Where you set your story can be as important as the characters you put in it. In some instances, setting can be very much like a character, with its own style and mood and personality. And, as with your characters, your setting should be one with which you’re very familiar.
If your story is set in a real or fictionalized version of a city or region (past, present, or future), what’s on the page must at least approximate the reality. Authors might spend years really getting the feel of a place, the nuance of it, and smart authors will choose somewhere exciting or exotic, or immerse themselves in places with stunning landscapes, or those steeped in fascinating history.
Unfortunately, I didn’t take the smart-author route. All of my books are set in places you wouldn’t want to go. The bad part of town. Homeless camps. Hospitals. Dilapidated apartments. Dementia care facilities. Barren stretches of desert. Spider-infested cellars…
When I started writing, I didn’t consider cultivating knowledge about a setting apart from what I already knew. I didn’t really consider setting at all. I just let what was around me work its way onto the page, and what was around me was mostly not pretty.
I lived with my husband in a tiny box of a rented house in Santa Maria, California. The Box House was near the intersection of Broadway and Main Street and a short walk from the Town Center Mall.
Also in the vicinity were St. Mary’s Church, the Salvation Army, the police station, the fire station, city hall, the courthouse, lawyers’ offices, and the library. A little farther away were a seniors-only apartment building, a seedy hotel, a just-as-seedy bar, and other random small businesses, including a corner store.
Sammy Keyes lives in a seniors-only highrise on the corner of Broadway and Main in the “fictional” town of Santa Martina. Near the highrise? A seedy hotel, a just-as-seedy bar, a corner store, the Town Center Mall, city hall, the police station, the fire station, the library, St. Mary’s Church, and the Salvation Army.
The setting was easy to keep track of in my mind. It was easy to follow Sammy Keyes wherever she went because these were my stomping grounds. I could make them feel real on the page because they were real in my mind.
Every seedy detail.
When my husband and I moved into the Box House, the four hundred square feet seemed luxurious. We’d lived our first year together in a tiny duplex that had a single way in (and out) and a bedroom doorway that was half blocked by the refrigerator.
Moving gave us a second bedroom, so despite the structure’s being a literal box, flat roof and all, we were grateful for the extra space and willing to spruce it up. We repainted the walls, replaced the carpet, refinished the cabinets, unstuck the windows, planted a lawn and shrubs, and built fences.
But as time would show us, there really is no polishing a turd. The roof leaked, the plaster peeled, the mold grew, the floor in the kitchen sagged as if it might collapse into the dirt cellar beneath it. Cats came to die (and decompose) by the floor heater under the house, and I swear the bugs were just letting us live there.
But worse than the decay surrounding us on the inside was what surrounded us on the outside.
Today, if you drive down the street where we lived, you would likely describe the neighborhood as quaint. It’s in what’s now called the Cottage District, and the houses in this area definitely have character, with no two being the same. But once we were living there, we got to know the neighborhood in a different way. We got to see the underbelly.
From the house across the street came regular shouting and screaming, which sometimes escalated into front-yard altercations, with police regularly zipping over from the station two blocks away to break up another round of domestic violence.
Behind us was a dirt alley that divided our street from the next one over. Designed for trash pickup, the alley was also the access point for shacks and converted garages that were rented to people living under the radar. This included drug dealers and gangbangers, who were clearly fond of punctuating the night air with gunshots.
Next to us on the west side was a little old man who’d had polio as a child and had no family to care for him. We helped him out but were told to keep away when a middle-aged man who saw an easy target moved in as his “caregiver.” Before long, elder abuse was in full swing, something we could hear clearly, as our windows were only a narrow driveway apart. Our calls to the police yielded nothing but animus and threats from the “caregiver” because the old man was too afraid to press charges.
Around the corner was the Salvation Army, where homeless people congregated. It wasn’t unusual to find a homeless person sleeping on our front porch in the morning or peeing in its sheltered corner at night.
Our plan was to work hard and save our pennies until we had enough for a down payment on our own place, and get out. When it was just my husband and me and the two big huskies, that plan seemed manageable.
Crowded, but manageable.
But when it was my husband and me, two big huskies, and two little kids, the plan began to crumble. At least, I began to crumble. “I am not spending another Christmas in this house!” became my annual refrain. There was no room to move, no space to bake, no spot for a tree, and with kids now, the tabletop variety was just not cutting it.
My sister likened living in our home to living in a submarine, and that was a pretty accurate description. Tables and chairs were folded up and tucked away when not in use. Things were stored under, behind, and over. My desk was a small secretary with a fold-down shelf, crammed against the wall at the foot of our bed. I sat on the edge of the mattress to use it.
Things went from tight to tighter, and despite my threats, Christmases continued to come and go. With kids in the picture, expenses grew and my patience shrank.
Nowhere in our plan was there a clause that said the move would take so long. If there had been, I would have come up with a different plan!
