More on setting

Thanks to my fellow Type M'er Thomas Kies for his excellent discussion of one of my favourite topics: the use of setting in fiction. Setting is so much more than the location where the action occurs. As Tom says, it draws the reader into the story, engages their imagination, and allows them to live the experience along with the characters. It can capture many moods, from menacing to tranquil to uplifting, helping the reader to experience those moods as well. 

Setting is much more than the physical place; it is the season of the year, the time of day, the historical time period,  the weather, the people and culture of the place. The more vivid and specific these elements are, the more unique and powerful the story is. 

I love writing about Canadian settings not just because I know them best and can draw on all my experiences with them, but also because Canada offers endless possibilities. On the macro level, it has everything from rugged coastlines, rain forests, wide-open prairies, thousands of acres of trees and sparkling lakes, arctic glaciers and tundra. The farms, small towns, and big cities each have their own distinct flavour. The people of the Newfoundland fishing villages are vastly different from Alberta ranchers, British Columbian loggers, and remote northern hunters.

Trail riding in the Alberta badlands for THE ANCIENT DEAD

The four seasons are also very distinct. Setting a story against a backdrop of frigid cold, blinding snow, and long hours of darkness evokes a very different experience than the hot sun, gentle breeze, bird song, and lush green of summer. Autumn is a vivid tapestry of oranges, reds and yellows, the rich golden carpet of prairie wheat, leaves swirling in the air and crunching underfoot. Spring is soggy, muddy, brown and grey, with the excitement of little green shoots poking through the last traces of dirty snow.

The weather is an almost constant surprise, and therefore a pet topic of conversation among Canadians, whether it's the welcome spring sun or the third blizzard of the week. And we're not untouched by climate change either. Tornadoes, forest fires, floods, fierce thunderstorms– all of them can  ramp up the tension and drama in a story, and even play a pivotal character in it.

Kayaking in Georgian Bay for PRISONERS OF HOPE

Creating a vivid sense of setting works best when the writer has a vivid idea of it, and for me, that means  spending time there and experiencing all the things the characters do. Relying on book research, the internet, and other sources doesn't give me the visceral, five-senses impressions I want to capture. When I stood on a clifftop in northern Newfoundland, I could hear the thunder and crash of the waves, feel the fine spray on my cheeks, hear the cries of the birds wheeling overhead, and see the humbling vastness of the land. And I wanted the readers to experience all that too. An added bonus - it made a fantastic trip!

Hitting the road

Barbara here. One of the great joys of being a writer is getting the chance to travel, whether it's into the head of a person very different from yourself or to a physical place you've always wanted to see. We writers can go anywhere, at least in our heads.

Each one of my Amanda Doucette novels is set in a different iconic location in Canada. I did this quite deliberately, because Canada is an extraordinarily varied country spanning seasides, forests, deserts, mountains, and northern tundra as well as charming villages and dynamic cities. I wanted the chance to visit it all, as well as the chance to share my discoveries with others. Canada is a modest place, inclined to say sorry and not at all inclined to toot its own horn. We have cultural, historical, and geographical treasures that we are too modest to brag about.

So the Amanda Doucette series began in Newfoundland, continued on in the Laurentian Mountains of Quebec and to Georgian Bay in Ontario, an unsung paradise of thirty thousand islands in a bay big enough, but for a technicality, to qualify as the sixth Great Lake. During the writing of each book, I read books on history, culture and current events, consulted sources, and spent time visiting the location and walking in Amanda's shoes. I wanted readers to feel as if they were there, and I wanted each nuance to be as vivid as possible. The bonus – each book has enriched my understanding and love of the places.

