Location, location, location

Forums are great places to troll for talent and flush out ideas on how to use great settings to advance a plot. Many of the contributors to my Writing California blog series raised their hands in the LinkedIn Fiction Writers Guild and the She Writes forum, Novelists (Struggling or Not).

I posted a question about how place can also function as a character. Clare O’Beara pointed out that settings behave like characters when they intrude on people’s lives and affect the way people dress, behave and speak. The features that define a location, like weather in New England or traffic in New York City,become a player.

Clare is writing a SciFi novel set in  London, which is a larger than life character; everything from bin strikes to bees making honey, and all the historical, neighborhood and institutional references one could ever need, she tells us.

William M O’Brien Jr. ran with this thought, commenting that a setting can shove all other antagonists aside by presenting the protagonist with almost insurmountable problems. He writes:

In my dark fantasy mini-novel, my small force of freedom fighters faces a nearly impenetrable forest on their way to attack the capitol of an occupied country. The gigantic trees, crushing undergrowth and brush slow their way, while their enemies keep them from the roads.

Hmmm. Might The Capitol be a character in Hunger Games?

Last week  my author spotlight on Writing California featured John Bird, who set a car chase on a road between San Francisco and Sun Valley, Idaho because the route provided such a rich variety of locations for the twists and turns of the plot.

Man versus Nature

Last week I watched Klondike on the Discovery Channel. How different this story about gold miners attempting to claw a fortune out of frozen tundra is on Discovery than it might have been on, say, Hallmark. Hallmark productions tend to focus on relationships, letting setting provide a scenic background. Discovery documents the struggles of ambitious men versus an unrelenting environment that has the upper hand. Relationships play second fiddle.

So given the opportunity, where would I pitch The Sheep Walker’s Daughter?

No question (in my mind) it’s a family drama that would play well on the Hallmark channel. It would be a far different story on the Discovery channel. Basque history and culture would get a starring role. It might not be the story I wrote, but it’s the movie I’d like to see.

Readers: Is romance one person’s lips upon another’s,  or an evocative place and time through which lovers travel?

Writers: Is your story a Hallmark moment or a Discovery channeling history and landscape in compelling ways?

No right answers.