question - where do your ideas come from - in the same way? Do you look at life and say, what if ... ?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)