How To Create a Sense of Place

Ivan Doig – the Connection of Place and Imagination

October 27, 2011
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If you are an emerging writer, note: A strong sense of place is a real key to developing the richly delicious details that good fiction needs. Here’s a quote that hits the nail on the head about the role of a sense of place from the website of a great writer, Ivan Doig. One last…

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Hasselstrom’s Meditation on a Jar of Jelly

September 5, 2009
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When I wrote my previous post to this blog on a whimsical piece by James Boswell and Samuel Johnson, I mentioned it made me remember a similar piece overflowing in a sense of place. Here ’tis. It’s by a North Dakota writer, Linda Hasselstrom, who writes and runs a writer’s retreat at her home, Windbreak…

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Boswell’s Meditation on Place and a Pudding

August 29, 2009
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Last week I did a pleasant book-signing at Boswell Book Co. (for A Guide to Fantasy Literature; my thanks to Daniel Goldin, proprietor, and Jason, for hosting!). Boswell Books is a Milwaukee indie bookstore, named for James Boswell (1740–95), a literary Scottish laird, described by one biographer as a complicated fellow, with “his rippling good…

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A Sense of Place Pilgrim – Annie Dillard

July 21, 2009
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To learn to see and write better, there are great books to inspire you. One of the finest, an exquisite book of nature writing, is Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974), winner of a Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction, an account of a year spend looking closely at the world centered around a creek in…

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Sense of Place: The Setting for Desire

November 22, 2008
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There are several things that drive a novel’s fictional story from the first pages. Think of a story as a kind of journey, something with forward motion. If you think of the metaphor of an automobile, the plot of a story might be considered the engine, the motive power. But something is needed to propel…

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The Sea of Trolls (Opening Lines)

February 18, 2008
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A compelling opening for a novel can be an intriguing description of place. Here’s the start of a 2004 fantasy for young readers, The Sea of Trolls, by Nancy Farmer, 3-time winner of a Newbery Honor award. Jack woke before dawn and listened to the cold February wind lash the walls of the house. He…

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Willa Cather: Pitching Novels with Place

February 15, 2008
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“There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.” — Willa Cather I was talking informally with a writer the other day at a book signing I was doing, and she told me she was writing a novel. Tell me about…

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