A sense of time and place Options

[vwl]

I find that I am partial to stories that evoke a sense of time and place, so I thought it would be fun to exchange lists of good gay-romance stories from Best of Nifty and the Net or otherwise. The stories I like have a real sense of verisimilitude.

My selections are:

The Mike and Danny series of which Two Men and a Pickup are currently at BoNN. This series to me evokes a good sense of the farming country of Nebraska and the rough-and-ready people who live and drift through there.

Lem - which evokes the rodeo world of Northern Montana and the young riders trying to break into the circuit.

The Lizard - at Gay Authors. This story made me feel as if I was growing up in Florence. It's written in English by a German, so the translation can be rough.

[Pee Jay]

Mike and Danny?

That's the Nebraska one that moved so slowly, the one that starts out with two guys riding in a pickup and his other half goes out of town or something like that. Then comes back in a snowstorm. I forget the specifics but I read that one I may have the wrong scenario, not altogether sure.

I find it's slow moving. I can digest that kind of thing if I'm in bed reading a novel, a good one mind you. On the net, however, it has to move and hold your interest. Albeit, that means different things to different people. But nonetheless, it has to be quicker than published material. Grip the reader, move the story along, hold his interest and deliver the punch; this isn't the venue for intuitive writing.

Having said that, whew! I feel lighter and a lot more vulnerable so take advantage of that, let 'er rip. It's fun ya gotta admit.

All The Best,


Pee Jay

[The Pecman]

Yes, I agree 100% with VWL. I think I picked that up from a couple of my favorite writers (Stephen King and J.K. Rowling), and also from my favorite filmmakers (like Alfred Hitchcock). I want to know exactly when and where I am 100% of the time -- what year is it, what month, what day, the street names and so on. And what year it is, even if the author leaves it vague and only puts out some subtle clues like movie titles, TV shows, songs, or other pop culture tidbits. Sometimes, just one sentence is enough to do it; I'm not asking for a roadmap -- just enough details to give me a little reality.

Often, writers give the excuse "I don't want to be specific, because I want the reader to imagine that the city or country might be the one they live in." To me, that's just lazy. It takes a lot more work to drop in the street names and make sure the directions are right (north, south, east, west), and and know all the details that make the story real. Even if it's a fictional town, I figure the least you can do is come up with all the simulated details that make it feel real.

Lem did this very well, and I very much got the sense where and when I was throughout the story. This is particularly surprising, given that the author is apparently in the U.K., and he's writing about the rodeo circuit in Montana.

[Cole Parker]

Come on, Pec! You know what you're saying doesn't always hold. You know it! It depends on what the writer is trying to do. Vagueness, nonspecificity, is a valuable part of art. How can you entertain the everyman concept if you have your action centered in Denver in August in 1952 in a downtown apartment building facing west, toward the Rockies? You can't. You simply can't.

You're right, there are lots of time stories benefit from that. But there are also lots of times they benefit from not being so specific. And you know it!

The writer has to write the story to fit the vision he has. If he wants it as centered and focused as you ask for it to be, great. But it's up to what he's trying to do. I might even grant you that your way works more often than it doesn't, that it's helpful more often than it interposes itself. But it also detracts from identifying with the characters. I would guess, off the top of my head, your way works better if you're writing in third person, less well in first, for the most part.

And as for the Mike and Danny stories, Peejay, not everyone likes chocolate, or key lime pie. Many people do. Not everything fits everyone's tastes. If that set of stories moves too slowly for you, you probably shouldn't read them. If you like great writing that sets mood and relationships and is true to the psychology of the characters, if you like to see the characters being human with all their warts and wonders exposed, you won't find anything better on the web. The story is the characters, is the relationships between them, is how they respond to each other and the situations they find themselves in. If you want the story to sizzle and move at a cheetah's pace, then read something else. For myself, I've found few writers in this genre that do it better than Rock Lane Cooper.

But the stories are certainly not for everyone.

C

[DesDownunder]

I also like stories that evoke time and place.
However, specifics can get in the way of an author's desire to be confrontational; they can also provide a pathway for the reader to escape the substance of an author's message (where he has one) by saying that (moral) happened then and there, not here and now.

I freely admit that some stories depend on the message being concealed through being described in a specific time and place so that we are able to access some parallel to our own time and experience. In other words where a moral exists in a story it may be easier to relate to it when it has a different setting to the real one in which we live. Fairy tales and fables come to mind as obvious parables of this kind.

