March 31 – Today is the final day of this fabulous conference. It has been a great experience and, as you can see from the previous posts, a lot of information about writing, writers, readers, editors, and publishers has been shared. The first session today, Setting as Character, has panelists Bryan Robinson (moderator), John Billheimer, Vinnie Hansen, Elena Hartwell, and Heather Young talking about where their stories take place and how setting affects their characters. Any errors are entirely mine, due to faulty notetaking and/or memory.
John
- Story set in West Virginia, has more corruption per capita than any other place west of Washington DC
- Drawn to West Virginia because of characters, then the state became setting
- Kind of wishy-washy on the question of whether setting can be character
- His characters were formed by the hardship and rigors of being miners
- Likes James Lee Burke’s use of setting as character
- Advises writers to visit the settings they write about, if possible
Vinnie
- Story set in Santa Cruz, CA, a very navel-gazing kind of town
- Does not believe setting can be a character, setting impacts and informs character
- Closest we get to setting being character is when we have a person vs nature conflict, and nature becomes the antagonist
- Once setting becomes character, it isn’t setting any more
- Jane Harper – The Dry, uses setting as character
- Which comes first, setting or character – it’s a tie
Elena
- Story set in Bellingham, WA, likes the Pacific Northwest
- Setting can be character, functions as character because it allows you to shape your protagonist
- Typically begins with character, then setting
- Writing in the West, she can legitimately have cell phones not work plus other technological issues
- Environment creates opportunities for characters to solve things without technology
- One moment the environment will help you, the next moment it will kill you
- Environmental experience may bond characters for life (ex: two characters digging for coal in a mine)
- Remember that our experiences of the environment involve all of our senses
- If writing about where you live, you can make your character a local; otherwise, write about someone who comes in to the environment
- We as human beings are so dependent on the context in which we live
Bryan
- Story set somewhere in the South (Florida)
- Works as a psychotherapist – “heal by day, kill by night”
- Setting can be a character
- Writers often write things about themselves without realizing it
- When you live in that place, setting becomes more real