Inspired by Setting

One of the early neighbourhoods which influenced me

Sometimes inspiration for my articles comes from unexpected sources. The one for this week came from a book about writing fiction. I know that we don't want anything fictional to show up in our family histories but there is nothing that says we can't steal some of the ideas behind creative writing.

An important part of any fictional story is the setting, the place that contains the characters and action. Sometimes setting is so important that it becomes a character in and of itself. But when you think about it, the place in which our ancestors lived their lives created some of the action that took place. Think of farmers who settled along the Mississippi or the Red River who made periodic flooding a part of their lives or people who lived close to their industrial workplaces and lived with the consequences of pollution. Of course, many of us grew up in much cleaner and more settled areas.

Just like setting is important for fictional characters so our ancestors' settings were important for them. Added to that, an even more intriguing idea was introduced when Hodgins, the writer of A Passion for Narrative quoted from a speech by David Malouf.* It was about how, as we were initially getting to know our world, our ideas were shaped by the place where we were brought up; first by the house in which we were raised, then by the street and town in which we were located. So, we were socialized to believe that the rooms, their contents and the size of our house were the norm and that all other places were as flat, barren, hilly or treed as the geography that surrounded us. In fact, that all countries were like our own. No wonder the Scots who came to Canada from crowded lands where the trees were sparse were at a loss when they first landed in early Canada where forests grew down close to the water.

Much like the Scots we can be confounded by new places that don't match our expectations. But where did these preconceived notions of how a place should be come from? In the chapter about setting there was, of course, an exercise suggested to gain an understanding of how  thoughts about our surroundings were developed. In this exercise, we were asked to describe out childhood home and its contents and then to do the same for the area outside, close to our home. This was a writing exercise as well as a way to underline how our first homes and neighbourhoods influenced us. Our childhood homes were where we gained our ideas of how places should be.

I tried the exercise but in my attempt to remember my childhood home, I came up with a hodge podge of stories about my two childhood homes in Montreal suburbs, one at the end of the airport runway and one in a brand new subdivision which had yet to be landscaped - lots of tunneling opportunities there. Also in the mix was my grandmother's home close to London. I'm sure I dredged up an image of an airplane back in the day as well. So maybe my varied childhood homes set me on my wander ways? I don't think that is what the exercise was supposed to show me. What does it show you and does it give you an idea of what some of your ancestors faced?

Sources:

Hodgins, Jack. A Passion for Narrative: A Guide for Writing Fiction. McClelland & Stewart Ltd., Toronto, 2001. 

* p 73 – 74.