272. How to Bring Your Setting to Life with Cheryl Grey Bostrom

Author and photographer Cheryl Grey Bostrom discusses how to write setting without cliches and the effects of characters on setting.
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Visit Cheryl's Website:
https://cherylbostrom.com/

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https://www.instagram.com/cherylgreybostrom/
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Transcript

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Jennia: Hello, I'm Jennia D'Lima. Welcome to Writing and Editing, the podcast that takes a whole person approach to everything related to both writing and editing. Today's topic is setting, and how you can write a setting that comes across as realistic, but without relying on cliched phrases and ideas. And also, as it's seen by your different characters. Author Cheryl Grey Bostrom, whose beautiful prose show she knows how to do just that, is here to help us answer those questions. This is "How to Bring Your Setting to Life."

Jennia: Thank you for being here, Cheryl!

Cheryl: Thank you for having me, Jennia! It's just a treat to be here.

Jennia: Well, if you'd like to tell us a little bit about your work and even some of the settings that maybe come up again and again.

Cheryl: Okay. I have loved writing since I was a kid but started as a poet. So I'm looking for an opportunity to express the things that I see, and experience, and feel, and my characters do with a touch of magic to them and hopefully a different view than you might typically see. So that's my goal. But I wrote all the way through school, wrote a couple of nonfiction books about 20 years ago, and helped a lot of people edit and write their books, and wrote short form work, columns. I'm a photographer and am currently a columnist for "God and Nature Magazine," in which I contribute photo essays and then contribute with thoughts on a connection between the spiritual world and the scientific one. And so, as a lifelong resident of the Pacific Northwest, (laughs) I come by these beautiful settings so naturally.

Jennia: Oh my gosh, yes!

Cheryl: Yeah, yeah. We lived—you know, my family has, since the late 1800s, has lived in Washington. And my husband and I now live in far Northwest Washington, although we spent an early stint when we were both in graduate school in Washington's Palouse, which is where this second novel of mine is set. And then the first one is set on the west side of Washington state. But what's interesting is, in all of the years that led up to my beginning to write fiction, I would work with students—I taught high school for a number of years, and I would work with students, or those who are working on their craft and help them with language structure. And yet, once I started writing fiction, which I was terrified to do until I got a lot older, (both laugh) then it's just, like, it set it free. And so setting then became so essential to me, and I wanted it to be a character in my novels—

Jennia: Ooh, I love that!

Cheryl: —you know, and to be an expression itself of theme. And I really have taken a lot of delight in that.

Jennia: Do you think that being a photographer plays into those extra insights you have? Maybe you'd have other observations people wouldn't just because you do have that photographic eye?

Cheryl: I think it helps. I listened to an earlier podcast that you'd had on—there that was, you know, that was just talking about the structure of her creativity. And I was again reminded how I don't think in a linear fashion. I don't plot in the way that is typically represented in a lot of craft books.

Jennia: Mhm.

Cheryl: It's like my mind works like a camera lens—

Jennia: Oh!

Cheryl: —in that I will take in a scene. And at first, you don't even know what you're seeing exactly. You just know that it's affecting you viscerally.

Jennia: Mhm.

Cheryl: And so then as I take these shots, and it's always about the light. And of course, spiritually, that's very important to me too, because I think light changes everything. But as I look at a—as I look at a scene and I take a snapshot of it, if it's out of focus, it's pretty useless. But once it comes into focus and clicks into focus, then I'm able to work with it and ask myself, "What is that setting saying to me?" And so my brain works like that. Say right now I'm looking out at a forest with a field in front of it, and there's a lot going on out there, you know, from the wind to the summer flowers that are coming up to the grassheads that are seeding out.

Jennia: Mhm.

Cheryl: And as I take a photo of it and I look at that photo afterwards and I ponder that photo, it can connect with me at multiple levels, emotionally, spiritually, physically. And I always start my stories knowing where they're going to take place. I always choose the setting because that's where I want to spend the next year, or two years, or whatever.

