Old North Bridge by Sarah Phillips Pellet
I have a scene in my current Work In Progress (WIP) where my main character and his sidekick encounter a raging river. While I grew up nearby the Concord River in Massachusetts and spent many an afternoon roaming around the gardens of Buttrick Mansion and canoeing under the Old North Bridge, I haven’t spent much time on rivers in my adult life. So to re-enforce my memories, I turned to a virtual source for my setting’s inspiration: Facebook.
A Picture’s Worth a Thousand Words
A friend of mine from childhood is a fly fisherman now and lives, breathes, and luckily for me, photographs, rivers. He spends hours immersed in the subtleties of his environment in solitude. He has managed to find places to fish where nothing – apart from the natural life cycle of things – has changed. No cars, no boats, no other people. Just him, his fishing pole, his dog, and the river. And in the quiet moments of the morning or evening, he captures the nuances of river life: the interesting details of rock formations, the dappled sunlight on the water, the mist curled around rocks, rotting trees spanning banks, unusual bugs. They are taken from the perspective of a patient native, content to let life unfold, not of a tourist taking a snapshot. His pictures don’t scream, “Look where I’ve been.” They suggest, “Look at what I’m surrounded by.” When I see his pictures, I can smell the river, hear the water rushing, and feel the cool soft moss on my fingertips. I can experience the river vicariously through him and it inspires me to take a reader to that same place through my words.
Memories Shape Perspective
I could have gone on-line and snagged a few shots like the one of the Concord River above, courtesy of Wikipedia, but there is another layer to the photographs from my friend: memories. I haven’t seen him since we were kids, so my memory of him is from that time in my life. When I look at his photographs, I imagine him as he was as a child and thus, see the pictures through the eyes of a child. Interestingly, the river scene in my WIP was one of the easiest ones to write. I was so in the moment, in the character, in the place and I think that had everything to do with my friend’s pictures putting me there in that mindset. Now, if I could just get my other childhood Facebook friends to capture other settings for me, I’d be all set!
I wonder how other writers glean the finer details of the settings in their stories? Do you immerse yourself in a setting? If so, how?
