"In March the running water of the valley is bitter, acid cold, as snow on the fells begins to melt and is brought down over chilled rocks and icy beds. It has in it all the breaking soul of winter, thousands of dying flakes in one long, moving water-coffin."That's a powerful nature scene written by novelist Sarah Hall, describing earth-shaking changes in a rural area in Europe. Her novel Haweswater captured the difficult lives of a 1930's farming community in England, a setting she'd memorized during her childhood.
Last year she stopped by for a practical interview about her craft, showing us how to turn the most familiar settings into evocative novel scenes. That interview was one of my most popular posts, and I'm reframing the whole entry for your reading pleasure.
As winter looms, trapping us inside our houses, we should all follow Hall's advice and turn the environment outside our window into vivid setting? Click here to continue reading.
(This is an excerpt from my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a serialized set of weekly interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web writing.)
Jason Boog:
You grew up near the setting of Haweswater, and it shows so vividly in your prose. What's your advice for writers looking to write about a setting where they live? How can we write vividly about something we see every day?
Sometimes I think it's good to gain a little distance first.
That way the principle features and principle matters of home will take priority and really come through, and they will maybe have gained, in the remembering, that sense of being one-step removed already, one step romanced already, which helps fictionalize the actual.
I wrote Haweswater in America and I certainly think that helped, because the novel itself has a mood of nostalgia and loss to it, and I was very homesick at the time.
I also think writers often have a natural tendency to be observational, so the chances are as a writer you'll be noticing all you have to anyway, all the details and colour and local flavour, that's going to ultimately re-create the vernacular world in your work.
But keeping a notebook handy never hurts while you are in situ. In Victorian gardens they used to have these places called Forcing-Houses, where things were grown too fast, like early strawberries. That may or may not work for writing novels.
I guess when the place is ready to be written about it'll come easily and naturally or maybe you do have to encourage things to come out of season. I think it depends on how an idea gestates. Either way it's a personal way of working. And my only other advice is this: eat local honey.
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"In March the running water of the valley is bitter, acid cold, as snow on the fells begins to melt and is brought down over chilled rocks and icy beds. It has in it all the breaking soul of winter,... [Read More]
Tracked on: November 27, 2007 8:34 AM | Permalink to Trackback