Amanda is now heading west into the Alberta badlands for book #4, and I am having a wonderful time learning about Alberta. I am currently working my way through 13 books on the prairie province's history, politics, and people. Going to school in Montreal during the fifties and sixties, I learned almost nothing about the settling of the west, and everything I learned about the history of Quebec and the Atlantic provinces was heavily Anglo- and Euro-Centric. Looking at all this information through twenty-first century eyes, as well as the wisdom of over half a century of my own lived history, has been a gift that goes far beyond the writing of my next crime novel. It enriches me as a person and a citizen, and helps me interpret events in the world. We should never stop learning.

I still have not yet set pen to paper on this book. Nor do I actually know what it's going to be about, but all my stories are rooted in place and history, and this research, along with discussions with people who live there, will eventually yield up the seeds of a dramatic story. My next step will be to travel there in person, so that I can visit the places, fill all my senses, and see for myself the nuances that make the badlands unique. Maybe even hear the stories that the badlands themselves tell. I am planning this research trip for September– two weeks in a rental car visiting Dinosaur Provincial Park, the Royal Tyrell dinosaur museum, horseback trail riding, Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park, and reconnecting with my cousins in Lethbridge and my writer friends in Calgary.

By the time I finish the Amanda Doucette series, I hope to have visited most corners of Canada and stood in the shoes of people from all different places and walks of life. If through those journeys I can share a bit of what I've learned with readers, I will be delighted. Imagination and empathy are two priceless qualities that writers bring to a world much in need of both. And travelling opens the way to both.

Making A Real World

Great-grandfather's farm

After I read Vicki’s entry about location research, below, I commented that I’ve researched a lot of places using Google and imagination. But upon reflection, I have to admit that is not really true. I think that it’s incredibly helpful to experience a place before writing about it. My series is set in a place that I know down to my bones, because I was raised there. However, the place I write about and the place I was raised no longer exist, so I actually rely on memory—and use imagination to fill in the gaps.

Where I live now

But it’s true that there is no substitute for actually experiencing a place. I’ve been to Britain several times, and every time I'm reminded that we may speak a common language (kind of), but we are not the same. I get the same impression when I travel to different part of the United States. I moved  to Arizona thirty-four years ago and was quite surprised to find out that it's very different from Oklahoma. I did not recognize one native plant, tree, grass, bug, bird, or lizard. Who would have thought it? Both states are located in the American Southwest. You'd think the cultures and the landscape would be basically the same. But in my experience, keeping in mind that I am not an Arizona native and live in a giant metro area, Arizona is culturally like back door Los Angeles, but more conservative in attitude. Oklahoma, at least when I lived there and knew it best, is easily as conservative as Arizona, but the culture is like nowhere else I've ever been. Put Texas, Arkansas, New Mexico, and Kansas in a blender and mix it well, and you may get an idea. I am quite politically and socially liberal, but I can't deny that I am marked by the values of the place I grew up. And it shows in the characters and themes I write about.

I was born and raised in Tulsa, a rich oil town located in the hilly bend of the Arkansas River. I came up among people in three piece suits, cowboy boots and stetsons. My father owned a construction business and raised quarter horses on the side. My mother ran his office. I rode horses every weekend. The picture at the top is my great grandfather's farm in eastern Oklahoma, where I spent a lot of time when I was a kid. I played in blackjack woods draped with wild grapevines, hot and sweaty and covered in cockleburs and chiggers. I picked up wild pecans off the ground by the bucketsful in the fall. At the time, I'd have rather stayed at home and read a book. I was not a lover of the outdoors. Now I look back on it through a golden haze of nostalgia. In fact, I write about it.

The author creates a universe with her choices and invites a reader in. If the writer is really good, the reader is enveloped in the story and moves through it without being quite aware that he’s in a made-up world. The writing is all-enveloping, but unseen.

I’ve quoted this before, but it is to the point. The very best writing reminds me of one of my favorite Zen sayings: The fish is not aware of the water it swims in.

That’s what we writers are shooting for.

