Category: People and Place

Imagine Being There

 

Place in a story is vital to ground where and why characters react to or create situations which drive the plot of a story. Within identified locations, characters become loved or despised for the actions and reactions they indulge in.

People connect to a place for an array of reasons because it holds the memory of:

  • a brilliant childhood/not so brilliant childhood
  • first love/first break-up
  • marriage/honeymoon/divorce
  • travelling to landscapes or geographic locations where culture, cuisine, architecture, history or local people either inspire or horrify
  • favourite authors/celebrities who lived in those settings
  • the stories heard or read about  places making them part of one’s experience
  • loss and grief
  • spirituality
  • the devastation of war and politics
  • personal heritage associated with a place
  • the comfort of home, a bedroom, a garden, study

The reasons are endless making it necessary when writing a story to anchor it in a specific place or a few places to create a sense of physical reality for the reader. Place, in fiction, does not have to be grounded in a real geographic location, the sights, sounds and smells –  odours or aromas of a place will bring it to life for the reader based on how effective the sensory imagery is in connecting the reader to the context of the action.

 

 

The lines below portray an inescapable landscape that confines and stifles. The narration indicates familiarity with a place which makes it experiential for the reader through the author’s specific framing of location. Here, the place is named creating the reality the reader craves, when a place remains unnamed, evocative sensory imagery creates a link in the reader’s imagination.

The heat in the street was terrible, and dust was all about him, and that special Petersburg stench, so familiar to all who are unable to get out of town in summer –Author, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment.

 

 In the creation of a fictional place the writer is the creative camera lens, beginning with a wide view, then zooming into backstreets before giving close up consideration to:

  • Demography – who will be created in this terrain- will it be a multicultural environment? What morals and values might come to light,  is there an alternate way of thinking endorsed by a group?
  • What is the socio-economic dynamic of this place?
  • What’s the weather like?
  • What sounds are heard in this place?
  • Is this a city or rural setting- what other aspects will you include to define this landscape?
  • Is it a busy or laid back place?
  • Is this a contemporary world or a lost and forgotten world?

Let the reader reach his or her own conclusion but be sure to add drama to most scenes and emotions that characters go through- this will allow the reader to speculate why particular locations elicit human reactions the way they do.

I leave you with these lines that reveal the human condition through the words of Alan Paton in his  novel, Cry the Beloved Country:

The great red hills stand desolate, and the earth has torn away like flesh. The lightning flashes over them, the clouds pour down upon them, the dead streams come to life, full of the red blood of the earth. Down in the valleys, women scratch the soil that is left, and the maize hardly reaches the height of a man. They are valleys of old men and old women, of mothers and children. The men are away, the young men and the girls are away. The soil cannot keep them anymore.

 

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‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ Moment

Going to the movies for the first time was a landmark moment in many ways. Living during the ‘Group Areas Act’ era in South Africa meant living in racially segregated suburbs. Going to the Grand Theatre on the upper end of town implied being in the same space – somewhat anyway with white residents. This anticipated visit to the Grand Theatre generated tremendous excitement in a young child’s world to see, yes that’s right, ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarves!’

 

Apart from being a momentous event in a young child’s life, it came as an awakening event that dwells deep in memory resurfacing with vigour when situations trigger the enlivening of such a memory.

 

Two queues lined up to buy tickets for the show – one ‘Whites only’ queue, the other, ‘Non- Whites only’ just as the local park benches and public toilets were labeled. This negative, exclusion labeling applied to the airport arrival and departure terminals areas too.

The stares across the racially segregated ticket purchase queues are remembered with the awkwardness and need to keep one’s eyes downcast for fear – fear that if the stare was returned it might be perceived as ‘doing the wrong thing, an unlawful act’ – such was the fear the dark child of apartheid felt.

