The Geography of a Story
Majorca, SpainIn 1992, I traveled to the Spanish island of Majorca in the Mediterranean on an investigation assignment. I spent ten days there running around the streets following a woman who had escaped the long arm of the...okay, okay, the claims department of a major American corporation. Even so, it was exciting. Speeding around the narrow, European-style streets of this beautiful Spanish island in some European tuna can with wheels, the smell of paella wafting over the breeze, I felt like Illya Kuryakin in The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
Palma Cathedral, Palma de MajorcaBetween periods of work, I explored the island with this shapely, exotic, luscious...okay, okay, my wife joined me. Even so, it was exciting. We spent four days working and six days traveling the entire island, experiencing the friendly people, the rugged inland mountains and shores, scoured Bellver Castle, climbed through ruins and one of the largest caves in the world, and got lost on foot in pouring rain in the maze of Palma streets, streets that all seemed to end up somewhere I just knew I'd just left. And I videotaped everything. Nearly 10 hours of video. Because I knew I would one day use it. I knew that one day I would write something set in Majorca, and I'd have a visual record of all that I saw.
Brainstorm a list of places I know well or that I'm willing to get to know.
When the idea for a semi-autobiographical book was still germinating back in the late 1990s, I knew it would have to begin in Los Angeles, but I wanted it to be an adventure (thus, the term "semi"- autobiographical, because I rarely have adventures). My story would begin in my real world and end in another world. During that time, I was acting in a musical called Big River about Huckleberry Finn. One of the songs was titled "Worlds Apart." During one of our performances, I stood off-stage listening to Zachary Levi (who played Huck Finn and now plays Chuck on the TV show Chuck) singing this number. And something clicked. The geography of my novel had to be "worlds apart" from my own world. I began to systematically and mentally catalog a list of places that would have such contrast from Los Angeles that my character would be lost in it.
Eliminate overused settings.
I honestly don't remember all the places I considered, but I wanted to eliminate settings that were overdone, like New York, Paris, and London. The Empire State Building, Eiffel Tower and Buckingham Palace didn't appeal to me, because geographically they had been worn out by film makers. I wanted something new, exotic and not the usual stop on the road to adventure.
If I haven't been to a place, research it enough to justify my never having been there.
Since I'd only been to Canada, Mexico and Spain (Majorca), I considered choosing one these places. But I really wanted some place even more exotic, with perhaps a political impact. Frankly, Canada and Mexico seemed boring to me and I wanted to save Majorca for a different kind of story. I decided I needed to find a place I knew little to nothing about so that I could research the setting. Research always helps me find new ideas for the story, including more localized settings within the general setting.
Make sure my characters have a reason for being in this place.
Now it wouldn't make sense to take an L.A. preacher's kid and plop him down in Norway, unless I had a good reason to be there. I knew I had to find a place that made sense for my character.
Analyze my plot: can this setting and my chosen plot go together convincingly?
I wanted my main character to find love, adventure and to discover what it really meant to be a hero. That meant my "hero" had to be drawn into something bigger than himself, grander than his years, for there to be any hope of him growing in the story.
Finally, I was sitting with my Dad one day and--I don't even recall the impetus for the thought--but I knew the geography of my novel would be Haiti. My father had been a missionary in the 1960s there, so I knew I had the means for finding great stories, impressions and facts. Ultimately, though, I spent considerable time reading about Haiti's geography, people, politics, customs, history and even the Creole language before I sat down to write Worlds Apart. When the place was right, I knew it.
Henrik Ibsen's play, Enemy of the People, was the inspiration for my novel The Plunge. In Ibsen's play, a Norwegian coastal town is fast becoming a prominent health resort by way of their natural municipal baths. As the town anticipates the rush of the tourist season, an idealistic physician named Thomas Stockmann, discovers the baths are a cesspool of disease.
In my story, I wanted to have a poor man's Palm Springs, turn the spa into a lake, and have all the "disease" (fraud, political corruption and murder) to be created by a dead man who owned everything. Over several months, beginning in 1983, I pondered the plot, the characters and theme of my story, but all of it was held up by my not knowing the geography of the story. I knew it would start in Los Angeles, where my private eye operated his business, but he had to go somewhere in his search for three runaways to end up in the bigger story.
When I couldn't decide on a place that existed, I decided to create a town in a desert that did exist. And Paley, California, was mindfully and creatively built in the Mojave desert. A friend and I drove to the Mojave desert with a map. I had circled an area where nothing existed. It was in the middle of Broadwell Dry Lake several miles east of Baker, California, on the road to Las Vegas. We drove off-road across a landscape that could have been Neptune or the moon, plumes of borax dust blanketing the view in my mirrors. Off to the north I spied a horseshoe shaped valley, surrounded by rugged hills impassable only by mountain goats with four-wheel drive.
Broadwell, CA.
"I found my Paley," I said to my friend. I jotted some notes, drew a map of the area. And that was the basis for my research and ultimately my developing the setting for The Plunge. And it met all my criteria: it wasn't overused; there was ample information about the area; there was little history to get in the way of my story and for creating a fictional town; and my characters would thrive in a place where isolation spawned secrecy, manipulation and murder.
What I've learned about my choices of settings is that the setting can become more than just a place for the story to happen. It's a place that, used to its fullest, will become a living, breathing character and a melting pot for ideas.
Posted by Tom Eubanks at 3/2/2011 8:18 PM 
Categories: Places!, Novel Ideas, On Writing
Tags: Essay Storytelling Working It
Categories: Places!, Novel Ideas, On Writing
Tags: Essay Storytelling Working It
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