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I don’t write much about writing, but I was talking to a friend recently who has a completely different approach to setting than I do, so it was in my mind.
Many writers, especially of sf and fantasy, think inventing imaginary places is the best part of their job. I’m the opposite. Not only do I not like to invent places, I don’t even like to write in settings that I haven’t actually visited. Even when I write fantasy set outside of the real world, I tend to base the geography very closely on real places. If it’s mythological India, it’s mythic!will-become-Pune or mythic!will-become-Delhi, not mythic!totally invented Indian location; if it’s post-apocalyptic America, it’s a new town built atop the ruins of the real Marina del Rey (currently ten minutes from my apartment via the 10 W to the 90 W.)
Even when I do invent a place, like the city in The Taste of Honey, it tends to be more of a composite of real places (in that case, of every city I’ve ever loved) than a complete invention from scratch.
(It is very difficult to separate setting from culture. The buildings, the food, the crops, everything but the untouched wilderness arises from the cultures of the people who live in an area (and sometimes the untouched wilderness turns out to only be untouched by foreigners.) That being said, the last thing anyone needs is another white writer posting on how to write cultures she doesn’t belong to. So while I do realize that setting and culture aren’t really separable, I do not intend this post to be about how to write cross-culturally.)
(Also, I mean to be descriptive, not prescriptive. I don’t think that my way of writing is better than yours. Actually, mine may reflect a lack of imagination.)
My approach to settings is summed up by an interview with Tim Roth, a British actor who has frequently played Americans. He was asked how he approaches accents, and he said, “Everyone knows you can’t do an ‘American accent.’ But a lot of people think you can do a New York accent, or a Minnesota accent. I like to pick a very specific area and spend time there if I can, listening to people who live there. Maybe I’ll imitate one guy I meet. That way if I’m wrong, at least I’m only off by a couple of blocks, not by an entire state.”
I try to only be off by a couple of blocks. I’d rather mix up the décor of the subway station on Hollywood and Vine with that of the station on Hollywood and Western than to, say, be unaware that LA has subway stations, or to assume that they’re filthy and gross. (They’re very nice, or at least the Hollywood-downtown line is.)
Before I start writing, I like to know where I’m writing: ideally, not just what country and which state, but which part of which city or forest. I want to know the color and texture of the dirt, whether alleys smell like piss and whether it’s cat piss, goat piss, or human piss, if there are street vendors and what they sell, the season and the weather, what kind of plants grow there, whether the background noises are the cawing of crows and the tinkle of cross-walk music or the swish of cars and buzz of leaf-blowers, what you need to do to get a cold drink and whether it’ll be barley tea, boba tea, a bottle of Limca, or a green coconut with the top hacked off and a straw stuck inside.
I didn’t just make up those examples, incidentally. Food, seasons, and dirt are probably the top three things I want to know about before I start writing.
A lot of my favorite place-writers are English, which possibly inspired my obsession with weather, wildlife, dirt, and food. I almost feel like I’ve been to James Herriot’s Yorkshire, Alan Garner’s Cheshire, Kenneth Grahame’s idealized rural England of Wind in the Willows, Enid Blyton’s equally idealized boarding schools (proving that you can create a memorable and convincing setting without either detailed description or being a particularly good writer), and of course Tolkien’s very English Middle Earth.
But I would be unlikely to write a story set in England. I haven’t been there long enough to get a sense of that one block that’s the minimum I’d need to fully observe. I could read travel guides and other people’s books, but for me, that wouldn’t be enough. The dirt I’d write about wouldn’t be my dirt, it would be Alan Garner’s dirt. The exception for me is fanfic. In that case, I’m basing my setting on someone else’s setting anyway, so it’s no problem if my sense of place is entirely filtered through someone else’s experience – in this case, the original author’s.
Speak to me of the sense of place in reading, the sense of place in writing, how you convey it, what conveys it to you.
Many writers, especially of sf and fantasy, think inventing imaginary places is the best part of their job. I’m the opposite. Not only do I not like to invent places, I don’t even like to write in settings that I haven’t actually visited. Even when I write fantasy set outside of the real world, I tend to base the geography very closely on real places. If it’s mythological India, it’s mythic!will-become-Pune or mythic!will-become-Delhi, not mythic!totally invented Indian location; if it’s post-apocalyptic America, it’s a new town built atop the ruins of the real Marina del Rey (currently ten minutes from my apartment via the 10 W to the 90 W.)
Even when I do invent a place, like the city in The Taste of Honey, it tends to be more of a composite of real places (in that case, of every city I’ve ever loved) than a complete invention from scratch.
(It is very difficult to separate setting from culture. The buildings, the food, the crops, everything but the untouched wilderness arises from the cultures of the people who live in an area (and sometimes the untouched wilderness turns out to only be untouched by foreigners.) That being said, the last thing anyone needs is another white writer posting on how to write cultures she doesn’t belong to. So while I do realize that setting and culture aren’t really separable, I do not intend this post to be about how to write cross-culturally.)
(Also, I mean to be descriptive, not prescriptive. I don’t think that my way of writing is better than yours. Actually, mine may reflect a lack of imagination.)
My approach to settings is summed up by an interview with Tim Roth, a British actor who has frequently played Americans. He was asked how he approaches accents, and he said, “Everyone knows you can’t do an ‘American accent.’ But a lot of people think you can do a New York accent, or a Minnesota accent. I like to pick a very specific area and spend time there if I can, listening to people who live there. Maybe I’ll imitate one guy I meet. That way if I’m wrong, at least I’m only off by a couple of blocks, not by an entire state.”
I try to only be off by a couple of blocks. I’d rather mix up the décor of the subway station on Hollywood and Vine with that of the station on Hollywood and Western than to, say, be unaware that LA has subway stations, or to assume that they’re filthy and gross. (They’re very nice, or at least the Hollywood-downtown line is.)
Before I start writing, I like to know where I’m writing: ideally, not just what country and which state, but which part of which city or forest. I want to know the color and texture of the dirt, whether alleys smell like piss and whether it’s cat piss, goat piss, or human piss, if there are street vendors and what they sell, the season and the weather, what kind of plants grow there, whether the background noises are the cawing of crows and the tinkle of cross-walk music or the swish of cars and buzz of leaf-blowers, what you need to do to get a cold drink and whether it’ll be barley tea, boba tea, a bottle of Limca, or a green coconut with the top hacked off and a straw stuck inside.
I didn’t just make up those examples, incidentally. Food, seasons, and dirt are probably the top three things I want to know about before I start writing.
A lot of my favorite place-writers are English, which possibly inspired my obsession with weather, wildlife, dirt, and food. I almost feel like I’ve been to James Herriot’s Yorkshire, Alan Garner’s Cheshire, Kenneth Grahame’s idealized rural England of Wind in the Willows, Enid Blyton’s equally idealized boarding schools (proving that you can create a memorable and convincing setting without either detailed description or being a particularly good writer), and of course Tolkien’s very English Middle Earth.
But I would be unlikely to write a story set in England. I haven’t been there long enough to get a sense of that one block that’s the minimum I’d need to fully observe. I could read travel guides and other people’s books, but for me, that wouldn’t be enough. The dirt I’d write about wouldn’t be my dirt, it would be Alan Garner’s dirt. The exception for me is fanfic. In that case, I’m basing my setting on someone else’s setting anyway, so it’s no problem if my sense of place is entirely filtered through someone else’s experience – in this case, the original author’s.
Speak to me of the sense of place in reading, the sense of place in writing, how you convey it, what conveys it to you.
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