A Sense of Place

Yesterday evening I had the good fortune to spend a few hours with a friend of mine whom I don’t get to see as often as I’d like. We met at a favorite spot of mine called The Flying Saucer. We sat out on the “porch”, sunk deep into leather couches and sampled a few foreign brews. It was well-spent time, catching up with my friend, commiserating about things that are common to most men in their mid to late thirties. And just enjoying the place.

The Saucer is one of those strange spots that, for lack of any fitting descriptor, seems more vivid than just about anywhere else. There is an atmosphere, a concreteness, an intangible thing that makes it more than the sum of its parts. If it was the setting for a story, it would be as important a literary element as the plot and the characters.

That’s one of the reasons that I like the southern authors so much. In their books the place is a character; the towns, the natural surroundings, the culture – each is described with something just short of anthropomorphism. You can see the love that the writer has for the place, itself. If you don’t quite get what I’m saying, pick up anything by Larry Brown.

When a writer has the ability to evoke a sense of place it pulls the reader deeper into the story, helping them to get their bearings in a landscape that exists in the mind of the author. When the reader is connected, they can follow the characters with greater confidence.

Good characters should be shaped by their surroundings, if they have any depth at all. To understand the place is to understand elements of the characters. To describe a Kansas farm suggests a great deal about Dorothy; do we really need to have the author tell us that she is bored? Can we not understand Kino and Juana’s quiet hope and resigned acceptance from Steinbeck’s crafting of La Paz?

I’ve often struggled with the literary charge of “show don’t tell” and I can’t think of a better tool that a strong sense of place to help me craft a good story while trusting the reader to follow along.

Readers: they’re smarter than you think.