Thursday's Children 10/4/12 Haunted by Houses

Last week I blogged about how knowing where a character lives can help both reader and writer gain understanding of that character's psyche. Or how outer world can reflect or influence inner world. In most of my stories I have the character in mind BEFORE I figure out where they reside.

But sometimes it's the house itself that sets off the spark. At this time of year I am especially susceptible to dwellings with a certain...vibe (read that word as Vincent Price might, if he wasn't dead, or maybe as if he was dead, but had decided to visit).

Here are some of those places. They haunt my imagination, begging for their own story.

The home below belongs to one of my best friends from college.

It's a fascinating house with an interesting history and even its own name...
Rhododendron Hall.
Has a nice Gothic ring to it, don't you think?

I know it's really hard to see the actual house in this atmospheric photo, but it's very cool, trust me.

Photo Courtesy of Craig Comeau

You might live right in the middle of a swarming hive of stories without even realizing it.

Are there any haunted houses in your town?

Or houses with intriguing backstories?

This ode to weathered shingles is in my town.

It actually got resided this summer and looks hideously new and raw,

but the salt air will fix that quickly enough.

Rumor has it that this house appeared in the opening of the "Dark Shadows" tv show,

recently reinvented by two of my creative heroes, Tim Burton and Johnny Depp.

Clinging to the granite cliffs the way it does, I would imagine that on stormy nights the crashing waves must make the whole place tremble.

Below is the Captain Nathaniel Lord Mansion built in 1812,

from money made in his ship-building business.

He died before he ever got to live here.

The Lord family lived here until 1927. It is now an inn.

Somewhere in the middle it was also an old ladies' retirement home.

It is also in my town and apparently a ghost is a permanent resident.

She wears a nightgown and is sometimes seen in The Lincoln Bedroom.

It was known as The Wisteria Room

until someone pointed out that wisteria means "remembrance of the dead".

She's also been known to climb the stairs to the eight-sided cupola.

Some think she is Mrs. Captain Lord. Apparently she gave a honeymooning couple quite a fright.

I could write a story about them. Or about her.

Captain Lord Mansion

And then there are dwellings that suggest inhabitants who might, or might not, be fully human.

They might be squatty, hairy, and not very nice.

Especially if the sun went down while you lost your way in the corn maze nearby.

Husk Wigwam

Though it is teepee shaped it's covered in cornhusks. I took this photo at a PYO apple orchard.

This week I hope you'll join our Thursday's Children bloghop. 

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Thursday's Children 9/27/12 Part I Where Do Your Characters Dwell?

"We shape our dwellings, and afterwards our dwellings shape us."

WINSTON CHURCHILL, Sir Winston Churchill: A Self-Portrait

How much thought do you give to the places your characters live?
By that I don't mean geographic location (that'll be another blog post), but the actual house itself. 

Home. There's a loaded word if ever there was one. It might summon feelings of comfort, embarrassment, even terror. A house invariably affects the lives of its inhabitants.  How a home looks, sounds, and even smells, all help to convey its signficance within a story.

A house can be as much a character in the story as any of the human ones.
Houses have personalities.
And sometimes secrets.

 

The George Jacobs Senior House (see below) was an inspiration for my book
UNQUIET SOULS

Do you think a home can absorb the essence of those who have lived there?
Can walls, ceilings, and floors retain memories of their own?

If so, could a psychically sensitive person experience past events or personalities if she were to touch one of the structural beams that had once belonged to it?
I used this idea as an inciting event.

The Jacobs house collapsed during the 1930s.



Geo. Jacobs Senior's House c. 1891

This farmhouse helped me flesh out a minor but still important character.
Ezekiel Hovey,local historian and elderly bachelor, who lives with his white cat Mary.
 

Don't you think this house might smell like boiled cabbage and litter box?

In my YA Contemporary FOOLISH, Sparrow (the MC) lives in a mobile home adorned with hippy graffiti and crammed to the ceiling with her mother's unfinished art projects - it's only a few crocheted afghans shy of being featured on "Hoarders".

But notice the flowers.

So picture this van, as a mobile home, but only half-painted (because her mother never completes anything she starts). 

Of course it's on the wrong side of town, underscoring Sparrow's "have-not" status.

No wonder she can't wait to get the hell out of there. 

But in her next residence she plants a garden, to make her new house feel like home.

Many of us have ambivalence about the places we've called home.

Here's where I envisioned Opal MacBride, (the MC in my book TENDRIL) living with her grandmother, Pearl.
A cottage tucked into a cleft between forested hills, by a quiet lake in New Hampshire where trees and steeples frame the sky.
The walls inside are painted marigold yellow, delphinium blue, and geranium red.

A very "female" sort of place if you like symbolism, which I do.

But after Pearl dies, Opal must live with her Uncle Ned, a lighthouse keeper.

The perpetual fog smells like ocean creatures. When the swells are big Opal hears the hiss and roar of a sea monster, but when the waves are calm Opal imagines she hears mermaids whispering. The walls, floors, and furniture are white, like Opal (who has albinism).
Her uncle has an unhealthy obsession with her.

 

Constant movement, craggy cliffs, and of course, the lighthouse itself, you can't get much more "masculine" than that. It is here that Opal must reclaim her sexuality.



Photo Courtesy of Kari Jo Spear

Where do your characters dwell, and what does that say about them?

Does knowing what a character's house looks like, smells like, sounds like help your reader understand him or her?

Does knowing where your characters live help you understand them better?

For Thursday's Children this week Kristina Perez blogged about Falling With Grace, and as a former competitive figure skater I bet she knows a thing or two about that. Her post goes up on Thursday.

Here's the Linky List so anybody else who wants to share their Thursday inspirations can be part of an ongoing Bloghop.