Jennia: Which makes sense. Yeah.

Cheryl: Once I have that setting and find my characters, then those characters can begin to interact with the setting and the story can move forward. And that's just the beginning. But... does that answer your question?

Jennia: Yes, it does. I think it just helps explain too, why your settings—because I started reading the beginning of Leaning on Air, and almost immediately on that first page, you are just struck by it. It is so vividly detailed, but not in a way that takes away from the story. It just feels like it is part of the story. This is all integral to everything that you're going to learn about these characters and what happens to them. And that's something that I think is really hard to pull off because a lot of writers, and just people in general, we want to reflect on every single detail we notice and include it, whether it's relevant or not, because we attribute that to being how we make a place seem real. But you have this ability to pick and choose what's really going to strike the reader and what's really going to make that scene feel like this full, huge, real place.

Cheryl: Oh, well thanks! I think it makes a difference if you keep in mind that you don't want to pull your reader out of the story to tell them where it's set. Every setting, at least all of my settings in the natural world, they're all dynamic, they're all moving. And I want to write plots that are compelling and that are paced so that I don't have a boggy middle and so that I don't have to go, "Oh, I'm skipping this section because 'nanana' I'm going to get back to the story." I just don't want that. And so when I'm writing the story, nature is moving too.

Jennia: Mmm.

Cheryl: You know, the characters are moving too, and then how do they interact? And there are details just, like with my cameras, you know, I've got some big lenses, some long telephoto lenses. And there are occasional times when you pull up just a tiny section of nature and it's at the micro level, you know, you're pulling it up so close that maybe you're concentrating on a beak, or a foot, or a collection of needles. And then at the same point, you can come in with that same measure of closeness to a character. But let's say, just for example, you're coming into a situation that's especially difficult, you know, or a real challenge to the heart, and you don't want to overwhelm your reader.

Jennia: Mhm.

Cheryl: You know, then you go back out to a wide angle, or you maybe you do go even closer and you just concentrate just on a throat, or a bird note, or just something that conveys an emotional attachment to the scene but allows the reader to move with the character forward, you know? And I guess there are all kinds of books and all kinds of stories, and some people just really like, you know, to be overwhelmed by an experience in a story. And I want my stories to be emotionally evocative and for readers to feel like they're right there in them, but I don't want them to knock them over to where they can't even breathe.

Jennia: Yes, exactly. Suffocated with detail where they don't even know what to pick up on. But I love that you've touched on that too, and that we can use setting also for mood, and atmosphere, and to parallel what the characters are going through in their lives. I feel like we do see that a lot more in the classic work. And the first one that comes to mind is always the moors in Wuthering Heights. I mean, they just feel like they're running alongside the characters and everything they're going through and feeling. And you do the same thing in that you realize you're doing the same thing. So you've given an example somewhat here, and then how you can focus on either that micro or macro level. But do you have maybe a specific example from your work you'd like to share just to better signify how that can occur?

Cheryl: Yeah, I can tell you about one. In Leaning on Air, my protagonists are Celia, who's passionate, adrift; she's an ornithologist. She is reunited with an autistic friend of hers from childhood. And both of these characters first appeared in my debut novel, Sugar Birds. But she is reunited with this man twelve years after they last saw each other. And he is autistic, very principled, very literal. But he also has a trait called synesthesia, in which his deeply felt emotions shift the colors in his world.

Jennia: Mmm.

Cheryl: And so there's a scene where they have experienced a trauma, the two of them, and he is going to try to find her. And so he's driving to this farm in the Palouse, and there is a storm gathering overhead. And he's describing the interplay of light and dark in this, which are really the emotions that he's experiencing and the doubts and the fears that he's having that he's not going to be able to get her back. And so he watches these clouds which are advancing. He identifies them as, like buckler clouds, you know, like advancing troops over this farm. And then the interplay of light and dark, and then ties it into his heart experience, and how when he sees light pooled in certain areas, how that affects him, and then he pulls in. You know, so he's arriving. And I guess one thing that was—it was intentional for me—

Jennia: Mhm.

