I am feeling pretty depleted.
This is almost entirely because of the place I’m in.
I need a new place.
There’s nothing dramatically wrong with where I’m at—quite a few people would happily trade me places. In fact, my area has seen a pretty explosive bout of growth in the last three years as huge numbers of people move out of the cities and up here into this little mountain valley in central Idaho. I don’t blame them; I mean, even I can’t deny how beautiful this place can be at times.
There are also times where I genuinely feel at peace here. I’ve seen some beautiful sights during my years living in different big cities, and some breathtaking scenery out in the wild on my trips across the American West, but there remains something profound in feeling that the wild places of this giant continent are right outside the front door. That’s a feeling I’ve only ever found here, and on the West Coast (it should surprise no one a boy raised in the mountains is obsessed with the ocean).
But, this is also the town where I was born and raised—the one I couldn’t wait to get out of as soon as I turned 18. I did leave, back then, and spent a decade trying life out in a few different cities, both big and small, but ended up coming back here.
And that was a good thing, at the time. I needed to come back, I needed to get my feet under me, and I am more than a little proud of how much I’ve accomplished in my nine years back here—but I only meant to come back for one. Somehow, that turned into two, then three, and, well, nine.
Nine years back in my hometown, out in the rural wilderness of Idaho.
No matter what else I might construct as part of my own personal “story”, the setting I find myself in is a powerful reality that dictates so much of what my tale is even capable of containing. In a county with a population density of 7 people per square mile, it sure isn’t going to be a story about meeting someone new and interesting every day.
But I am getting a bit off track here. The point of these monthly check-ins is to set the intention for the upcoming month, not to reminisce about the past; all I am really getting at, here, is that where we are matters. The place we’re in informs the story we tell, so let’s talk about place.
Let’s talk about the fictional city of Rust.
Everything Begins with the City
If you were to approach writing as a checklist of tasks, it would make a lot of sense to place “define the setting” as the first task on your list. I think, rather, that the first step in writing is to simply show up and write, a task much easier said than done. I am proud to say that I feel I can finally check this off. I have been showing up, consistently, and am eager to continue doing so.
It feels like an appropriate time, then, to move on to the next task: it’s time to figure out just where exactly I am. It’s time to develop a place.
The sentiment “everything begins with the land” is one I’ve seen expressed in numerous sources, from the stories of indigenous peoples to the stories of viticulturists. Every story must have a setting, of course, but the stories that touch us the most deeply are the ones that have a sense of place.
Let me get concrete with what I mean by asking a question.
Where does my story take place?
I’ve mentioned in earlier check-ins that I have been working on the setting for Project Sunlight for nearly a decade, so in a sense, I have a kind of answer to the question of where is this story: it is set somewhere in the vast sprawl of notes—which in sum comprise a fictional setting—that I have for convenience’s sake gathered into a single folder titled “Sunlight”.
But therein lies the problem, because this setting was not developed to tell a single story. Rather, it is an amalgamation of a bunch of different stories, each of which further expanded the borders of what this fictional place is. But, as I was getting at in the introduction above, a story set in the mountains of rural Idaho cannot be the same thing as a story set in San Francisco; a story set in the on the front lines of a war against the “outsiders” is not the same thing as a story investigating a murder in the heart of the city of Rust.
This isn’t to say that the width of a setting must be discarded in favor of fostering depth of place. What it means to be in rural Idaho is most definitely informed by the reality of San Francisco existing—the places our story does not go, but still incorporates, can help inform and define where we actually are. In this sense, the expansiveness of the setting is not a waste of time, but a useful tool. However, it is one that must be used to enhance the sense of place where the story develops; we generally are not reading to learn about the breadth of a fictional world, but are instead turning pages because we are hooked on how a character is experiencing that world.
As much as I, feeling stuck where I am, might wish it otherwise, our experiences are local. Local, and specific. I want that experience to shine through in my characters. In order to do that, I need to really think about “the land”; I need to evoke memory, locality, specificity, emotional connection to where the characters are.
To be specific, the kind of story told in “Welcome to the Bottom of the Well” …
… is not the same kind of story being told in “A Death in the Last Garden”.
Both stories take place in the same setting, but it’s only in the second story that I have begun to see how am emotional connection to place can develop. And that place is the city, Rust.
Let’s Make a City
So here is my intention for the next month: I want to highlight some of the standout portions of my vision of this fictional city, Rust, and I want to invite you to help me: to fill in the missing holes, smooth out the rough edges, and bring some diversity to this canvas.
I will continue with the Lone Navigator posts (I’m really enjoying them) but, before continuing any fiction writing, I want to engage in some world building—hopefully shared, in that I will invite comments, thoughts, and ask questions.
So, I’m stuck in place (Idaho); but I’ll use that restlessness to detail out the sense of place (the city, Rust) that I want my story to evoke.
What is Place to You?
To those writers who may read this post, I want to ask: does differentiating “place” from “setting” make sense to you? If it does, how do you do it? If it doesn’t, what am I missing in my understanding here?
To those readers (or anyone) who are of a mind to chime in: what fictional world holds a special place in your heart, and why is it so dear? What are some of the things that you most remember from your favorite speculative fiction that made you feel the impact of the setting?
For me, nothing can compare to Dune—perhaps in part due to the movie adaptations (especially, of course, Denis Villeneuve’s). Reaching further back into my childhood, the Redwall Abbey still stands out in my mind after all these years as a place I would truly love to sit down and enjoy a feast.
And, to anyone, really… how are things in your neck of the real world? Are you happy where you’re at, or are you dreaming of somewhere else, like I am?
When I think of the difference between place and setting I think of a story that could only happen in a certain world vs a certain world where things happen. Both can have good stories and writers and I don't think one is necessarily better than another.
For instance, discworld is a vibrant wonderful setting. Within that setting there are things that are always happening and it supports a whole ecosystem of vignettes, side-stories, and tangents alongside a few epic narrative arcs.
For a place, I'm thinking of many of the phillip K dick worlds, where the stories could ONLY really make sense in the context of a specific place, and often are explicitly surreal toy universes that are designed to fall apart or move forward a single weird thought "what if a man went in for surgery and the doctors discovered he was filled with electronics?". Or the blade runner world, which starts with a premise but is just ostensibly in LA in the future. These are rich worlds too, but they'd likely get worse and worse you more you filled in parts unrelated to the main question that created them.
I think Dune as well actually fits this as well, even though an extended universe got bolted on after-the-fact.