But day by day, week by week, year by year, time kept ticking. I wrote the first six Sammy Keyes books on a compact computer at that fold-down desk, letting the outside in as I sat on the edge of the bed.
The kids went from infants to toddlers to trike riders to bike riders. Santa brought bunk beds. Storage buckets stretched to the ceiling.
And then finally, finally, we moved.
Goodbye, Santa Maria!
But I couldn’t actually fully leave. I might not have been living in Santa Maria anymore, but I returned to Santa Martina in my mind each day for the next fifteen years as I continued to write about Sammy Keyes. Sammy’s world was undeniably a part of me, something that happened in a way I’d never intended, hadn’t seen coming, and couldn’t escape.
What’s also undeniable is that, despite my protestations, I wouldn’t trade those years in the Box House for anything, because that setting is what made Sammy who she is. Her world is steeped in underbelly. Her resourcefulness comes from not having things. When she’s trapped by a gangster in a spider-infested cellar with little to work with to save herself or the kidnapped girl she’s found there, I can picture exactly where she is. It’s just like the cellar beneath the Box House kitchen. I know all about the creepy pull-up door, the water heater that’s down there, all about the odds and ends coated with dirt, and the crawl space vent along the edge where you can see feet walking by outside.
I know exactly how icky and creepy and scared Sammy feels, trapped in that cellar.
I would like very much to forget that cellar.
And yet…
When I heard last year that the house was being demolished, I wanted to go. Not to watch, necessarily, more to say goodbye.
And it was weird. I got all emotional. It wasn’t that I was romanticizing having lived there; it was more that this was the place where so much began. The porch held the memory of drug-addled vagrants and puddles of pee, sure, but it also held the mailbox.
The Hope-in-the-Mail mailbox.
And, with time and distance and the eighteenth and final Sammy Keyes book recently completed, I recognized how much living there had given me.
How much I’d learned and grown by being there.
How there might never have been a Sammy Keyes if I’d had the good fortune to live somewhere better.
What this has taught me is that your setting plays a crucial role in the creation of your characters. Where you place them influences who they are, what they experience, how they react, and who they become.
Also that no matter how great our plan is, there are things we can never fully escape, any more than we can escape ourselves. And maybe as writers we’re actually fortunate to be in environments where the streets hiss with danger and characters lurk in the shadows.
So if you’ve experienced hard times, if you’re having trouble getting through them or moving past them, try using them. See if there’s something to be gained from them in both your creativity and your personal growth. Apply what you’ve been through to a fictional setting and to the creation of characters. Turn your pain and struggle into stories of resilience, compassion, and triumph.
Because the best way to truly get past hard times may be to look back on them with an eye toward what they’ve given you, as opposed to what they’ve taken.
In theory, creating a detailed outline of your novel before you begin writing it is a smart, practical, efficient idea. It will keep your story on track, help guide you through the process, and get you where you plan to go.
Since I’m someone who loves a to-do list, it seems logical that I would also love detailed outlining.
I do not.
Not for novel writing, anyway.
I have tried it on several occasions in hopes that it would make the revision process easier, but I’ve found that a detailed outline (a) stifles my creativity and (b) takes a lot of the fun out of the actual writing. There’s a sense of true excitement when you’re submerged in the creation of a story and something totally unexpected pops up. It’s that moment of transitioning from being at the helm of the story to being along for the ride.
For example, in a scene I was writing for the fifth Sammy Keyes book (Sammy Keyes and the Curse of Moustache Mary), I knew Sammy and her friends were going to come upon a little old lady dressed in black who was walking along the side of the road. I knew the lady’s name was Lucinda Huntley. I knew her Wild West backstory. I knew that she was on her way to crash the funeral of a lifelong foe.
What I did not know until the words appeared on the page was that Lucinda Huntley would be walking a two-hundred-pound pet pig.
A pig?
Hello?
What was a pig doing here? On the side of the road. With a tiny, hunched-over woman dressed in black.
I had no idea, but soon the pig had a name.
Penny.
And then the pig had a big black bow tied around her neck. And a personality. A snorty, intelligent, funny personality.
But…why? What was the pig going to do? What purpose did it serve?
I had no idea.
Still. I already liked the pig, so I threw caution to the wind and followed where it led.
Now, the danger of letting an unexpected pig nuzzle its way into your story is that it may lead you on a wild truffle chase. Or it may simply become a distraction with no real reason for being there. And the problem with that is that once you get to know the pig and have given it the chance to fall in love with the ornery cop in your story (which you find incomparably hilarious), it’s hard to be objective about what the pig is actually contributing to the story.
And if it turns out that the pig isn’t serving a purpose—if the pig starts to get in the way or you find yourself losing track of it—you must corral the thing and take a long, hard look at it. Because, come on, it’s completely impractical for a little old lady to have a two-hundred-pound pet pig, and do you really want to get into why she has it or where it sleeps?
If not, good writing requires that you get rid of the pig.
Cut it out of the story.