Cheryl: —by having him be a very bright, autistic man as a neurodivergent who sees the world differently, it doesn't seem odd at all to readers to hear him express his love, and his doubts, and his fears, and his emotional level in his thoughts tied all into nature. And so he doesn't talk like that. He talks in a very staccato, very measured, unimaginative way, but his brain just lights up and connects with nature.

Jennia: That's interesting, yeah! Did you have to do any research into that? Both what it was like to have that type of neurodivergence and how it's expressed?

Cheryl: Some of it came from experience with people I love (laughs). Some of it from students that I taught. And I also had an opportunity on Sugar Birds because, of course, autistic Burnaby was there too, to work with an editor who has written a number of books on autism and really has, you know, some works that are considered representative of the field. And she had said, "If you know one autistic person, you know one autistic person." They're extremely unique. And I know we just wandered way off, but ... (both laugh).

Jennia: I think it's important though too, because it gives people who haven't read the book yet a better understanding of his character and why he does view his setting the way he does. Which ties into one of the questions that I had. And that is how the characters, depending on their personality, their state of mind, their current mood, even their career choice, and how that influences how they interpret the world around them?

Cheryl: Mhm, mhm. Well, and let's take Celia, for instance. Now as an ornithologist who—she's had a number of relationships. You know, she's very skittish about intimacy—emotional intimacy, not physical intimacy. In fact, she's used physical intimacy as a decoy or a buffer, kind of as a barrier for her to protect her from emotional intimacy. And so she has an experience with a hawk in this story. It's a bit of a spoiler, but it won't wreck the story. But where this hawk has had tail feathers burned in a prairie fire, and with her skill set, she is able to imp feathers into that bird's tail so that it can fly again. And just her connection with that bird's experience and contending with fire, and the hope and the resilience that this bird has—just thinking that he's just, that this bird's just going to go on—really has an impact on her emotionally too, and is really quite a huge breakthrough for her. So it's her interaction with this devastating fire, with this bird that propels her to her next level of growth. There are a lot of those that happen all the way through the story, in which the setting is instrumental.

Jennia: Yeah. Which really, I think is a key part for thinking about setting in a story anyway, because we don't always want this thing to just be a random backdrop. I mean, there are going to be cases where the scene doesn't need all those details. But I think especially if you're looking at literary fiction or upmarket fiction, it just really adds to the story. It gives it that extra level of depth that you would be missing otherwise.

Cheryl: Mhm. You know, you're the first interviewer I've talked to who has a concept of that upmarket fiction, because (both laugh) that's really what I want this to be. It is literary, and yet I want it to be accessible. And a lot of these visual images can help to make layered literature more accessible. Where you just don't have talking heads, you just don't have characters that are spinning in their own soups, you know?

Jennia: Exactly.

Cheryl: Moves them forward. Moves them forward.

Jennia: I think we can also lean more heavily on theme there, which you had talked about the setting being used to bolster the theme that you're going for. And so I think that's another reason why it works so well within that genre.

Cheryl: Mhm, mhm. Yeah, it's really fun. And then, you know, and then I can go back and I go, "Wow, these pictures are useful to me." (both laugh) You know, that I've taken...so.

Jennia: Like doing research without even knowing you were doing research.

Cheryl: Yeah, exactly. Just with the sheer joy of it, you know? And beauty is very nourishing to me, and nourishing to me spiritually and emotionally. And so I'm not gonna write scenes in cities. I just won't.

Jennia: Yeah. This might come naturally to you just based on what you've said so far and what we chatted about before, but how do you avoid then stereotyping a place? Because even thinking about the Pacific Northwest, there are ideas that people already have in mind. It's filled with fir trees. It has lots of waterways. It has these certain types of animals. So how do you get away from that while still expressing what it's really like?

