NOTE: Today’s guest post is from fiction author, Kathleen Bailey. She’s guest posted here before, sharing about her historic novel, Westward Hope. Today, she’s instructing on how to effectively weave character and setting into your fictional work. I enjoyed this post since she uses a variety of literary works that appeal to different readers.
Also, she is generously offering three giveaways, so be sure to read the details at the end of the post.
Guest post by Kathleen Bailey
Setting and character
“Last night I went again to Manderley.”
She sure did, and she took us all with her.
Avid fiction readers will recognize the first seven words as the opening to Daphne Du Maurier’s classic tale, Rebecca. The story of a self-centered woman and her lasting impact, even after her death, takes place in an isolated mansion. But it would have worked just as well in a Hallmark-y small town or a Manhattan high-rise, right? Well, right?
Probably not.
The best fiction weaves setting and character together, everything from “I’m going back to Tara” to today’s Hallmark movies, which inevitably have someone ambitious stuck in a small town. It’s even more crucial if it’s THEIR small town, and the past is there to greet them.
My first published book, an Oregon Trail romance with Pelican/White Rose, uses this technique, or at least I hope it does. Not only is heroine Caroline reunited with Michael, the man who betrayed her, but they meet again on the Oregon Trail, 2,000 miles that will test everything a man or woman is made of. “Michael had once betrayed Caroline’s trust, in the worst possible way. Can she trust him to get her to the Oregon Country, and can he trust God and himself for forgiveness?” The rigors of the trail bring out their past relationship and force them to confront their issues.
I’ve also done it with my New York 1920s series, still uncontracted, where a gently-bred young woman takes a job as a nurse in a Hell’s Kitchen settlement house. “Violet O’Connell found everything she needed among people who had lost everything.” The hero doesn’t think she can handle Hell’s Kitchen, so there’s the conflict. But nursing New York’s discards brings out a strength and fire Violet didn’t know she had, and she’s willing to fight for the right to stay there.
Jesus said, “You will always have the poor with you,” and He’s right. But the plight of the poor, and especially immigrants, was even more searing before the current government programs were established. Violet needs to help these people, who have nothing and nowhere to turn.
My current contemporary, a “coming home/small town” romance, uses this blend too. Jane has built a life away from Hilltop, New Hampshire, but when she has to come home for an extended period of time, she finds it all unraveling, due to a dying Prodigal Mother and a handsome pastor bound and determined to see her in the Kingdom. And she arrives in Hilltop just in time for the annual Hilltop Christmas Festival, exalting the birth of a Savior she no longer serves.
Lauraine Snelling did this to perfection in her “Red River” series. Ingeborg wouldn’t even have a story if it wasn’t for the prairie. It shapes her character, especially in that first year, when she and Kaaren must make it through a prairie winter after the deaths of their husbands. And it’s a thorn in Ingeborg’s flesh for the rest of her life, as she struggles with seasonal depression and leans on her Lord to get her through.
Melody Carlson also does this in her “River” trilogy, where the river functions almost as a third character.
Cinematic examples also abound. Who can forget the film version of Meredith Willson’s “The Music Man” back in the 1960s, the dreamy watercolor perfection of an Iowa town at the dawn of the century? It was the ideal background for Harold Hill to work his scheme, and ultimately his magic. And who can forget the black-and-white canvas of Andy Taylor’s “Mayberry”? It wasn’t just Andy and Barney, or even Aunt Bee and Opie. Genial barbers, vacant mechanics, town drunks who committed themselves every Saturday night. Andy and Barney had a whole town to play off of, and we are the better for it.
How do you weave setting and character?
1. Make this a story that couldn’t happen anywhere else. World War II stories (may they never stop coming) excel at this. She’s a French Resistance fighter, he’s an American airman, locking them inextricably to their time and place.
2. KNOW your setting and bring in sensory details. Brock and Bodie Thoene’s “Zion Chronicles” accomplishes this and then some. After reading them, I think I could find my way around the Old City of Jerusalem without a map. Or wake up there and know instantly where I was. The city of Jerusalem is an entity in itself. Again, this story couldn’t have happened anywhere else. Cathleen Armstrong does quirky small town well in her “Last Chance” series, but she also sprinkles in Southwestern details, from Russ and Juanita’s chili farm to the dishes on the “Dip and Dine” menu. You know you’re not in Minnesota, you know you’re not in Maine. You’re in Last Chance.
3. Make it a not-so-happy return. My friends in the Love Inspired community are good at “reunion romances.” Either their hero or heroine has usually come back to town to make things right, for whatever happened in the past. This technique accomplishes two things: it gives the hero or heroine a history in the area, and since these are shorter books, it allows the author to skip the “getting to know you” phase. If there’s a reason the character left, it’s all the more poignant when they come back. And make the reason they left big enough to matter.
4. Make it worse. Make them desperate. In Janette Oke’s, Love Comes Softly, Martha “Marty” Davis has no choice. Her young husband is dead, and she has no way to get back East. Marrying Clark is the ultimate marriage of convenience and she hates the prairie, though she learns to love it (and him) before the novel’s satisfying end.
In Snelling’s book Ingeborg and Kaaren don’t have a choice either. They’re alone in the vast wilderness of a new country where they don’t speak the language. And they have children depending on them. They can’t go around it, they have to go through it.
5. Don’t use setting for the sake of setting. This isn’t a travelogue. It’s tempting to use THAT vacation for a novel or novella, but make sure your people have a reason for being there.
How about you? Is there anything you’ve written, read, or watched that you think does this well?
About Settler’s Hope:
After years of wandering, Pace Williams expects to find a home in the Oregon Country. He doesn’t expect is to fall in love with a fiery Irishwoman bent on returning home to avenge her people.
Oona Moriarty expects one thing: to exact revenge on the English overlords who took her home. She doesn’t expect to fall in love with a man who looks like he’s been carved from this Western landscape.
Together they vow to trust the unexpected and settle into a life, but when Pace’s ancient enemies threaten to destroy the life they’re building, Oona must choose between helping the man she loves and seeking the revenge she craves.
Here’s the link to purchase on Amazon.
Bio:
Kathleen Bailey is a journalist and novelist with 40 years experience in the nonfiction, newspaper, and inspirational fields. Born in 1951, she was a child in the ’50s, a teen in the ’60s, a young adult in the ’70s and a young mom in the ’80s. It’s been a turbulent, colorful time to grow up, and she’s enjoyed every minute of it and written about most of it.
Bailey’s work includes both historical and contemporary fiction, with an underlying thread of men and women finding their way home, to Christ and each other. Her first Pelican book, Westward Hope, was published in September 2019. This was followed by a novella, “The Logger’s Christmas Bride,” in December 2019. Her second full-length novel, Settler’s Hope, was released July 17, 2020.
She lives in New Hampshire with her husband David. They have two grown daughters.
For more information, contact her at ampie86@comcast.net; @piechick1 on Twitter; Kathleen D. Bailey on Facebook and LinkedIn; or at www.kathleendbailey.weebly.com.
Giveaway Info:
Kathleen has generously offered three separate giveaways to three separate winners. One eBook copy of Settler’s Hope, a paper copy of Westward Hope (US residents only), and one New England Gift Pack (US residents only). International winners will receive thier choice of an Ebook copy of one of Kathleen’s books.
To enter, please share in Comments, a favorite character or setting from a novel that intrigued or captured your attention. Thank you.
Featured Photo by Laura Chouette on Unsplash