Interestingly, the fictional nature of a fairy tale often bypasses the reality relationships with the well known phrase, 'Once upon a time, long, long ago, in a place far, far away...'
This does not preclude the specifics of a cultural setting of course, and great detail of a fairy tale kingdom or, of wars in another galaxy may well abound in such a story. As readers we are aware of the fictions and accept them, so long as they are sufficiently well conceived and presented.

To perhaps play devil's advocate, I would also state that it is sometimes easier to provide specific time and place than it is to find a way to set a story in a non-specific, general, or universal environment from which there is no escape for the reader but to face the reality of the moral directly. Indeed, I would add that done badly such a story can be little more than a philosophy lecture, (or worse, a psychological treatise.)
Sometimes the reality is best seen through the metaphor. Sometimes we just can't handle the truth directly.

This does not mean however, that a story devoid of time and place references, is not a valid method a story-telling, or that it is the result of laziness by the author.
A great deal of effort and thought has to go into writing a story which by its nature seeks a setting of anonymity, of nonspecific place or period, especially if the author is trying reveal a universal insight through such a story setting and not bore the pants of his readers (if not his characters.)

The truth seems to me to be that the particular nature of the parables, allegories and extended metaphors are the more familiar, easier, time honoured methods of story telling, while it requires considerably more effort to enter into an author's attempt to explore direct communication of his truth in an anonymous, unidentified story setting.

I think in this regard, that many of the Flash Fiction stories we see, assume details which we as readers are able to accept, even though many of them may technically fall into the category of stories that do not specify their place or time.

It would also appear to me to be impossible to absolutely avoid both the representative or the direct access elements, in any story-telling that retains its value as entertainment, and that word, entertainment, is too often forgotten in the rush to be avant-garde, rather than just curious about exploring alternatives.

[Fritz]

Excellent points Cole. I agree that there are instances in which being specific about the time, date, location, etc can add to a story, but there are also times when it can distract. I can even point to one of your own stories (When He Was Five) as an example where I think adding more specific details would have distracted from the story. It depends on what the author is trying to accomplish with his story and I could cite other examples to back up that view.

You're also right that different readers enjoy different styles and that means that while one reader might consider a given story as slow-paced and boring, others might consider it thoughtful and introspective. I would also add that a person's mood can have a big influence on how he perceives a story. If I'm in a relaxed and laid back mood I am more receptive to slower paced and thoughtful stories.

[The Pecman]

It depends on what the writer is trying to do. Vagueness, nonspecificity, is a valuable part of art. How can you entertain the everyman concept if you have your action centered in Denver in August in 1952 in a downtown apartment building facing west, toward the Rockies?

Then I want to know that. Just one or two lines in the story would take care of the main details: we're in Denver, it's the summer of 1952. The guy's driving a Nash Rambler and Kay Starr is singing "Wheel of Fortune" on the radio, and Eisenhower's in the news. That's enough.

I think there are ways of communicating what time we're in just with subtle details. A character is driving a late-model Prius and flips open a cellphone. OK, we know it happened in the last five years. Or a character is headed to his stockbroker job in the Twin Towers. We know it happened before 2002. And so on.

Even great novels that happen in a completely fictional place manage to communicate their locations and the general timeline. I point to the Harry Potter novels as being a good example. We know they happen in the 1990s from little tiny details: train stations, the cousin owning a Playstation video game, and so on. Hogwarts is four or five hours north of London by train; OK, that gets it close enough for me. See what I mean? J.R.R. Tolkien created an entire world, and went to the trouble of including extensive maps and diagrams in his novels. We accept that his stories happened thousands of years ago, but even though it's a complete fantasy, I buy it 100%, because he makes it all real through detail.

Another writer that was great on time and place was Hemingway. You always know where you were, whether you're chasing the bulls down a street in Spain, in the desert, or in the middle of a battlefield. Other great writers, like Arthur Conan Doyle, make you feel every cobblestone in turn-of-the-century London streets -- even if the places are fictional, you get the sense they're very close to real locations (like Baker Street). Anne Rice does the same thing, both in her vampire novels and her historical fiction, describing very real places in infinite detail. She devotes a lot of time to what it felt to walk in the streets of Paris during the French Revolution, or in a lavish Miami nightclub during the late 1980s, or in a crumbling New Orleans mansion in the 1990s. (Or even in Heaven and Hell -- several times.)