Hello, bacon.
Which is a whole slab of work. Much more than if you’d never followed the pig in the first place.
But here’s the thing about “going with the pig”: It’s fun. It’s unexpected. It’s exciting. Going with the pig puts joy in writing, and I highly recommend it if (and this is a big if) you’re willing to edit out the pig when it becomes clear that it is not earning its keep in your story.
Fortunately, what I’ve found is that most of the time your subconscious will find ways to put that pig to work. I like to think there’s a reason pigs show up in the first place, and that once I follow along for a bit, I’ll understand what that reason is. In the case of Penny, she became an integral part of solving the mystery, and she was, in fact, such a well-loved character that she survived the entire series and showed up to embarrass Officer Borsch one last time in the final book.
In civilized circles, “going with the pig” is referred to as “organic writing.” Some people also call it “pantsing,” which is an adaptation of the old expression flying by the seat of your pants, which basically means you’re actually kinda clueless about where your story’s going and you’re just following your characters wherever they lead. Writers are often asked, Are you a plotter or a pantser?
What I do is basically a balance of both. I may go with the pig, or have episodes of pantsing, but I’m also definitely a plotter, and in the end, furthering the plot (or contributing to character development) is going to win out over going hog-wild, stumbling after my characters wherever they may lead.
I call the hybrid of plotting and pantsing “signposting.”
Signposting gives you something that’s less than an outline and more than a blank page. Not only does it help get you where you’re intending to go and allow for surprise developments, it also breaks the story into more manageable chunks.
Imagine you’re taking a road trip from San Francisco to New York City. And let’s say that after looking at the various choices, you decide to take a southern route. Not the fastest way, but you want to visit places you haven’t been before. Your plan is to make it to the Arizona border by the end of your first day, then continue east, visiting Albuquerque, Oklahoma City, Memphis, and Richmond along the way.
Your destination is New York, but your first “signpost” is the Arizona border.
This is comparable to mapping out a (fairly linear) novel, where you plan the basic events that will take place in your story between the beginning and the end.
On your road trip (and metaphorically in your novel), what you do not have plans for on the section of road (or writing) that runs between San Francisco and the Arizona border is the flat tire in Bakersfield, or getting trapped inside a truck-stop porta-potty in Barstow, or that crazy guy dressed in nothing but sandals who jumped onto your back bumper and cried, “Fweeee wiiiiide!”
You could not have planned for those things, and yet there they are, part of your cross-country adventure. Part of your story.
In writing, I plan my signposts. Usually, a signpost is the place I hope to get my characters to by the end of the chapter (with “place” being either destination or situation). Sometimes reaching it takes more time than that—maybe three chapters, depending on the organic writing that happens along the way. But regardless of crazy naked dudes on my bumper or pigs appearing out of nowhere, the goal is always to get to that signpost. And the goal of that signpost is to keep me on track toward my ultimate destination.
Now, as your story unfolds, you may find that you need to add—or subtract—signposts. That’s okay. The trip is never going to go entirely as planned. And really, that’s how you want it. It’s the unexpected that keeps things interesting. So as you journey through your pages, keep one eye on the road and the other on your back bumper.
It’s a great way to get from here to there.
When a book is constructed without an ending in mind, it usually shows. Oh, the author can try patching things to cover it up after the fact, but it still shows. And sometimes it’s just bad. Like paint sprayed over Bondo in the afternoon wind.
It’s maddening to read a book that’s great until the ending, where it just kind of fizzles. Or frays. Or leaves you feeling meh. Especially if it was so good up until then. When people talk about a book like that, they’ll say how great it was, yadda-yadda, “but the author didn’t know how to end it.” And what’s sad is, that disappointment is what they remember most about the story.
You don’t want that to be your book. When you’re excited about a story, there is a big temptation to get started on it before the ending’s worked out. The writing devil on your shoulder will assure you that you’ll figure it out when you get there. And maybe you will…but maybe you won’t. In my opinion, knowing the ending is crucial. It’s what you should be driving toward, and it, as your destination, affects (or should affect) everything else. It is worth the wait to figure it out ahead of time.
My most extreme personal experience with this was my book Runaway—the story about Holly Janquell, a girl who escapes abusive foster care, then lies, steals, and sneaks her way across the country.
Holly is the same homeless girl who appears in Sammy Keyes and the Sisters of Mercy. The one who Sammy discovered was living in a camouflaged cardboard box down by the riverbed. The same girl I was writing about when that homeless woman in a pink dress knocked on my door.
After Sisters of Mercy was published, a teaching colleague who read the book told me he wanted to know more about Holly. How did she come to be homeless and living on her own in that box?
My epiphany regarding backstory and fleshing out the history of the characters didn’t kick in until I wrote Sammy Keyes and the Runaway Elf. So when I introduced Holly in Sisters of Mercy, all I really knew about her backstory was that her parents were dead and that she’d run away from bad foster care.
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