Entry into the movie theatre, needless to say, had its separate entrance too, this time the Non-White entrance led to a flight of 100 steps up to the gallery. Non-Whites had to sit in the upstairs gallery while White patrons to the theatre sat in spacious seats downstairs. In the early teenage years, this ignited the child’s connection to Harper Lee’s ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ when Tom Robinson was on trial. Non-White folk who were confined to the upstairs gallery in the tightly packed Maycomb courthouse was reminiscent of the segregation at the Grand Theatre in the dark days of apartheid South Africa.

Peering over the upstairs railing from the high in the sky gallery, childlike curiosity prompted the voyeur within to see how ‘the other side lived’. Thinking back to that moment stirs the soul with sadness – the distance between the upstairs gallery, out of sight from the downstairs gallery, a hundred steps up – no stairway to heaven for an asthmatic child or aging grandparent who lovingly accompanied grandchildren on this momentous visit to the movies.
Snow White and the dwarves transported the child into a magical world leaving behind the racially divided queues and hidden away, out of view, sky-high seating.

Growing up in a racially aware, politicised home where Nelson Mandela’s release from prison lived in the hearts and minds of most adults, had a huge impact on the child. Non-White parents put aside their deeply felt grievances with grace and dignity to ensure their children were not denied the joys of seeing and experiencing the fairy tales they loved, come to life on the silver screen, albeit in a racially segregated theatre, so far removed from the reality of their daily lives.

Social justice was born from a perception of deeply felt social injustice in the child’s psyche on that very day, the day that Snow White made her debut on the big screen in a little town in South Africa.

Atticus Finch soon became Nelson Mandela of the Rainbow Nation where black and white exploded – a palette of many colours – merging in love, acceptance, kindness,  and tolerance.

 

Such were the days of the child’s early childhood in a country racially divided, decreed by the law of the land.

 

Walk away from hatred and unkindness, you deserve better, you have much to offer the world, walk away with grace and dignity to preserve your soul, walk away to love, acceptance and  kindness, walk away to a better world that awaits you…- MN

We all have stories to tell. What’s your story?

 

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Fertilising the Imagination

When access is denied, imagination provides fertile ground for creativity.

The absence of television in apartheid South Africa was strategic, to keep the masses ignorant regarding democracy and justice in a bid to thwart the emerging voices of resistance. Avid reading and listening to the radio for recreation offered many hours of joy in a world where outdoor games were limited in apartment blocks.

 

 

Born in South Africa  during the height of the apartheid era meant that I had a childhood devoid of a television set in the family lounge room. The only ‘moving pictures’ apart from the local cinema were those created in my imagination.

 

Radio held its own fascination with the popular weekly, Friday evening, crime fiction episodes of, Squad Cars. I listened intently, forming images in my mind about places and situations in each episode. My rite of reading passage into the world of crime depicted through voices and sounds grew each week. Crime/Detective/Adventure fiction in children’s books from the Famous Five series to Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys and ultimately Agatha Christie’s and Edgar Allen Poe’s short stories were hunted down each week at the local library. Visions of snaking queues of children lining up, thirsty for their favourite book is imprinted in my memory. Such were the days…

After school radio programs for children were eagerly anticipated, excitement gained momentum with the chatter of voices speculating what  Noddy (by Enid Blyton) would be getting up to and whether Mr. Plod, the policeman’s kind and watchful eye over Toyland would save another day. Empathy for the skittles who did not seem to care whenever they were run over, filled my waking and sleeping hours. The imagination was ablaze with stories that wove into the stories of my mind’s eye. The imagination was fertilised with self-created images of places, characters, and events. An emotional investment of compassion for those who struggled or were mistreated and revulsion for those who harmed others was set in motion.

Listening and reading awakened the inner being as fodder for the imagination in the years ahead in the creation of my own stories – in the adult years, I turn back to my own voice recordings of my reactions to places I have visited, places that I have been moved by, to mulch and refresh an evocative sense of place through the voices and visions of my characters.

Audio books are a blessing, like reading is, to supercharge the imagination for a personal take on people, places, and events that ‘moving pictures,’ with all its commendable grandeur, might not quite fuel.

‘Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere’- Albert Einstein

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