I'm not saying it's not possible to write a great story that isn't specific about time and place. But the stories I enjoy reading almost always do this, and I feel like something's missing when it's not there. Again: I'm not saying you need three paragraphs describing every minute detail about the town. One or two sentences can do it, just covering the approximate time of day, the location, maybe the time of year. "The early snow was beginning to fall as I looked outside my window on Broad Street, which overlooked the business district in Philadelphia." Boom, done.

To me, the moment I don't see at least a vague location and time in a story, I feel like something's missing. The same is true for film, but at least there, one shot of the Eiffel Tower or of the Transamerica Building will tell you what city you're in, and you can guess the approximate date by the weather, the clothes, the hairstyles, and the cars.

[vwl]

I didn't mean to suggest that every novel had to have a strong sense of time and place--just that I liked such novels. In the gay-romance genre, there are fine stories in which the place doesn't make a lot of difference--Ardveche's Educating Alex, for example, which is on nearly everyone's best of Best of Nifty lists. The relationship developed in it is the centerpiece of the novel, and the dialogue is brilliant.

Outside of this genre, there are plenty of excellent examples of time-and-place novels. One of my favorites is the Patrick O'Brian Master and Commander series, set in Napoleanic times on a British warship and in England. The details are incredibly well researched--science, warfare, medicine, food, Parliamentary intrigue, Admiralty intrigue, etc. In fact, the only error that I have seen remarked upon is in O'Brian's reference to a musical piece that had been written when the story took place but had not been published.

In the mystery genre, there are scores of examples of well-drawn times and places. This mystery-genre point is apt, because mysteries, like gay-romance stories, involve constantly reused themes, and time-and-place effects distinguish them one from another.

[The Pecman]

In the mystery genre, there are scores of examples of well-drawn times and places. This mystery-genre point is apt, because mysteries, like gay-romance stories, involve constantly reused themes, and time-and-place effects distinguish them one from another.

Yes, mysteries and thrillers often require very specific time-and-place information, particularly if it involves politics or murder. I'm reminded of Tom Clancey's techno-thrillers, all of which seem to be involved in kind of an "alternate universe America" where terrorists set off H Bombs and do all kinds of nastiness throughout the 1990s. Quite a complex web he sets up.

To tell you the truth, I'm hard-pressed to think of a major literary work where the author didn't include some kind of sense of time and place. Look at To Kill a Mockingbird, where you know it's somewhere around the 1920s or 1930s in the old South of Alabama. Or something like Catcher in the Rye, which captures New York teenagers in the early 1950s. It's hard for me to come up with the name of a classic novel where they leave the time and place completely vague.

There are certainly science fiction novels where they don't come out and specify the exact year, like a lot of Phillip K. Dick's novels (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, aka Bladerunner), and We Can Remember It for You Wholesale, aka Total Recall). But at least then, there are flying cars, thought police, miniature robot spying devices, and talk of space colonies living away from the Earth, so we at least get a sense it's at least 50-100 years from now, maybe a little more. That's close enough.

Again, omitting those details just feels like a loose end dangling in the wind. I'm not saying it's necessarily bad writing, particularly with short stories, which are often deliberately vague. But I don't think you can sustain this in a novel. I think at some point you have to be more specific about exactly where and when the story takes place, even if it's something vague. "That car's a 1963 Buick! It's almost brand-new! Why would you wanna get a new one?" Just something like that would work for me.

[DesDownunder]

Are we talking at cross purposes when we discuss time and place in a novel? If so the fault is obviously mine.

The reference of time in a novel is apparent in the subtext or in the exposition.
If it is in the subtext we should see that it is part of the author's desire to make the reader work at discovering when the story occurs. If however the time is delineated in the text as specific, the reader has no choice but to accept the author's statement of the time period as being the setting for the story.

As others have said, 'There can be a time without novels, but no novel without time.' That is not argued. What can be discussed is whether the time period needs to be revealed or can be left for the reader to discover, or even guess, for himself.

If that seems to oppose my earlier post, then it should be obvious that I have been looking at novel theory, and I can assure it is one long academic, indecisive (and historical) headache. (If you must have a reference see this, but consider yourself warned, as though, interesting as it might be, I found it too intellectual to read in its entirety.)

