Writing Lessons Episode 4: Sense of Place Featuring Barbara Kingsolver

this is writing lessons and I'm your host Silas house and each episode of writing lessons we look at a different topic of creative writing well today's guest needs no introduction we are with one of the greatest storytellers of our time Barbara King salver thank you so much for joining us Barbara thank you salus I'm I really appreciate you're inviting me to this chat well we can not do this podcast and not have you own it so well thanks that you're giving us some of your time well first of all someone asked me the other day what the difference is between setting and sense of place and as writers I think we talk a lot more about sense of place is the way we talk about it and I have my own definitions of each but what would you say is the main difference between setting and sense of place sense of place has trees in it I mean to when you just say those words and I think about it um or if it's a desert there aren't trees but whatever I think that sense of place is much more holistic it involves everything alive uh that's that's you know creating a context for this piece of writing in addition to the humans whereas when you say setting I think of a a uh you know a theater a set I think of maybe a a kitchen and a kitchen table with people sitting around it I think about the sort of human built constru you know the sort of the human constructed part of a story but if I talk about sense of place then we're going outside even even if and I mean you know I'm I'm just examining this as a say it to you because I've never really answered that question or even thought about it it's a great question by the way but even if a whole novel took place inside let's say in a hospital room to me it would matter whether that was a hospital room in Tennessee or in New York City um and that's because of what's outside of that room and it's not just the trees it's the way people talk it's but fundamentally it's it includes the relationships that those people in that hospital room have with their families and their work and their you know sort of all the things that go on outside the room and outside the building yes I think you're saying exactly the way I think of it I always I think of setting as something that's much more concrete and since the place is much more abstract it's like we have to artic articulate all of these sort of you know big Notions of makes a place a place culture ex yes exactly it does of course include human culture that's a very important part of it but human culture is so formed also by by by the land and you know the where PE where people live whether it's in the country or city influences what they do for living and what their relationship ship is with their neighbors and all of those things yeah that makes me think about like in Demon Copperhead how important football becomes exactly to the narrative and how that's a part of smalltown life and things like that right and how it's I mean football might be a part of many lives but where I live and probably where you grew up high school football the Friday night game is more important than I don't know what you could say like what's the equivalent in New York City it's like it's like as important as the Olympics it's so it's it's so it's so outsized in terms of how much people think about it you know the fact that um in the country you know in a rural place like where I live um the people who are filling the bleachers on a Friday night football game a high school football game are not just the parents of the kids on the field it's the town and the whole town you know if you have a if you have a losing coach the whole town cares about that not whether they have kids in school or not because it's just it's a part of your local pride and your local identity exactly yes to write the story I did about a young man growing up where I where I did where I do live I had to become acquainted with football and I had to go to you know I mean obviously been to many many many many high school football games when I was you know growing up and uh when my kids were growing up and stuff but I had to go and pay more attention to the game not just the marching band exactly it's like if if you're writing about something in particular even if it's something you might have been familiar with you have to go into it with that writer's hat on right and and look at from your character's point of view as well yes exactly you have to pay attention to exact ly the things that your characters need to know about which is why research is such a huge part of sense of place um even you know I I had a conversation recently with a um a writer who had finished who had published her first novel and uh there were several of us you know in this conversation all you know more experienced novels and she said I had to do so much research for this one I'm looking forward to my next novel I don't think I'll have to do any research and we all the rest of us burst into laughter because research is and and of course she you know she did find out she just wrote me to find out that to tell me that was true research is integral to writing it's so much a part of the writing and when it comes to sense of place even even writing about a place that I've lived in my whole life like demon Copperhead I still had to research things like the the real tals of football and what it's like to be in you know football practice and all that there are still things that you're going to have to to research but going back to what I first said my kind of first free association with you know what makes a sense of places it has trees I believe that you really have to know the the biology of a place the landscape of a place to write about it and I would never I have never and would could never write about a place unless I've spent time there myself um it's so important to know the lay of the land so let for example when I wrote the Lacuna um half of it takes place in the United States in a part of the country I know real well half of it takes place in Mexico in Mexico City and some other places in Mexico including sort of a wild jungle place I had to go there I had to spend weeks and weeks and weeks in the exact places uh the exact neighborhoods of Mexico City the exact a place like I invented this place called this wild jungle place called Isa pish but I went to a place that was like it because there is no substitute for direct experience for a writer you can read all the books you want to about or even watch all the movies that you want to about a place but you're getting someone else's interpretations and you're missing a whole lot of stuff that doesn't come through in in either in words or in a movie I always say to write about a place I have to know what it smells like exactly yes and and even though you're not gonna like write be writing about smells on every page that's part of it because the smell of the place tells you how you feel