When the Setting Does Not Fit

My work in progress is a straightforward horror novel, and for approximately one month and twenty or so thousand words, it took place in Colorado.  Specifically, it took place in a fictional community called Ellingwood, which was a blend of the real-life towns of Leadville and Salida, two towns in the heart of the Rockies that I love and have visited frequently.

Colorado just made sense.  The terrain was familiar, and a Rocky Mountain winter would provide the dark, cold, isolated atmosphere the novel seemed to demand.

Somewhere around the ten thousand-word point, however, the story began to show signs that it was not comfortable in its Colorado surroundings.  The scenery, while beautiful and a pleasure to write about, felt wrong, and this wrongness was bringing the story down with it: no moving part moved on its own.  I either forced the story along, or it went nowhere.

But I persisted, telling myself I was simply facing the doubts that tend to come with first drafts.  My thought process was something like this: Why are you thinking about changing the setting?  Colorado is fine!  At some point, the narrative will start roaring along again and the setting will become integral to the story, like Denali did in your last novel.

Ten thousand hard-fought words later, I accepted that my story had not settled into its Colorado locale, and it never would.  The story wanted to be set in the wooded hills of my home state of Arkansas, terrain even more familiar to me than the Rockies.

Sometimes, it’s good to get away from home.  Writing novels should be (for the most part) fun and liberating.  I don’t hesitate to leave the comfortable confines of Arkansas with my stories; I travel all the time, and places frequently inspire me.  When that happens, the story tends to slip naturally into its setting; the two intertwine, and one feeds off the other.

But Colorado did not inspire my new novel.  Those snow-blanketed Rockies were not integral to my novel, and the snow was spinning my story's tires.  The book wanted to come home, so I brought it home.

It’s much more comfortable now.  The Ozarks, when you look at them in a certain way, are a gray, ominous sight in the winter months.  The trees are skeletons, and the sleet clicks against them.

Setting is important.  If the setting is not somehow integral to the story, the setting—or the narrative itself—might be wrong.

Listen.  The story will explain.