So I will agree with Pecman on the need for a story to be set in time, but not that it needs to be obvious in all cases. This is especially so when the plot turns on a deception of time to keep the reader guessing, as in a mystery. There are many literary devices such as tense and dialog which can contribute to imparting the sense of the time in which a story occurs.

Place is open to a wider interpretation. "My place or yours," is not really a question that a reader can pose to an author, it is always the author's prerogative to set the place, if not the time.

In terms of the place being specific however, it is much more dependent on the author's creative objective, and how much the plot depends on the exposition of the place. It is here that we might find differences in style that may alienate some readers while fascinating others.

A sunset may occur in the mountains or over a construction site in a city. Do we need to know that the city is New York, or that the mountain is in Tibet? Not necessarily. Too much geography may destroy the poetry in the prose, it may give purpose when none is wanted or needed, it can in fact be a distraction from the plot, (and that too is okay if it is the author's intention.)
It seems to me that inclusion of the exact latitude and longitude of the story's setting is very dependent on the author's priorities for his tale.
Consider this opening to an unwritten story, deliberately written to conceal place:

There was no doubt in what remained of my consciousness, that I had been hit by some kind of motor vehicle. It could have happened to anyone, but it happened to me, I just didn't know at that moment, who I was. Ambulance, that is where I am, I'm in an ambulance, a siren blaring, speeding ambulance. My query about who I was sudden took a turn of recognition when I realised I found the paramedic an extremely attractive man. I tried to sit up.

"Please, sir, just lay quietly," he said to me. He called me 'sir', I guess that, in combination with my finding him attractive, means I am homosexual. The thought of being gay didn't worry me until I wondered if I had always been gay, or was it a result of the accident, a bump on the head which suddenly released my inhibition, hitherto hidden from my mind and now running rampant all over the paramedic's tight jumpsuit. Alas, whatever he was injecting me with had sent me into a dizzying state, riding in an ambulance through streets that could have been in any city in the world and for all I knew, I could have been anyone.

It should be obvious that this attempt to conceal both place and character identity is to impart a sense of everyman to the character, even if he is gay, maybe even because he is gay. It should equally be obvious that the time is now.

Experimental writing as an exploration of new ways to use the medium of writing is always going to find difficulties in being accepted. Historically, the novel has built on its origins in Petronius' Satyricon to become a form of communication that both entertains and informs.
I don't particularly like the idea of being restricted by rules, even if I do acknowledge the need for discipline in any art form.

It seems to me there is definite interest in examining literature devoid of specifics in modern novels. I can't say that I like it, anymore than I like handheld camera shots in a movie, which I dislike most of the time, by the way.
However I am quite willing to entertain the possibility of some genius finding a way to write a story without reference to time and place. It's unlikely to be me or if I read him correctly, Pecman.

[jamessavik]

Two of my favorite authors are D***** 9 and Freethinker. Both are masters at grounding their plots in a time and place.

Freethinker's work has an awesome bell bottomed paisley late sixties/early seventies wonder years type feel. You can practically smell the bong hits.

D***** 9 work is firmly grounded in early to mid seventies.

Both authors use music, the news and events that acted as cultural focal points at the time.

For example: Free Thinker used the night of the moon landings in the summer of 1969 as an excuse for young teens to stay up late and party because... well their country landed on the moon.

One of D***** 9's characters was popular with many of the veterans in town because he reminded them of a friend that didn't come back from Vietnam.

[DesDownunder]

There is one story (among many others) that I find very evocative of time and place.
For many it will break too many rules. It is multi POV. which in this case has been made to work, (for me anyway.)
It is emotional and at times sentimental.

But it really does make me feel like I am back in 1969, where the story starts.
In many ways I think Billy and Danny won the Love and Peace revolution that the rest of the world abandoned.

I read it as it was being posted way back in 2003. It awakened me to gay stories being capable of historical value as entertainment.
At 75 chapters it is a long read, and it progresses through time and fashions, liberation, tragedy and Love.
For those who can enter into their world, Bill and Danny is a delightful history, for others...well they will just miss out.

Billy and Danny

[The Pecman]

Too much geography may destroy the poetry in the prose, it may give purpose when none is wanted or needed, it can in fact be a distraction from the plot, (and that too is okay if it is the author's intention.)

Naaa, I don't agree with that. I gave a dozen examples of famous novels and novelists who are extremely specific in time and place with their stories. I'm very hard-pressed to name a famous novel that never specifies when and where it takes place.

