Swank apartment or simple shanty?
One of the characters in my novel lives in an apartment building named The Eldridge. The Eldridge was built in 1928, beginning its life as an Art Deco bank in the fictional town of Applecross, Iowa.
I love Art Deco designed buildings, especially in the Midwest, where they seem just a little out of place, like a big city visitor who never left town. There’s something especially appealing about the geometry, soft yet sharp, machined yet organic. It reminds me of corn stalks on a rolling field where the patterns drop off and pick up again on the next hill.
Grant Wood knows what I’m talking about. I could prattle on for hours about his work, in fact, let’s just add him to the list of conversation topics I will bore you with at a party from last week’s post.
To describe The Eldridge I had to search for images of Art Deco banks, exteriors and interiors. My character’s apartment on the fifth floor of The Eldridge is modern and posh. Since I live in a country house which is the exact opposite of this, I also had to search for images of modern, poshly decorated apartments.
Then the hard part, I had to force myself to save the first appealing couple of pictures right off the bat and then close my browser. I will spend my entire writing time ooo-ing and ahh-ing over images of sleek furniture arranged perfectly in impossibly clean rooms. From there I will spiral into thinking about how I can’t even keep the dining room table clean, let alone an entire house. This is not doing my writing any good.
I sincerely hope other writers do this, too (use pictures to describe something, not lament about their dusty houses). Or do you all have a trove of perfect images just waiting to be flawlessly described in your head? Stop— I don’t want to hear about it.
Descriptions have been a challenge for me. I prefer for my readers to telepathically know what I’ve imagined. Just get inside my head, look for The Eldridge file, open it and, ah, see, isn’t that a beautiful apartment? So far this method hasn’t been optimal, but I’m pretty sure it’s your fault for not being psychic.
The Eldridge is not just a place for my character to live, it’s practically a secondary character. Some of my favorite books have inanimate objects as characters: The Overlook Hotel in the Shining, the planet Dune, all the animals in Winnie the Pooh, and of course, Kitt from Knight Rider. The Eldridge does not have a voice like Knight Rider, I promise you. And it isn’t haunted like The Overlook…probably.
The Eldridge has a soul, a history, stories to tell, and the eighty-five year old doorman knows most of them. Ok, I know, you’re thinking, a doorman in Iowa? Even back in the day there weren’t such things! But stay with me here, because he’s a peculiar hold-over from another time, he even wears his Homburg hat at the appropriately jaunty angle.
Did that assuage your doubts? No? Then look at this picture of old timey hats to make you feel better.
The doorman started work at the bank when he was ten, back when child labor wasn’t just legal, but kids really wanted to work, you know, so they could buy cigarettes. He rolled coins, he ran errands, and he eventually became a teller/loan shark/likely suspect.
The new owners of The Eldridge agreed to give him a job when they purchased the bank to convert into living space, it was even part of the sales contract (is anyone buying that?). He definitely has a scandalous story or two to tell, in fact, those are the only kind he has to tell. And even though no one else believes him, he knows the place is haunted. But it’s not, I swear (maybe).
The yin to The Eldridge’s yang is another architectural character, a fishing cabin. It too has a soul and history and stories, but of a more modest sort. Its owner only visits in the summer, when the weather makes up for its lack of amenities. The trees around it have overgrown to the point where you could easily miss it from the dirt access road. It waits patiently through the showy colors of fall, under the heavy blanket of winter, through the hopeful songs of spring, never feeling alone.
Can a cabin have patience? This one does. It’s never been more than half finished, and it never expects to be completed. It’s happily resigned to its fate. It has a million dollar view of the lake, it’s allowed to have dirt on its floors and to smell of trout and pipe smoke if it feels like it, which it does.
Where The Eldridge is a shimmering, silver cocktail dress and champagne, the fishing cabin is a pair of well-worn jeans and a beer.
The real purpose of The Eldridge and the cabin is to serve as a backdrop for the changes taking place in my characters. It’s where they feel at home that describes them best. I think my own house sums me up fairly well. Not too close to the neighbors and a work in progress.
If you like what you’ve read, please recommend so others can see it.
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