about like the desert the way the desert smells after it rains that's so much a part of living there and it's it influences your emotions uh the weather the more than just the smells you know the weather the Heat or the cold the way the you know like if there's if the air is gritty or clear kind of where how that grit feels in between your teeth when you're in the desert all those details you're only going to know if you've experien experienced them yourself and then your job as a writer is to get that sense of reality onto the Page by by figuring out which of those details will will pass that experience out from my from my brain into your brain as a reader one of the things I think is so interesting about writing is we have to know so much of that stuff when we actually get to the page five per of all that may show up right but at most but we've we've been able to pick the 5% that really articulates that to the reader and we don't even know how we do that but we have no we don't but you're you're exactly right just in the same way that I feel like we know so much more about our characters then we put on the page um you know you have to know every when I begin a novel I have P I have files on all the important characters where I just write down everything about them like starting from a very early age you know what was their what were they afraid of in childhood what was their you know first uh when was their what was their first love what was their first heartbreak uh when did they get their first bicycle I mean I would bore you to tears if I put all that stuff in the novel but I have to know it because those details as up to a fully formed person who will behave the way and speak the way that person does on the page the the the sensation of realism uh that we create that makes people think that you're actually basing everything on real people which we're not uh we're inventing it but we invent it from this really fertile ground of all the stuff that we've already figured out about that person I think it's also true of sense of place we know so much more about a place than we're putting on the page but the the the fundamental skill is to just look at that movie I I I don't I don't I mean everybody writes differently but I see a movie in my mind movie a movie that I can also smell and taste but I watch this movie in my mind of this novel that I'm writing and I look around the room and I look for that one thing those one or two things in the room that characterize it that will tell you oh this is an old lady's house who lives alone and collects things or this is a young AR architect's house who needs who has every surface clear or you know you find that detail that carries weight and you know we spend so so much of our time as writers figuring out what not to put on the page because if you put everything it would be tediously boring and you would never even get through the first scene so it's all a question of pulling out those things that that kind of give are the shorthand for the bigger picture I talked to my writing students a lot about knowing what serves the story yes I think that's sort of what you're talking about there pulling out what serves the story what serves that particular scene what serves that character Etc yeah and it is it is such an important process because really nothing nothing is allowed to be there if it doesn't serve the story and you know you in student writing you know you'll you'll you'll get a story and there's a dog that runs through the the scene from time to time and you say now what is this dog doing here and they say well that's my dog Goldie and you have to tell them sorry Goldie has to go exactly Goldie can only be in this story if she's essential to the story if it's the same story more with with or without the dog the dog has to go um same with visual details um you can't put them in there just to pretty the place up you have to put them in there because they because they actually move the action of the story forward they tell you something about what's going to happen well when writing about where I'm from uhuh I have always felt like an Insider and an outsider and I think there's real value in being both of those things can you talk a little bit about that concept for yourself sure I yeah I think you're right because if you're too fully inside of a place you don't know what's special about it I only really understood I didn't even I didn't even really think that much about being from Kentucky till I left Kentucky and heard from all directions what kyans are like and uh you know of course I didn't really appreciate very much of it because they were all mostly well all I'm going to say 100% wrong about what kentuckians are like we aren't all one thing but we're mostly not like um you know those backwards people that my classmates had seen in Deliverance um um so so then you know I spent a lot of time away from my you know my homeland never felt at home anywhere not completely I was always homesick for the mountains always wanted to come back and so I had a lot of years to think about okay what do I miss uh because when I was growing up I just couldn't wait to get out of there I thought oh you know watch me me kick the the little town dust off my shoes and go have a big life and you know so come to find out my biggest and best life was going to be lived here so that gave me the experience of really looking at the place as an outsider and seeing stuff just like you can't really see your own marriage or your own family when you're in it you're just too invested in your own sort of it's the only world you have and you have no context for it living outside of it made me think so much about Community how people depend on each other what's great about that as well as what drives you crazy about that the way people talk the way people tell stories the way people make things um the way people know their neighbors and want to know their neighbors you know all this stuff my education about Appalachia really kind of took place in my heart while I was living away from the place and so it so now I've been you know I've been back here um for decades but I feel like that was an invaluable experience for me in understanding what makes this place special just like I always think you know if kids are lucky enough to get to College the best thing they can do is study abroad go out of this country because I feel like you can't really understand the the United States of America until you've been somewhere else and looked back at it um uh sort of get outside of the story We te Stories We Tell ourselves and learn you know what are other people's stories and that's how you find out you know what's my story yes and I think just being an artist makes us Outsiders to some degree right even if we're an Insider in a community yes because we're we're examining and we are leaving we're stepping away from our own personal point of view you have to I feel like to write fiction