"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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