Cheryl: In those, that's where the coming in close makes a difference. Summer after my freshman year in college, I traveled Europe for a couple of months, but I was on a bus with 40 other students, and we went 10,000 miles in two months. And so you got, "Okay, well, here is Hamburg, Germany, and here is this forest, and here's that cathedral." And it's just—it just becomes this blur of visual context without any entry into the meaning of it—

Jennia: Mmm.

Cheryl: —you know? So I'm not just going to say it's in the Pacific Northwest, and there are, you know, lots of fir trees on the hills. I want somehow to convey the emotional experience of that setting. And you can't just walk in there and have your character talking to the trees, but through the characters interactions in those settings as they become part of the settings. And I hear from my readers that they do enter those settings with the characters. It becomes a whole different deal, you know? And I know there are people who have driven through the Palouse where Leaning on Air is set, or in the wintertime, for instance, and they go, "Wow, this is barren."

Jennia: (laughs)

Cheryl: It is breathtaking. It's just, you know, I need to go through the seasons there, you know? And we revisit it every year, but we spend endless hours on foot, roaming those hills and noticing the flora and fauna that are native to the original prairie, you know, and, you know, are surprised by a herd of white-tailed deer flying over a hillside toward us, or a cougar in a thicket that goes after our dog. And so you experience those things, and you recognize both the dangers and the richness of them, and then combine them with human beings who have needs, and wants, and obstacles, and it all fits! It's so great.

Jennia: Do you think that level of self-immersion is necessary for every writer, or were there going to be possibly stories where they don't really need that?

Cheryl: I don't know. You know, the heart is a—we're deep wells, right? And I could no more write about something I'm not immersed in or that I haven't immersed myself in, than—I just would need to do it. That doesn't mean I have to have had the same experience as my characters, but I will still have had a connection thematically to what they're going through, or will have experienced sorrow, or confusion, or guilt, or shame, or whatever, at a level that I want my characters to convey. There are different kinds of readers. I mean, some readers are looking for plot-driven fiction that, you know, that are just the details of the plot, and they want to solve a mystery, and that's a beautiful thing too. That's perfectly okay, but that's not what I'm writing.

Jennia: Right.

Cheryl: You know, I hope that my readers will immerse themselves in these stories and love these characters or not love them at all, and (both laugh) you know? And in so doing, emerge richer, or wiser, or deeper, or more thoughtful about something or have—or have an opportunity to look at it in a different way. I don't want them to be didactic. But I believe we're spiritual beings, and that the more we can engage that conversation with ourselves and with others, the more we're going to grow. And in the same way that you don't want a book to be static and all bogged down, we don't want our lives to be static and all bogged down either. We want to keep moving, and keep growing, and keep learning. And I hope my stories do that.

Jennia: Well, even what you've just said goes back to what you talked about with setting and that it is dynamic and that nature is dynamic. And I think it is easy for us to forget that sometimes. Especially when we think about set pieces or something, which almost give us this sense that, here is this forest of non-moving trees, here is this store that will be here forever, and here is this home that may have two different stages: existing, non existing. But we don't really see that in-between between process. We don't really see those changes taking place. And I think that's one thing, even with some of those opening chapters in your book where we do see that. We do see that vitality that is there constantly around us. And that is part of what makes setting feel alive. Because it is alive.

Cheryl: Mhm. I've got another example of that. In Leaning on Air, there's a scene where Burnaby's talking to a little boy who likes to draw like Burnaby does. And this little boy brings him a sketch of a stylized horse, you know, and the little boy has quite a capability to draw. And he brings this sketch of a horse to Burnaby and he says, "I want to draw it real." And Burnaby says, "Well, this is really what it looks like." And what it is is a 3000-year-old geoglyph in England called the Uffington White Horse. It's the oldest one and it's as big as a football field. And it's pounded into the hillside chalk. And Burnaby believes that Cobb is trying to make sense of this horse. Like, "What is this horse?" And Burnaby's explaining to him, you know, that it's in this huge hillside, this green hillside, and it's pounded into the Earth. But Burnaby believes that it's a prayer—

Jennia: Mmm.