you have to be willing to put yourself aside yourself and your Prejudice prejudices because you're going to be entering into the minds H or the sort of sort of the Ambitions or fears or or what whatever of all these different people in the story and you have to be able to understand that each of those people thinks they're the good guy I mean unless they're living with some disgrace and shame but even still like everybody comes from a place of thinking I'm right my mama told me I was great and I'm great you know even the bad guys really think they're the good guys so this is an exercise in erasing yourself and becoming other points of view I think it's helpful to I most writers I know are introverted um they tend to be more observers and sort of all their L tend to be the the quieter people who kind of kind of hang back and watch you know at the party instead of being the life of the party they're back over you know by the wall maybe with a drink in hand thinking where's that person coming from yeah what makes him think he's all that right you know what does it feel like to be that person we have and and and that's not always true I also know a few extroverted writers but not a lot of them to tell you the truth I think that OBS we we are professional observers of human nature and a really important part of that is being able to shut down the your own uh version of the story and enter other people's versions of the story sometimes people will say to me my last two books the last one was set in Ireland the one before it was partially set in Key West Florida and sometimes people will sort of get a little angry and be and say you know why isn't why are those books not sent in Kentucky you're from Kentucky and you've written Appalachia um Congo yeah New Jersey so how do you respond to that idea that a writer must only you know write about the place where they live writers writers should write about what moves us um good writing will only come from Passion from uh you know starting starting from a a a thing starting with something we care about a story we need to tell and those stories often take us to other places of course I have a loyalty to Appalachia I'm I feel very proud of my Appalachian identity and as I've gotten older I have come more and more to accept that uh sort of the mantle of being an appalachin artist and understand how the fact that we're so misrepresented still in so much culture American culture and you know Global culture gives me a duty to write about Appalachia yes I feel like I have that responsibility just as you know as as a person of color you know will often feel a sense of responsibility to represent her experience of the world as a person of color and so forth as a woman yes okay but life is long if we're lucky and we get to write a lot of things and if we had to write the same story over and over of who who am I what am I proud to be that would just get so old I feel like the things that are important to me as an Appalachian probably transfer probably are important to people from all over the place and my job is to find our common ground in looking at sort of You Know The Human Condition what are our big problems what can we what do we need to examine as people for for our you know as part of the human project that's going to take me all over and I usually I usually begin with theme with a big idea sort of something I want to write about and let's just take the example of the Lacuna I wanted to write about American culture American history and how did this thing happen in the 1950s that uh American government became so suspicious very very suspicious and controlling of culture to the extent that anyone who was suspected of being like too Progressive like being too interested in civil rights or human rights or social welfare uh was blackballed blacklisted lost their jobs lost their livelihood it's it's relevant because we're seeing some of that happen again we're seeing inklings of that and it could happen in on a much bigger scale if we don't watch out so I thought that's an interesting thing to to write about where did that come from how did people get so scared that they went along with that so that involved reading a lot of history books and then thinking like where was the fulcrum of that um how could I have a character who experiences experiences that he would be a writer who would lose his livelihood because he suspected of being a communist which he's not but that's how it went in those days and then backing up and giving him a story like how would he how who would he associate with that would create those suspicions later in life well where is a place where culture went the opposite way where revolutionary artists were greatly celebrated and respected well that was Mexico at the very same time so I cooked up this plot this story of this this guy Harrison Shepard who is bicultural his mother is Mexican he's born in the US he ends up living in Mexico growing up in Mexico ends up working for uh in this household of of Freda Koo and Diego Rivera a very important revolutionary artist couple and then he comes to the us and this happens and that happens so I started with a question then I developed it into this plot that really interested me that would kind of of EX exhibit the kind of the kind of EX like walk us through how this stuff happens and then he ends up being uh living in Asheville which was a place I could research I could do historical research there because they neighborhoods that are still the same now as they were in the 1950s 60s or even 1940s okay so long story short I started with an idea ended up having to set it in various places which I researched very carefully publish it and what does my friend silus say about this novel that it's the most Appalachian of all my novels maybe before demon coverhead and I love that you say that because what that says is I'm still being Appalachian I'm still I'm still writing about I'm writing from who I am and the culture that I know but I can take that I can paint that across a very large palette which is exciting as an for artists and it's exciting for readers too yes and I I especially love you know the way it globalizes an appalachin person in in that beautiful way and that what you're saying is a perfect example of how we have to find the ways that everything serves the story so you were finding the place that best served that story and it just perfectly yeah thank you well are there uh particular novels that come immediately to mind for you when I say sense of place I think all of my favorite novels are sort of embedded in place I think of Marilyn Robinson and like all I mean all of her all of her novels I think are said in pretty much the same about like a 10 square mile area maybe even smaller than that but I feel like I've been there I feel like I've lived that that little town and know you know those people in their relationship to the land Wendel Berry of course is the greatest of all teachers