Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.
I have been thinking a lot about images and writing lately. An image helps me focus and informs my writing. When working with an image, I can be more specific in sensory details.
Over at Teachers Write camp, the focus has been on character and dialogue and how the setting can be used to guide the dialogue rather than using tags. Megan Frazer Blakemore has a number of tips for writing dialogue.
I am using setting to inform my characters’ actions. In the sequel to Blessen that I am working on, I wanted to put in this tree. It is located on the grounds of a former Catholic girls’ school, and my husband tells me it is called “The Boob Tree.” Can you see why?
My former student/ middle school Beta reader advised that I change it. She said if my book was going to be read aloud in 3rd-4th grade classrooms, Boob Tree was way too embarrassing. So I took her advice and changed the tree to The Angel Tree. The tree becomes an important character and gets intricately involved in the plot.
I want the setting of South Louisiana to come through strongly. This morning while I was walking in the park, I came upon a nutria. Nutria are aquatic rodents. They are not too fearful of people (perhaps not too smart), so I got a good close up shot. A nutria makes an appearance in Sunshine (the working title of Blessen’s sequel.)
Something jumps beside the boat. A fish? A snake? An alligator? I paddle faster. It doesn’t help. The boat spins around. I try paddling on the other side. I spin back. I just stop, put the paddle inside the boat, and wait. Breathe.
Then I see it. A baby nutria with its tiny head sticking out above the water. He skims the surface, joining his family in a grove of cypress knees. I am mesmerized. They chatter together. Nutria language, foreign to me. Mother and baby look my way. I whisper hello. Mother nudges baby back into the water and they skim off together into the dark spaces between the trees.
Nutria are large rodents, a glorified rat. But I think they are cute, especially the curious babies. They are as big as a beaver, but their tails are long and skinny. My uncle, who we call Big Brother, used to hunt them for fun. He made me a string necklace once with two shiny orange teeth. He told me they were a nuisance, imported to Louisiana for their fur, but no one really wants a rat for a coat. They have multiplied and taken over.
A few years ago, Momma thought it’d be funny to feed us nutria spaghetti. She didn’t tell us what it was until we all had eaten. You should have seen my Pawpee’s face. He laughed so hard and said, “Cher, Deanie, you make the best nutria spaghetti around.”
–Margaret Simon, all rights reserved
How are you using setting to inform your writing?
Kim Douillard invites us to take a Photo-a-Day in August, trying to capture the unexpected. Both of the above images qualify as unexpected in nature. I am piggybacking on her challenge and asking you to write a scene, description, poem to accompany your image. The list is as follows:
So August’s challenge is to look for the unexpected as you enjoy the last of the long light and warm days (at least in the northern hemisphere). And to help you look, here are some prompts—one per day—to focus your attention and spur your thinking.
1. People
2. Place
3. Nature
4. Plants
5. Animals
6. Horizon
7. Food
8. Transportation
9. Light
10. Home
11. Smell
12. Sound
13. Garden
14. Inside
15. Thing
16. Drink
17. Sky
18. Outside
19. Neighborhood
20. Weather
21. Early
22. Texture
23. Words
24. Interaction
25. Walk
26. Arrangement
27. Trash (#Litterati)
28. Architecture
29. Close up (Macro)
30. Landscape
31. Pleasure
Once you find the unexpected and capture a photo of it, post a photo each day with the hashtag #sdawpphotovoices to Twitter, Instagram, Flicker, Google+ and/or Facebook (the more the better!), so that we can all enjoy the posts.”
Boob tree and Nutria spaghetti? I love how your setting and powerful word choice has made your writing so rich and descriptive. I can just imagine….and I suspect I will be thinking of this all day!
It’s always interesting to me to read a book that has a setting new to me, and the scene you shared is something a little scary to think of a young girl there alone. I will try to meet your challenge, at least some of the days. I too find it fun to write to a photo prompt. Love that you caught that nutria! Thank you, and best wishes for today!
I love losing myself in a new setting, too. My favorite this summer was the lake in New Hampshire in Cynthia Lord’s Half a Chance.
Margaret, I am intrigued by your new book since Louisiana is such a foreign setting for me. The introduction of the nutria as a character is fascinating as well. Your writing has such a flow to it that I too am mesmerized. Setting is such an important story element. As for your challenge, let me see if anything pops out at me.
Margaret,
I have been thinking a lot about setting too. AND using pictures to elevate our awareness, in writing and reading. Your post comes at a perfect moment.
I feel like the inability to really comprehend text has a lot to do with not being able to capture the setting clearly. As students grow in literature, setting becomes a character and they miss so much as they can’t translate those scenes meaningfully. None of us have schema for every setting, but isn’t that the beauty of reading. The fact that we can be in those places we’ve never been. I have never been to Louisiana (sadly) but the images I have of it are real and have been created by books. It is vivid place in my mind. Very distinct and fascinating.
I love the moment you shared with the nutria (more info to add to my schema!). I am intrigued, and this is the kind of text that I need to read aloud to my kiddos. We’d have to do a little research here and there,(thank goodness for google images ) and bring pictures into our room.
Finally, thank you for sharing Kim’s challenge and the daily list. This would be a good venture for me and my students (we start on the 12th!)
Thanks for such a thoughtful response. My trip to the Pacific Northwest made me realize just how different settings can be. I think place is important in writing. I hope to use more image based prompts this year. I think they lend themselves to more creativity.
Margaret, thank you so much for your thoughts today. Without a doubt, the environment and scenery in our tiny corner of the universe informs my writing.
My college professor who introduced me to poetry and creative writing often used photography as a portal to initiate the writing. It’s very effective and still my chosen path of creative exploration today.
There is always so much to learn when I read your posts! I have to say that my middle and high school students would have loved to read a book with a boob tree in it! They would have chuckled in the corner and translated the name for their friends who might not understand it. As I have never been in Southern Louisiana, your setting would also teach me so much more than just the story.
Can’t you just see the characters climbing over the boobs or sitting upon them. Maybe I could write two versions! Thanks for your comment.
Love the boob tree and the baby nutria! I think you should also write a story with the boob tree version of the tree.
I think you are right to change the name of the tree. It IS a perfect moniker for that tree, but sometimes there are so many distractors for adolescent minds that the real story in a book gets lost. So let’s be honest, that’s WHY some authors put in those distractors – because there’s not that much story to tell, or because they aren’t that good at storytelling. What I mean by this ramble is that you have the story and such an ability to tell it that you don’t need those other things! The part about the nutria was very informative and sunk me deeper into the setting. Of course the “place” is an important part of any tale. Things would happen differently if the action happened elsewhere. Great post!
Thanks for your comment and I totally see your point. The name of the tree would distract from the relationship of the two characters. I recently read The Secret Hum of a Daisy. Loved it. I noticed that everything had a symbolic reason for being in the story from the origami cranes to the horse. The boob tree would not serve any symbolic purpose while an angel tree might. So many things to think about when writing.
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