May
Snow in the Summer?
Today’s Ask-A-Writer question comes from Joe…
Q: Because of schedules, writers are always out of sync with the seasons. You’re writing Christmas scenes when it’s 90 degrees outside your door, or laying out a picnic when there’s ice on the windows. What do you do to set the mood and put yourself in Story time and place? Are there external cues you use to fool yourself into the season of the story, regardless of what your calendar says?
A: I love this question! You’re so right on being out of sync with seasons when you write. I just finished a romance that’s set at Christmas time. There I was, typing away the day while an early spring breeze was floating through the screen door. 
And somehow I had to bring a winter scene (equipped with a shivering protagonist) to life.
I can’t say I use any external cues (unless my hot chocolate counted), but I do run through the various senses in my mind, reminding myself how I’d react if it was freezing at that very moment. When it’s a scene that needs tension (as in a mystery), 
I try to think of the aspects of that season that will amp it up (winter can mean pulling one’s coat tighter as you walk through an abandoned parking lot, eyes cast downward just to make the walk go faster…while spring might bring the menacing clap of thunder or a storm-related power outage). If it’s a scene where I want to pull out the most enticing aspects of that season (as in a romance), I try to think of the things that are special to me (a crackling fire in the winter, a picnic in the summer) and make it come alive with sensory description.
I hope that helps, Joe. And thanks for the great question.
Now here’s a related question for all of you. What’s a book you’ve read where the setting popped off the page…making you feel as if you were there, too? What stands out about it even now?
~Elizabeth
Got a question for a future Thursday Ask-A-Writer? Email it to me at: ElizabethLCasey@aol.com.
May 20th, 2010 at 7:59 am
The description of the ‘Wall’ in the George R.R. Martin series. I picture a huge wall of ice and rock separating two desolate tundras.
May 20th, 2010 at 10:57 am
Okay – creep factor warning….
For me, it was Pet Cemetary by Stephen King. I was working as a trainer for a social service agency at the time. I was a subject matter expert in the Medicaid program for the elderly and disabled. Part of the job was teaching staff how to count resources. And one of the resource we counted was the burial plot, vault, and burial plans.
The detail in the book explained more about the funeral process than I ever wanted to know. But I always referred new employees who had NO clue what a vault or casket was to read the book. They knew after that.
I can also see the bramble he had to walk over to reach the cemetary. There’s one on the walk when I take the dogs. I’m pretty sure something crawled under the branches and died lately.
May 20th, 2010 at 11:25 am
One of my FAVORITE aspects of A Cry in the Night (my all-time favorite MHC book) is the fact that you could picture the blizzard. You could picture the building she finds that eventually leads her to the truth about the man she’s married to. I felt the cold of that Minnesota farm even though I was thousands of miles away.
May 20th, 2010 at 12:28 pm
I love the film Raiders of the Lost Ark.
I love the book more. Largely, that’s due to the richness and power of detail. With a few lines, Campbell Black shows me things I’ve seen a thousand times, but in a way I’ve never seen them.
Sunny afternoon, with some glare? We’ve all been there. But Black gives us this:
The afternoon was sunny, the sky almost a pure white. Whiteness reflected from everything, from the walls, clothing, glass, as if the light had become a frost that lay across all surfaces.
How did he find frost in light?!? Don’t know. But for me, it’s perfect.
I could have searched a million years and never found that image.
Reading sentences like that, where an author twists and tortures language, bends our expectations, uses familiar words in new ways–that’s magic. That’s what made me want to be a writer. And each time I sit at my desk, that’s what I try to do.