I think about sense of place because his people are their place they're of their place they have the dirt of the land under their fingernails you know in all the best ways so I mean honestly it's something rural writers do this for me you know when I think about it I and I just think about Thomas Hardy you know people who and you know that's probably my bias as a rural person even though I've lived in many of the world's great cities I'm a rural person because when push comes to shove if you ask me to think about place I think about trees I think about being outside and how how a place with all its living species is connected to the people who live there yes well we've primarily been focusing on writing about place and fiction but for the poets out there how place come into play for you when you're writing poetry oh still very much I would say probably half of my poems are connected in some way to some biological event or process I mean I've written I've written poems about trees about moths about about plant a particular plant with its own life history and how how that inspires me and I know when I talk about this in the abstract it doesn't sound very poetic but ultimately you know that's the challenge is to find the Poetry in these in these inspiring beings and that's just because of the person I am because I'm I was I grew up in the country you know my my first uh and and and enduring forms of entertainment involve walking in the woods seeing what I can see when I was younger I was it was also like what can I catch uh catching cads and frogs and you know trying to make pets of them and just really exploring the natural world still appeals to me just as much as when I was a kid so I'll take a walk we live you know as you know on this Farm that's mostly Woods I take a walk in the woods just about every day winter and summer and I always see something yesterday I saw this actually day before yesterday this amazing or orid a Wild Orchid that we people don't know that we have orchids in appal wild orchids in Appalachia but we do it's called a crane fly Orchid very beautiful it's about all these flowers on this stalk about 3 feet tall and I said that is wonderful tomorrow I'm going to come back here with my camera my my phone and take a picture of it well I did and it was gone something had come and eaten it dri the drip the Sal clean so this Exquisite Orchid all these beautiful flowers became dinner for something a turkey or I don't know what I don't know what eats orchids that's nature of yeah yeah something ate it and so we all consumed that orchid in our own ways or or aspired to and something about that tells me there's a poem in there it's just a a little story a little story I love it well if you could offer just one tip or lesson to writers about capturing sense of place what would it be it would be go there go there yourself put your feet on the ground of a place there is no substitute and um and take your time take a notebook and take lots and lots and lots of notes now you could also take your phone and take videos um I've done I've done both things I've taken when I take do research trips I you know I I I do take videos take pictures and recordings but I what I mostly do is fill up a notebook because if I can ultimately this place is going to have to be translated into words so the more I can do that on the front end the better the more I'll have already done when I get back home and by taking a notebook a notebook and a a pen and just you know using my senses going on input mode as my husband Stephen calls it just shut off the noise of my own prejudices or expectations and just go on input mode and write down the leaves are there are more colors of green here than a word than a dictionary has words or the water sounds like like music or you know if I just really pay attention to what I'm hearing what I'm tasting what I'm seeing and get it in words then I will have I mean that's money in the bank for a writer to get back to my desk and just look at all these notes I took and they put me back in the place now pictures are also helpful especially like let's say when I went to Freda col's house um for research for the Lacuna I took I took 100 pictures because there was so much to look at I couldn't I would have had to spend you know 25 hours in her kitchen to notice everything so it was helpful to get back home and when I wrote scenes that were set in her kitchen I could study those pictures and say look at that golden teapot look at that butterfly shaped plate hanging on the wall you know all of those things were available to me so but it boils down to go there and just digest a place with all your senses well I can't thank you enough to all the places you've taken me I mean I I read the Lacuna long before I ever went to Mexico and I felt when I open the book you know the pages of that book or the poison one Bible or whatever book of yours I have read I have felt like the you know the world I was sitting in away and I was being transported to me that's one of the things that a novel should do and um you're you're definitely one of the people that has has kept that very much alive in Contemporary American literature um in a time when a lot of other writers have not cared as much about sense of place well it's maybe repaying a debt because that's what fiction did for me when I was a little girl in Carlile Kentucky when I went to the library I got so excited because I looked at all these books and just thought look at all these places I can go I can go you know I couldn't go we didn't have a we didn't have any public transportation I couldn't even go to town until I could you know talk my mother into taking us for some reason or other but so I was very you know very stuck in place and isolated in a real little town as a kid but I had Windows into the world and and I suppose that for me that's one of the most amazing things a book can do is take a reader somewhere else in the world I agree well thank you so much for being with us you're welcome silus it was such a pleasure and I'm I'm so proud of you for being our poet laurate and I and for exactly this reason that you're doing these great things that help writers and readers all over Kentucky so thank you from one Kentucky into another I appreciate you wow that means the world to me thank you so much writing lessons is an initiative of the 2024 2025 Kentucky poet laurat that's me Salas house I'm thankful for the support of the Kentucky Arts Council the Carnegie Center for literacy and learning the office of Governor Andy basher and Kentucky Humanities this show is written recorded edited and produced by me I hope you will share the show with other writers students or anyone who is interested in the creative process please subscribe to our show and if you like it I hope you'll leave a review or a five-star rating that'll help us get the show to more listeners thanks so much for 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