Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook (35 page)

Coming to the island made me feel younger, a little more reckless, and as I finally went back to my car and closed the door— pausing one moment to lower the audio assault of the radio—I realized the island also made me lighthearted. I was willingly becoming re-addicted. As we arrived on the island, I pointed out the signs of summer's early arrival to Beth, my fourteen-year-old certified volcano.

"Oh, my Lord, look! There's Mrs. Schroeder!" I said. "I can't believe she's still alive." The old woman was draped over her porch swing in her housecoat.

"Who? I mean, like, who cares, Mom? She's an old goat."

"Well, honey, when you're an old goat like her, you will. Look at her, poor old thing with that wet rag, trying to cool her neck. Good Lord. What a life."

"Shuh! Dawg life better, iffin you ask me!"

I smiled at her. Beth's Gullah wasn't great, but we were working on it.

Is it the special qualities of Sullivan's Island working their magic, or would Susan have felt a sense of renewal arriving anywhere other than Charleston? It hardly matters. The beauty of seeing a locale through a particular perspective is that the point-of-view character cannot be separated from the place. The place comes alive, as does the observer of that place, in ways that would not be possible if described using objective point of view.

In alternate chapters, Frank's novel flashes back to the 1950s to relate the series of events that lead to her father's murder, so she later believes, by the Klu Klux Klan. In the first flashback, which we saw part of in an earlier chapter, Susan drives with her father to the rural side of the island to collect the new black housekeeper that the family has hired, the latest in a long string. On this drive young Susan views the island in an entirely different way, thereby giving us a glimpse of a white Southern girl's awareness of race in the 1950s:

I felt the spirits of freed slaves ambling along the roadside with great baskets on their heads filled with Sweetgrass and palmetto fronds for weaving more baskets to harvest rice or to hold vegetables. I saw small loads of just-picked cotton on the back of a buckboard wagon on the way to market, drawn by the slow clip-clop of a broken-down horse or mule.

When I came out here to Snowden, the hair on my arms stood up from goose bumps. Even though my family never owned a slave in all its history in the Lowcountry, my ancestors had prob

ably condoned it. Coming here to old plantation country made me uncomfortable having white skin. In the carefree existence of Island living, I never had to think about what slavery must've been, but out here in the country reminders were everywhere.

When point-of-view writing is done well, place and perception are inextricably entwined. A place is filtered not only through the person, but through the person's age, social station, personality, and where they are in their life's development.

In
The You I Never Knew,
Susan Wiggs made a transition from historical romances to a contemporary setting and broke out. As we saw in an earlier chapter, at the story's outset, Seattle graphic artist Michelle Turner is driving to Montana with her difficult sixteen-year-old son, Cody. She is going there to donate a kidney to her father, a retired movie star from whom she has been estranged for years. As they approach the ranching town of Crystal City, Michelle is reminded why she once was drawn to paint the area:

The valley slumbered in midwinter splendor, as if the entire landscape was holding its breath waiting for the far-distant springtime.

She read the names on every rural mailbox they passed— Smith, Dodd, Gyenes, Bell, Jacobs. Most people who settled in the area seemed to stay forever. Each farm lay in perfect repose, a picture waiting to be painted: a white house with dark green shutters, a wisp of smoke twisting from the chimney, window-panes glowing at the first touch of twilight.

There was a time when this sight had pierced her in a tender spot. She had painted this very scene long ago. Her brush had given life to the hillocks of untouched snow, to the luminous pink sunset, and to the fading sky behind alpine firs with their shoulders draped in white and icicles dripping from their branches. On a poorly prepared canvas with second rate paints, she managed to convey a sense of soaring wonder at the world around her. It was a good painting. Better than good. But young. Impossibly, naively young as she had never been since the day she left this town in anguish and disgrace.