Cheryl: —that the people 3000 years ago were so connected to the natural world. You know, this is before, you know, a lot of the faith persuasions that we have any familiarity with emerged, but that these people were so connected to the natural world that they aimed this horse, which, of course, would carry things swiftly to the sky knowing that they needed help from someone greater than themselves. And so this horse—originally, the story was titled "Chalk Horse,"  but the theme of this horse and this looking beyond ourselves, you know, to the creator of this natural world is really a thematic carry through in the whole story too.

Jennia: Yeah, I think that's another really incredibly good point to be making, is not just the author's own beliefs, but the beliefs of the characters and how that too, shapes how they view their surroundings, and see their setting, and even their feelings about what they see around them.

Cheryl: Mhm. Yes! I mean, you just nailed it (laughs). That's between Celia and Burnaby. They couldn't be farther apart when they get together. They're attracted to one another. Their minds spark each other. They both love math, and physics, and the natural world. He's a veterinarian, she's an ornithologist. You know, and they don't—when they get together, they don't really understand how much their differences—

Jennia: Mhm.

Cheryl: —spiritually and ideologically, are going to address how they handle tragedy, how they deal with the things that their world throws at them. And the natural world's all part of that, of the things that happen to them. And so it gives readers an opportunity to look at just what you said: How do these different worldviews shape how we see everything? (both laugh) How we experience everything, how we weather it, how do we go forward, you know? Or do we get stuck? You know, and Celia, in places, is stuck, and Burnaby doesn't know if she's going to be able to move forward.

Jennia: Aww, yeah, I can see that. I mean, I think it also shows, again, just how intertwined all these different elements are. Because even on the podcast episode, we say, "This is about structuring your plot. This is about setting." But it's never really just about one thing. It's always going to be about all these different components and then how they interact and bring each other to life, really, because you can't have just the one and hope that the story blossoms on its own with just that one piece.

Cheryl: No, no. And that's where, you know, how do you even begin to talk about it? You just have to have conversations with people who care about this stuff and see where it goes, right?

Jennia: Yes. Which you so clearly do. I mean, your passion has just been evident this entire time, and (Cheryl laughs), people can't see it, but even just the way you're smiling, and your body language, and the enthusiasm that you're expressing through it has just been so clear this entire time.

Cheryl: Oh that's neat! (Jennia laughs). I'm glad to hear that. Because I do, I really love it.

Jennia: Well, is there a setting that you've ever thought about including in one of your pieces and you just haven't gotten to it yet?

Cheryl: I would like to do something that is in the San Juan Islands, you know, out off the Salish Sea, off of Northwest Washington. But that also ties to fault lines—to the intersections of tectonic plates because we're on the Pacific Rim, you know. And the thematic possibilities for that in lives, earthquakes and lives, I think could be really good.

Jennia: Oh my goodness, yes! I'm already excited! (both laugh)

Cheryl: So I don't have my characters yet. I don't have their goals yet. But it is a concept, and I think it's going to fly. I mean, in my head, it's going to fly.

Jennia: Oh yeah, that one already sounds good. I say you stick with it.

Cheryl: Okay! (both laugh) Thanks.

Jennia: Well, thank you again. And is there any last bit of advice you'd like to give listeners, or maybe an upcoming event, or anything that you'd like to share?

Cheryl: Yeah, I just encourage anybody to get a hold of me if they want to talk writing. I love to talk writing with people. And you could contact me through my website at cherylbostrom.com. And, you know, I may not get back to you immediately, but I always write back, so feel free.

Jennia: That's so sweet of you! I love that. That's just so kind.

Cheryl: (laughs politely)

Jennia: Well, thank you again!

Cheryl: Thank you, Jennia! I appreciate it. So good to meet you!

Jennia: You too!

Jennia: Thank you for listening! And please make sure to check out the show notes for more information. And we'll have all of Cheryl's links in there too. And then please join me next week as author Liz Shipton joins us, where we're going to be talking about YA dystopian fiction and some of its many tropes. And if you enjoyed today's show, please subscribe and share the link with a friend. Thanks again!