Hey, ho, let’s go!
Reading Assignment for this class: “Pop” and “Mrs. Galvin” chapters from Teardrop Road
Donald Maass, he’s a New York agent, teaches writing all over the country. Said no two settings are the same. He’s right. Think about cities. Every city you have ever lived in has had at least one thing the natives know that visitors don’t.
New York
New York has too many of them for me to explain. They call New York the city of a million stories. I’m just not prepared to tell any of those stories. But I will tell you if you go down certain streets of New York, you’ll see little pieces of black iron art. This one looks like a bass clef. This one looks like a music note. Further down the street you’re gonna find a treble clef. Stuff like this.
Donald Maass told me that the visitor who drives by just thinks it’s decoration. But the native of New York knows that there was a city-wide campaign to try to get people to ride bikes more and drive cars less. So all over New York you’ll find these streets, and each one of those little tiny sculptures is actually designed as a place to chain up your bike. You won’t know that driving through New York. You’ll think that’s just cute decoration. But New Yorkers know exactly what that is.
Liefdom
I did the same thing in the book Liefdom when I was creating the city of the fairies. From everything naturalists and zoologists can tell us, birds are born knowing how to build a nest. Spiders are born knowing how to spin a web. Fairies, in my world, are born knowing how to build the house they’re gonna build. And 95% of fairies, when they build that house, they create on the roof three inches of mud. No visitor knows why. Those three inches of mud catch seeds from flowers and other flora. They grow there so that you have an entire city with houses covered in flowers and vines and foliage, to create the most beautiful city you could possibly imagine.
A visitor who comes in just sees houses with great amounts of flora. The natives know it’s because they put three inches of mud on their roofs. You can point at one thing and say this is what the natives know, this is what visitors don’t know. So when you go to a unique place, and you’re off the beaten path of tourism, talking to the natives, and they give you attitude, that’s why. It’s because they know that you’re not appreciating the right thing, and you don’t know the story behind anything you’re looking at.
Springfield
Springfield, what we know:
(1) avoid Glenstone between 3:30 and 6:15.
(2) The Steak n Shake on Glenstone is one of the oldest in the country.
(3) Anton’s only serves breakfast and lunch and closes at like 1:00.
(4) Don’t trust the students from MSU. They’re all shifty and they want something. Look at the room around you. Look at these people. You can’t trust a single one of them. I’ve heard there’s even a gang in Teller’s class.
Natives of this class know, be careful for the instructor. There’s no telling what kind of video he’s gonna make you watch.
New Orleans
When you’re in New Orleans, right down by the river, and you go to the bathroom and you see a massive rat, and you grab a waiter or waitress or manager, and you’re horrified and you complain about that rat, they have to placate you, tell you they’ll do something about it.
But you don’t know that that bass clef is there for you to strap your bike to. And you don’t know that newly built house in Liefdom has all that mud on it so it can catch random seeds and grow random plants. And you for sure don’t know that this restaurant is built right on the river, and no matter what this restaurant tries to do, they’re never gonna get rid of the amount of river rats that swarm this area. And they hate it as much as you do, but they’re natives. So they’ve learned to live with the rats.
These are examples of how you create a believable setting. You have to know something about the setting you’re describing that the reader doesn’t, and either explain it to them or let them wonder. And it’s more powerful if you let them wonder.
In my work there are no two cities the same. The reader knows it. They notice it. And it creates a kind of realistic quality. I won’t call it a realistic setting, but when there are things described that the reader doesn’t understand, it makes the setting more authentic. We’ve covered bikes, a million stories, beautiful flowers, and rats. I think we’re ready to move onto the next kind of setting.
Setting and character are inseparable. The setting makes the character.
Hard Reality: St. Robert
“Pop” from Teardrop Road
Language, everything is slow, there’s no alliteration, everything is laid out as fact, which creates a sensation of boredom and defines the character and the setting at the same time. (Every character you will ever write will either glow in their setting or riot against their setting.)
A lot of statements are made. Statements create a kind of rigid feeling to the work that allows for no imagination from the reader. In the chapter “Pop,” so much of it is dry and statements, and it’s so sapped of artistic flair that it creates a kind of hardness to the setting that allows the reader very little imagination. A good writer needs to have control of the reader’s imagination. Times when they give the reader the right to flow free and picture anything they want to. And there are times when the writer needs to pull in the reins of the reader’s imagination and bring it all into such a hard reality that they have no room, the reader feels constricted. I have a clip if I can find it, that’ll do a really good job of showing exactly what we’re talking about.
In this clip, the character Mork, played by Robin Williams, is an alien. And he truly believes there is a bird inside of this egg, because he has been taught by the person hosting his life, exactly what an egg is. Here we see him trying to free the bird within the egg, because he thinks there is an actual living creature in the egg.
This is not the realization of a character. Mork didn’t learn anything here. What you’re looking at here is the collision of two settings. The setting of his existence on another planet that has turned him into the person he is and the character he is, is colliding with the hard reality setting that he is living in on Earth. When you watch this clip, you are looking at the collision of two settings, not a learning experience. Mork walks away from this extremely confused.
In his fantasy setting, there is a bird in that egg. In the hard reality setting, that egg has not been fertilized. It holds a yolk and a white. And it was always gonna splatter on that counter. We’re talking about those two collisions.
