I understand (good) story-telling as a forced collision between characters in real, but exaggerated worlds. And how does one write about such worlds but through their own experiences--equally exaggerated, mind you, altered by necessary liberties.I don't buy that a person can write a great story in a setting they've never experienced. If your story takes place on the streets of New York but you've never made it passed Chilliwack, you story will falter as soon as you try to depict the unknown world.
There must be something to all the commentary on the importance of travel. Steinbeck followed soldiers around England, North Africa, and Italy during the Second World War, sending dispatches to the New York Herald Tribune that culminated in the Pulitzer winning Once There Was a War. Hemingway's experiences at war, in Spain, on the green hills of Africa also resulted in works of unparalleled brilliance.
Hell, I think it's fair to say any great novel I've read is steeped in personal experience--much of it stemming from travel.
So, what does a week-long trip to San Diego offer me? Not much, considering the brevity of my trip, but the people I saw/met seem to be forming into potential characters--albeit rough sketches.
- The San Diego civil engineer with his careful, clean appearance, sitting on a plane with a stack of official documents on his lap. His fear of flying evidenced by a constant shuffling of paper, repeated adjustments of his shirt collar.
- A Mexican maid at a resort, grinding through her days folding wealthy people's clothes, making their beds, cleaning up their piggish messes. She feels no guilt when stealing the left-behind travel bottles of shampoo and body wash, all the while picturing her thirteen-year-old daughter miles away at home by herself yet again. The threat of her husband returning, finding where they've fled to, always at the forefront of any activity.
- The surfers in their wet-suits, standing along the beaches of La Jolla, watching the waves with uncertainty, knowing this is not a good place to surf--too risky. But wanting to do it for some unspoken glory between them, a conquest shared with no one else.
- Also on the cliffs above La Jolla cove, a fiercely tattooed father who has been granted visitation rights with his child--a young, timid boy who does not want to be here with him. The father's love intense and violent--the only way he's ever known how to handle such complex emotion, mixed with anger at his ex, the courts, the world in general. Everyone to blame but him. But the power now in his hands as he stands along the cliffs, his grip on the scruff of his boy's neck. The waves crashing below them.
3 comments:
Cool, although I disagree. Shakespeare never went to Verona--or ancient Rome, for that matter.
But setting is tough, I think the toughest thing to get right. There's nothing worse than a book that tries to convey setting and fails. I mean, there's thousands of private eye books set in L.A., and one Raymond Chandler.
The real question, for me, is what makes a great setting? Street names? Attitude? Local politics?
That's true and I know Shakespeare is supposedly beyond criticism. Not being an expert on his works by any means, I raise the question as to whether setting was as intrinsically important to his plays back then as it seems to be in fiction now. Was his Rome believable? Verona? Did it matter?
It matters now--and is pretty obvious (as you suggest) when it fails.
I'm not sure what aspects of setting are the most important. Even in my post, I found the setting of San Diego more of a reservoir for new, interesting characters. Perhaps then, the character is intrinsic? How they speak, act, relate to their environment? That would seem to help determine the validity of setting.
Dollars to donuts, though, if someone sets their story in a city or town they've never visited, they'll misrepresent it in some fashion. But maybe that's not important?
I suppose one can create fictional settings that incorporate several places--but even those likely stem from experience--however brief or superficial.
And, as you suggest, simply having visited a place doesn't make you adept at portraying it.
Verisimultude is tough. I think you have to visit a place, but it also helps to leave that place, too. Joyce did his best writing about Ireland from France and Switzerland.
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