Marilyn's Musings

A Sense of Place When they begin thinking about their next book, many writers—especially mystery writers—start with a character. It’s important, obviously, to provide the reader with a person they can relate to, someone smart, attractive, funny, quirky—all the things that in our innermost secret places we wish we were more like. Or, alternately, authors may begin with a plot, the sudden clear sense that an idea, even just a passing snippet of one, could be developed into an intriguing novel. A lot of writers have half-finished stories just waiting for the right time, place, and character to arrive to make them come alive. Not me. I’ve always started with a place. There’s a story—possibly apocryphal—about novelist Phyllis Whitney, whose romantic thrillers were situated in all sorts of exotic locales. The story goes that she would decide where she wanted to go next on vacation, and then use that place as the setting for her new novel. I don’t know if it’s true or not, b...

Thank you, Marilyn, for hosting me on your blog today. I have to admit I was a huge fan of the television series Friday Night Lights, whose 63 episodes aired from 2006-2011. It told the story of a high school football team in the fictional town of Dillon, Texas. Running for six seasons, FNL centered around a coach, Eric Taylor, his wife, Tami, and a group of football players whose talents, decisions, and circumstances led them to a wider life beyond Dillon or a narrower life staying home. When it ended, I felt like I had lost a group of friends. Why? After much thought, I believe the town, its culture and expectations, and its human relationships reminded me of “a sense of place.” I understood and felt comfortable in that small town and with its characters—some with a huge sense of decency and selflessness, and others guided by narcissism and selfishness. It felt familiar. A good book is like that too. Reaching the last page, I hate to leave that place and time. For...

Sense of Place Though I've written about setting in the past, I'd like to approach it a bit differently today. Two of my favorite writers are masters at creating a sense of place in every novel they write. William Kent Krueger depicts cold and snowy weather in such a way that I often have to fetch a sweater to wear while reading. James Lee Burke, in his mysteries set in and around New Orleans, creates scents with words--something few writers can do. His descriptions of the bayous are wonderful. I do not claim to be anywhere near the writer these two are, but when I'm writing, my goal is to describe the places where my characters are, no matter what they are doing, in a way that seems real to the readers, and that they'll picture in their minds what I'm seeing in mine. In my Rocky Bluff P.D. series, the setting is a fictional small beach community much like others on the Southern California coast. Usually there are no weather extremes--excep...

Sense of Place is another way of saying Setting, isn't it? Maybe not, maybe it's a bit more. On a Facebook post--one about the fact that California's gas prices are the highest in the nation, topping even Hawaii, a friend wrote that this was yet another reason she was glad she'd moved out of California. My response was as a 4th generation Californian and with all nearly all my kids and grandkids in California it wasn't likely that I'd be moving anywhere. (I do have a four grandchildren who live out of state and their spouses, and one great grand.) Someone wrote back and said I must have a good sense of place--and I'm guessing the person meant when writing about California. I have to say that California is a really big place with a lot of different and unique geography, weather, towns and cities. So far I have stuck to settings in California, because that's what I know best. My Deputy Tempe Crabtree series is set in a mountain community much like ...

A Sense of Place and the Impact on Writer and Protagonist Guest blog by Carolyn J. Rose From the moment I opened a book by Zane Grey at the age of ten, I wanted to escape from the Catskill Mountains, to go west, to live beneath a huge expanse of sky. I dreamed of being away, of setting myself loose from the hold of family and place, of floating like a milkweed seed to some new place with a future only I would determine. I gave that same desire to Dan Stone, the protagonist of Hemlock Lake, knowing it would lead to conflict. Like me, he headed west when high school was finished. Like me, after a few years his visits home were infrequent. Like me, he found that he could leave the place, but that the place never left him. A break with the past is seldom clean, wounds inflicted then can fester for a lifetime, love given or withheld can change the course of a life. My memories of the hollows and ridges, the creeks and rills, are like stones in those centuries-old walls piled up when fields...