In contrast to the disquiet that Crystal City stirs in Michelle is the calm that the place inspires in Sam McPhee, a rodeo star turned doctor. Sam is the cowboy who got Michelle pregnant at age eighteen; he is Cody's father, though he does not yet know that as he looks at the same landscape on the same evening that Michelle is driving back into town with his son:

Sam McPhee stared out the window at the ripples of snow on the hills behind his house. Though it was a familiar sight, he lingered there, watching as the last light of day rode the broken-

backed mountains. The sight was a restful thing for a man to hold in his chest. In his youth, he'd carried the image with him no matter where he went, from Calgary to Cozumel, and when the time came to figure out where home was, he didn't need to look any further than these hills.

Sam's serenity is soon to be shattered, just as Michelle will eventually lose her restlessness and settle in Crystal City, in Sam's arms. They start the novel in opposite states of mind, and Wiggs uses Crystal City itself to illustrate the contrast.

Our perception of place changes as we change. The difference between a town as remembered from long ago and how it seems now is the difference between who we once were and who we are now. The same is true of characters in fiction. Take them anywhere and show us how they feel about the place, or how that places makes them feel, and you will reveal to us volumes about their inner frozenness, or growth.

So get to it.

_______EXERCISE

The Psychology of Place

Step 1: Pick a high moment, turning point, or climax involving your protagonist. Where is it set?

Step 2: Write a paragraph describing how this place makes your character feel, or how your protagonist feels about this place. Start writing now.

Step 3: Move forward one week in time or backward one week in time. Return your protagonist to this place. Write a paragraph describing how it makes your character feel now.
Start writing now.

Follow-up work:
What is the setting that recurs most often in your novel? From whose point of view is it most often seen? Count the number of times that character is in that place. Write a list, and for each return to that place find one way in which that character's perception of it changes.

Conclusion:
Bringing to life the world of your novel is more than just describing it using the five senses. A place lives most vividly through the eyes of characters. The unique way in which each one sees what is around him is how the setting itself becomes a character in the story. Think about it: By itself, landscape is unchanging. (Well, mostly.) It takes a person to perceive its differences over time. Delineate those evolving perceptions, and the world of your novel will feel rich, dynamic, and alive.

Point of View

A
s we have seen, most contemporary novels are written from the point of view of their characters, and this point of view can be quite intimate. (First person is, of course, as intimate as you can get.) There are plenty of alternate points of view to employ, if you like, including the objective and authorial points of view, older approaches now somewhat out of fashion. Whatever your choice, point of view is the perspective you give your readers on the action of the story. It pays to make it strong.

How do parents look at their children? Is there any way to describe them that is not a cliche? Of course there is. In
Skyward,
discussed previously, Mary Alice Monroe finds one by being true to her novel's protagonist, Harris Henderson, head of a South Carolina rescue clinic for birds of prey. Harris's whole life is ospreys, owls, kites, and eagles—so much so that he feels helpless to raise his own pre-schooler, Marion.

This is particularly a problem when Marion, a problem child at the best of times who was abandoned by her mother, develops juvenile diabetes. The finger prick needed for an insulin level check six times a day becomes an occasion for force-ten temper tantrums:

He looked again at his daughter curled up on the couch watching TV. How sweet and innocent she appeared. And how deceiving it was. He shook his head, took a deep breath and braced himself for what was coming.

"Marion? It's time to do the test."

Instantly, all sweetness fled from her face as she jackknifed her knees to her chest, locking her arms tight around them. "No!" she shouted.

"Come on, honey. You know we've got to do this."

"No!"

Harris released a ragged sigh. So, it was going to be another fight. As he walked toward her, she backed up against the armrest and cowered in the corner of the sofa, her hands up, nails

out, to ward him off. She looked just like one of the wild, terrified birds when he reached to grab them—all glaring eyes and ready to attack.

Under siege himself, Harris reverts to seeing things in a way that is natural to him: in terms of birds of prey. It isn't until the arrival of a nursing-trained nanny, Ella Majors, that Harris finds out how to handle his daughter: as a little human being. Meanwhile, with just a few words Monroe's strong point-of-view writing reveals reams about her novel's protagonist.