Note #7: Move Beyond Mountains
Setting is more than the surroundings.
McMansions, skyscrapers, mountains —the simplest way to think about setting is in terms of physical space. But to bring a place more vividly to life, one technique is to use an interaction, or street scene, as an establishing shot. Different places tend to act as theaters for different types of behaviors. In the words of Modest Mouse:
“People as places as people.”
One of my most salient memories of visiting D.C. was being repeatedly (and immediately) blitzed with different versions of “who do you work for?” & “what do you do?” in casual social settings. It felt like the quasi-motto of the city, revealing the spiritual machinery at the heart of the place.
In Montana, a taxi driver casually told me about his 9mm just in case he encounters a grizzly. In a story, that comment is more compelling than just announcing, “It’s common to encounter grizzly bears in Montana.”
The technique is easiest in fiction, since you can just plant a salient interaction as a way of imbuing your setting with more of a personality, and some psychological layering. Here’s a passage about a made-up place.
As R. waited in line at the cafe, she noticed two men outside raining blows on one another. She asked someone what had happened, and the person just chuckled. “In [fictional place], you never need a reason.”
After that, R. noticed with startling regularity how scarred faces seemed to be in [fictional place], the marks a kind of beauty in these lands.
Of course, micro-interactions aren’t always emblematic of a larger place, but sometimes they offer some insight, and keeping an eye out for them is a variant of Take Note of Their Tells, just on a broader scale.
In Portland for a few days, I sat down in a donut shop, the whole place colored in pink. There was a teenage clerk, acne-ridden, wispy facial hair (if memory serves, or possibly just my platonic ideal of someone that age), and me munching on a glazed. Then a cop walked in, over six feet tall, gun in holster. I began chuckling, a real-life incarnation of a classic joke set-up. Then, a development far outside the cop/donut canon.
“Do you have issues with a policeman coming into your coffee shop?” the officer asked the clerk, apropos of nothing.
The clerk stood motionless, almost shell-shocked, wondering if he was missing something.
“No…?” he said, hesitantly.
I was confused, too.
As he ate his donut, the officer told us how how tension between cops and some residents in the liberal city sometimes plays out in donut shops. It’s happened to him so frequently, he’s started asking as a precaution.
“It’s Portland,” the office told us. “People don’t want you here.”