My point is, to avoid giving the reader these details is like forcing them to read the novel with blinders on, excluding key details. To me, you have to engage all the senses -- sight, sound, taste, touch, and time -- in order for the story to be real. Without that, I'm always going to wonder, "where is this? Seattle or Sydney? New York or Nova Scotia? Rome or Russia?" It's the vagueness that bothers me. To me, the details change the nature of the story, and part and parcel of the fabric of the storytelling.

Again, just one or two sentences in the first chapter can cover the entire novel. I'm not asking for endless repeated detail or a distraction, and I've said many times that you can even set a novel in a totally fictional place and time as long as you reveal what they are to the reader (the planet Tatooine? the city of Atlantis? Hogwart's School?). My point is, withholding such crucial information in a novel is frustrating for me as a reader.

If you have the name of a major published novel that never reveals its time or place, I'd love to hear it. No doubt, they may exist, but I bet there are far more great novels that feature this information than omit it. To me, obfuscating time and place is as weird as not revealing the approximate age and sex of the lead characters. It's worse than not letting the other shoe drop.

[DesDownunder]

Try Herman Hesse who won the 1946 Nobel prize for literature for his novel The Glass Bead Game.
His novel Siddhartha is set in India and any further information is gilding the lily, so to speak, it isn't necessary.

The point is not that a place be obscured, but that the geographic clarity is not always needed for what the author wishes to say, that such defining of place may allow the reader to escape from being confronted with the author's point. Interestingly, the opposite is also true, in as much that specific geographic detail can be confronting, especially if it challenges commonly held beliefs.

Vagueness in itself is not a sin, it is simply a way for an author to say, "don't get involved with the 'where' of this story, the 'what' is more important, or the 'who' is what I am interested in describing."

I would certainly agree with you Pecman, that the vast majority of stories do specify the place of their action, their confrontations, I am just not needing the geographic location as much as you are. Indeed, I find myself alienated by too much association with a particular place when the story is really about the universal truth of a character that I am reading.

Sydney or Seattle shouldn't matter in those stories that deal with the universal human condition, they could happen anywhere to anybody.
Even so that does not mean that an author cannot mention exacting geographic location, just that it doesn't worry me if he is vague on such detail.

I also think it is the right of the author to be obscure, to make his reader work, to think, to offer the reader a chance to jump from the unknown into a recognisable reality of a truth previously unconsidered, albeit with a touch of irony and finesse which have become such rare commodities in art forms today.

I can assure you that so far my stories have all been about people living on Earth.

I also must emphasise that I love your story, Pieces of Destiny, with its exacting locale and time.
On the other hand I am bored into the middle of next week by Lord of the Rings.

But that is me and I can accept we all are different in what we enjoy reading and writing.

I must also state Pecman, that your posts on this matter have helped me explore and liberate my own thoughts and writing to set some stories in Australia, and that is something I would never have done before these discussions. My thanks for your prodding are in order.

[Cole Parker]

The point is not that a place be obscured, but that the geographic clarity is not always needed for what the author wishes to say, that such defining of place may allow the reader to escape from being confronted with the author's point. Interestingly, the opposite is also true, in as much that specific geographic detail can be confronting, especially if it challenges commonly held beliefs.

Vagueness in itself is not a sin, it is simply a way for an author to say, "don't get involved with the 'where' of this story, the 'what' is more important, or the 'who' is what I am interested in describing."


Just the point I was trying to make, Des. You just did it more clearly. There are some stories where the time and place are entirely irrelevant and even distracting. It is the writer's choice how to present his setting, and he must do this just as a composer much choose which chord variations to use with his melody line to get the music to sound exactly the way he wants it to sound.

On the other hand I am bored into the middle of next week by Lord of the Rings.

I thought I was the only one! That book is a classic, and I've been told by several people it's the best book they ever read. It's also the only book I ever read that I forced myself to read three-quarters of, then set it down. If I get through the first third of any book, I read it all the way. Not that one. Boring is a good word for it. I didn't find the characters compelling, the story line kept being manipulated by improbability and--well, no point in trying to explain why I didn't like it when the rest of the world thinks it one of the seven wonders. I don't feel that way, and it 's great to know there's another poor soul like me, balancing my point of view on the other side of the globe.

C

[The Pecman]

Try Herman Hesse who won the 1946 Nobel prize for literature for his novel The Glass Bead Game. His novel Siddhartha is set in India and any further information is gilding the lily, so to speak, it isn't necessary.