Have book, will travel

Barbara here. Work vacations are some of the great perks of being a writer. In a recent post I talked about my obsession with authenticity and realism in my stories, to the extent that I trekked all around the Great Northern Peninsula for FIRE IN THE STARS and endured a five-day winter camping expedition for THE TRICKSTER'S LULLABY. After that particular research trip, I vowed my next book would be set in Hawaii. Or on a Greek island.

I couldn't quite work either destination into my Amanda Doucette series – which is set in various iconic locations across Canada, alas – but I did the next best thing. I picked the beautiful islands of Georgian Bay in the sunny, warm summertime. Georgian Bay is a misnomer. It has sometimes been called the sixth Great Lake, but because of a quirk of geology it is not sufficiently separated from Lake Huron to be eligible for its own lake status. But at 15,000 square kilometres, it is no mere "bay". It is a UNESCO world biosphere reserve and home to the largest freshwater archipelago in the world. It has 2000 kilometres of rugged granite shoreline and at least 30,000 islands, which makes it a paradise for cottages, camping, boating, and especially kayaking. I did a kayak trip there a few years ago and always wanted to capture its wild beauty, powerful weather, and changeable moods. A perfect setting for drama, struggle, and escape.

Georgian Bay is about a 600 kilometre (375 mile) drive from Ottawa, so I had to plan my trip carefully. I could not jaunt back and forth each time a question arose, to double-check my facts or refresh my memory of specific locales. But since I don't really outline or plot my novels ahead of time, I don't really know what I need to know until I need to know it (if you get my meaning). This is the challenge of writing about a setting that is far from home. Another challenge is that Georgian Bay is a far different place at the height of the summer, when it bustles with tourists, adventurers, and cottagers cavorting on its sparkling waters, than it is in the icy grip of winter. I needed to see the area in the exact season I was writing about.

So my preliminary musings about PRISONERS OF HOPE were based on my memory of my kayak trip, and last summer, while I was actually still writing THE TRICKSTER'S LULLABY, I made a quick three-day trip out there to scout locations. This past winter, when I started to write, I used my memory and my notes; I used that writer's great friend, Google; and I relied on maps, books, and friends. What I didn't know and couldn't find out, I made up. Along the way, I kept a running file on all the questions that surfaced. What does the hospital in Parry Sound look like? What do the cottages around Pointe au Baril look like? What does a Massassauga rattlesnake sound like and how fast does it move? How hard is it to paddle in the open bay? How big are the waves?

At the beginning of July, with about three-quarters of the first draft written, I set out to answer those questions.

Accompanied by my ever-patient sister and my less patient Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retreivers, I booked a little cottage for a week on the shore of Georgian Bay north of the town of Parry Sound, which, with a population of about 6500, is the regional hub for the area. Armed with my checklist, my iPhone camera, and a notebook, I drove north and south in and out of the coastline and talked to people along the way. By kayak and canoe, I explored the inlets and islands. I experienced sunny days, moonlit nights, misty mornings, and crashing thunderstorms. I took a three-hour lake cruise through the islands, I rented a kayak to trace part of the route Amanda would take, and I hiked along the shore cliffs and through the bogs and crags of the forest. I saw rattlesnake, deer, mink, turtles, frogs, toads, herons, ducks, gulls, geese, whippoorwills, woodpeckers, and more bugs than I cared to. But that too is part of the Georgian Bay experience.

I answered my questions and found new ones. I made notes about the changes I would have to make to the manuscript and mentally added the rich detail that will bring the final version to life. But all the while I had fun as I learned more about the beautiful jewel that was my setting. I watched my dogs interacting with the environment, playing in the water and reacting to the rattlesnake. Role models and inspiration for Kaylee, Amanda Doucette's lively Duck Toller.

It made a great combination of work and play, and at the end, after I've polished this novel over the coming months, I hope readers will feel as if they have stepped out of the pages and into the Bay, dipping their paddle in the sparkling water and clambering over the smooth pink shores. I hope they will feel the wind in their face and hear the waves slapping against the boat. I hope they will become travellers too.