Yeah, but the time and place in Siddharthaare very clear by inference. We know we're not in Brooklyn or in Oz. The country essentially becomes its own character in that story, and it's clear that it takes place thousands of years ago, in a place without technology, no engines, just horses and wagons. That alone tells us enough. Glass Bead Game is in a vague future, centuries from now, and that's enough. I think science fiction kind of falls into its own classification, where we get a sense of when it takes place just through technology. One line of dialog that says, "I grew up in the third colony on Mars" will cover it.

Vagueness in itself is not a sin, it is simply a way for an author to say, "don't get involved with the 'where' of this story, the 'what' is more important, or the 'who' is what I am interested in describing."

That doesn't work for me. Here, we're arguing taste and not an absolute fact, so again, I'm going to emphasize that it's only hard for me to read a story where the author is vague on time and place. It becomes a nagging question in the back of my mind: where is this? Is it California? Is it the Bahamas? Is it the North Pole? a boat on the Caspian Sea? And when is it? Is it World War II? Is it the turn of the century? Is it contemporary? Is it long ago, in a galaxy far, far away?

When I don't know these details, it becomes a distraction, and then I can't enjoy the story, because it starts gnawing at me like a toothache.

On the other hand I am bored into the middle of next week by Lord of the Rings. But that is me and I can accept we all are different in what we enjoy reading and writing.

I read Lord of the Rings when I was 12 or 13, and up until that point, I think my father thought I was a lazy lout (or maybe annoying at best). I remember a time when he popped into my bedroom just for a quick chat, and he saw that I was halfway through reading the novel and he was momentarily stunned. He told me he had tried to read the story several times in high school and college and just couldn't get past the first chapter. So I think that was one of the first things I did that made my father realize, "hey, this kid may have something going on after all." I took that as quite a compliment.

LOTR is definitely a tough read, but I think that's because Tolkien came from such a strict academic background. The emotional content of the stories is a little flat, and the historical details get overwhelming after awhile. I think Tolkien was perhaps too much of an intellectual and not enough of a novelist to have the ability to write for the masses, and I think this "stuffy" nature of the stories makes reading them a chore for many people. Peter Jackson's movies are essentially the "Readers' Digest versions" of the books, and they move 1000 times faster and chop down all the fat to a fairly tight, concise story -- a story that still takes more than 10 hours to tell as a film!

BTW, note that the novel sold 150,000,000 copies (!!!), so apparently more than a few people were able to read it. Or maybe they just bought it, never made it past the first chapter, and left it on their bookshelf as a status symbol. (I have to admit, the subsequent books did bore me; the Harvard Lampoon satire Bored of the Rings is absolutely hilarious and a fun read, but only if you've read the real books.)

I do agree that there are situations where you have to be vague about time and place, and the classic example there are short stories where the surprise ending involves each of them. I'm reminded of several episodes of the classic Twilight Zone that use this trick: an old woman on a run-down farm is terrorized by little robots, and surprise... we're actually on another planet, the woman is a giant humanoid alien, and the robots are actually American astronauts in the future. So deliberately withholding the real time and place can be a gimmick used to create a very effective "O. Henry-esque" ending.

But man, trying to sustain that in a novel is maddening. And I still maintain this is a real problem in romantic fiction, particularly gay romantic fiction, as far as making it real and readable to me. Adding details about time and place obviously won't make the story great, but covering up that information does irritate me. My feeling is, all the writer has to do is just do a little research and work at it.

[Cole Parker]

LOTR is definitely a tough read, but I think that's because Tolkien came from such a strict academic background. The emotional content of the stories is a little flat, and the historical details get overwhelming after awhile. I think Tolkien was perhaps too much of an intellectual and not enough of a novelist to have the ability to write for the masses, and I think this "stuffy" nature of the stories makes reading them a chore for many people. Peter Jackson's movies are essentially the "Readers' Digest versions" of the books, and they move 1000 times faster and chop down all the fat to a fairly tight, concise story -- a story that still takes more than 10 hours to tell as a film!


I do agree that there are situations where you have to be vague about time and place, and the classic example there are short stories where the surprise ending involves each of them. I'm reminded of several episodes of the classic Twilight Zone that use this trick: an old woman on a run-down farm is terrorized by little robots, and surprise... we're actually on another planet, the woman is a giant humanoid alien, and the robots are actually American astronauts in the future. So deliberately withholding the real time and place can be a gimmick used to create a very effective "O. Henry-esque" ending.

Pec, I know you weren't writing that just for me, but I have to respond anyway, to defend my honor if you will. I never said, and didn't in fact feel, LotR was a "tough read." Of course, I didn't read it at 12, either; then it may well have been. I was middle-aged when I tried it. I didn't object to the pedantic nature or the historical aspect. I objected to the fact it was boring. It wasn't a lively, captivating novel. It was boring! But that's just me. Oh, and Des. 149,999,998 people may well feel differently, and they're welcome to their opinion. I never have been part of the in crowd.

Oh, and I'm glad you've softened your indefensible stance on time and place depictions in novels. I agree that different scenarios call for different writing strategies.

C

[The Pecman]

No, no -- I sincerely believe that Lord of the Rings is a very tough read. I totally understand why people bail on it. It took me two or three attempts just to start Stephen King's mammoth Dark Tower series, and that's almost as rough. At least there, you eventually get a payoff and it becomes an engrossing, textured story with lots of emotion and drama. LOTR is like one of those sprawling 1950s movie epics like The Ten Commandments or Around the World in 80 Days; it's so huge, it's hard to get into on a lot of levels. LOTR is also not a book I could easily read twice -- though I believe I did read it through once, then years later listened to the audio book, and also read one or two of the encyclopedias. Definitely some boring sections, no question -- not an accessible mass-market novel by any means.

But my point was that here's a book that made time and place very real and palpable -- no easy achievement for a story that takes place in a mythical world, thousands of years ago. The details of time and place are what made the story more real, and that's my point. The books I enjoy the most are written by people who make an effort to add all the minutiae of time and place. Without those details, the story is less real to me.

That's my one-sentence point.

On the other hand: I spent yesterday writing a scene for Destiny with the boys looking at the Missouri River, and I spent five minutes looking at maps of where the actual Missouri and Mississippi rivers converge, trying to decide if this would work in real life. And I finally said, "F it," and I just faked it. To me, all the story has to do is to feel real -- not be real. We have to assume, yeah, this is close enough to a real place that I'll buy it, and I'm convinced the reader will, too. I did at least make the effort to note that the real place is close enough to what I describe in the story, though I have no idea if a real hilltop is close by those rivers. I'm betting it'll work for the story and I won't get angry emails saying, "this is totally wrong! That whole area is completely flat -- there's no hills at all! Your story sucks!"

[Cole Parker]

If you do get that mail, Pec, just remember one term to use. "Poetic license." As long as yours is renewed, you can use it at will.

C

[DesDownunder]

Pec, I know you weren't writing that just for me, but I have to respond anyway, to defend my honor if you will. I never said, and didn't in fact feel, LotR was a "tough read." Of course, I didn't read it at 12, either; then it may well have been. I was middle-aged when I tried it. I didn't object to the pedantic nature or the historical aspect. I objected to the fact it was boring. It wasn't a lively, captivating novel. It was boring! But that's just me. Oh, and Des. 149,999,998 people may well feel differently, and they're welcome to their opinion. I never have been part of the in crowd.

Oh, and I'm glad you've softened your indefensible stance on time and place depictions in novels. I agree that different scenarios call for different writing strategies.

C

Cole, it wasn't me. I didn't say anything about 149,999,998 people. I'm with you Cole, I not one of the in crowd either. Anyway popularity has never been my hallmark of excellence.

Pecman,
I had no trouble with The Ten commandments, or Around the World in 80 Days. I have read much tougher books than LOTR, The Glass Bead Game for one. Try Kafka's* books. My problem with LOTR is that I cannot suspend disbelief sufficiently to get interested in the story, and the specifics of the time and place don't help, they actually deter me because I know they cannot be real. It's my fault for not giving myself to the author, but I can't help feeling I have better things to do. Same with Harry Potter. But I got through Gone With the Wind, Dune and Ben-Hur okay.


*Kafka, quote from Wiki:

Kafka often made extensive use of a trait special to the German language allowing for long sentences that sometimes can span an entire page. Kafka's sentences then deliver an unexpected impact just before the full stop—that being the finalizing meaning and focus. This is achieved due to the construction of certain sentences in German which require that the verb be positioned at the end of the sentence. Such constructions cannot be duplicated in English, so it is up to the translator to provide the reader with the same effect found in the original text.