Fantasy setting (imagination)
Excerpt from Teardrop Road
Okay we’re gonna move from Pop and Mork, which I think is a hilarious sentence, and we’re gonna go straight into a chapter called “Mrs. Galvin” from Teardrop Road. I am making my first call to a girlfriend. I’m gonna stop talking in I’s and go to the character, or he. I think it’s better for the setting. If I keep talking in I’s then you see me here. If I go to he’s, for the character, then I’m back there in Allenton with a phone in my hand.
We’re gonna talk for a minute about fantasy setting. It’s gonna be more than a minute. A fantasy setting has no real reality in which the character can truly live.
The first thing he tells her is he’s in a den, as created by a wolf. A wolf’s den. Well she knows there’s no way his phone cord can reach from the house through a backdoor and probably a screen, into the yard, a half an hour past sunset (Grr’s rules) and into the ground. When he tells her he’s in a wolves’ den, she knows it’s not real. Everybody knows it’s not real. I have created a fantasy setting. This particular fantasy setting serves a few purposes.
One is that he’s out in the dark. She’s in the light of her bedroom, and he’s in pure black.
Two, there’s not a lot of room in a wolves’ den and he’s curled up around the phone.
And three, this setting makes the character otherworldly. She’s a sixth grade girl in Wisconsin. It’s cold outside. She was in middle school all day. She was forced all day to be the second most popular girl in the school. She had to be the prettiest girl in the entire school. Everything about this girl is rooted in reality. And now she is talking to the most mysterious boy in the entire school, and he is curled up in a hole in his yard around a phone talking to her.
I don’t know how much you know about sixth grade girls, you may have been one, you might have spent time with one, you might be raising one. But a sixth grade girl is just getting ahold of the fact that she’s a girl. She’s just getting ahold of the fact that there are boys. She’s starting to understand that she has a body. And while talking to this boy, within minutes, she has been taken from that body, she’s been pulled out of all reality.
I picture her sitting on a daybed, but I don’t remember. In one of our conversations we described our rooms to each other. I remember I told her my entire room bent around a massive poster of Wisconsin, with all the roads and all the backroads. In that conversation, she was like, you have a poster of Wisconsin?
I told her that I stood in front of it all the time, staring at the roads and the names of the cities. And she said, why?
I told her because I’m trying to stay here. I’m trying to stay in this city, in this state, in this country. She asked in hushed voice, what do you mean?
And I said, sometimes I feel like I’m just gonna vanish. Like it’s all gonna go away and I’m gonna be carried off. God, I haven’t thought about that in years. Let’s stick to what you read.
He’s curled up around a phone. She sees him side by side with his best friend. He describes him as a werewolf, which is not a far stretch considering the wild that she has seen from him. He describes him as a werewolf and his wildness and his feral has bitten this boy. And because of the love he holds for her, he is hiding from the moon.
Now, what color are the walls? At this point in the story, what color are the walls? What room is he standing in? What city is he in? If you just read this one short, what city is he in? Where is she? She’s talking to a creature, she’s talking to a werewolf curled up in a den. His entire reality is gone.
As far as she’s concerned, he doesn’t have a home. And now setting has created a character. Me being in this den, X raging out there somewhere, and me hiding from the fate of following him has created a reality in itself.
This is the fantasy setting. We know this is two kids talking on a phone. They’re both in sixth grade. One’s a broken boy, the other is a popular girl. We know he’s in a house. He was in the kitchen, he slipped into another room. What we know is while he’s standing here he’s on a firm foundation. But that’s not what the writing is telling us, and all we have is the writing.
The writing has him in a hole in the ground. This is symbolic for where he feels like he belongs when talking about the politic of the school. We start talking about unicorns, and then all of a sudden she’s a Pegasus, a winged horse. She’s up in the air. She’s flying in the clouds. She flies where the night holds back the tears of his. She is in the air holding back his tears of his darkest nights. The message Artist is giving her is that you’re the only reason I’m not crying right now. And that she is something that he will never be able to touch and he will never be able to communicate with.
This is an autobiography. But just like everyone’s been taught, when it comes to literature, any truth can be found in anything written. These are actual words that were spoken by an actual 12-year-old to another 12-year-old. If we have an understanding of the academics of literature, we should be able to take this scene apart.
He’s in a hole, she’s in the air. He is bullied and made fun of, she is above all that. She is the only thing holding back his tears. And she is “breathtaking and unattainable”. Actual words spoken by a 12-year-old, but as a person who understands literature, this is foreshadowing to the relationship that will happen.
And this is all fantasy setting. In reality, she’s not flying in the air holding back my tears. In reality, I’m not in a hole in the ground. In reality, she’s not flying above me, my friend is not a werewolf tearing destruction everywhere he goes, although that part is debatable. None of this is based in fact. This is the fantasy setting.
- I’m in a den, dirt, I clawed my way in, which is desperate.
- Desperation is romantic here.
- Desperation means I’m running out of time.
- What have I been doing since the end of school?
- What do I have to fear if I don’t finish in time? (werewolf)
You can do anything you want. I chose den. But it has to have rules. In the fantasy setting, the reader has to have their feet set. I chose a den. A den is something she can picture. It’s done by a certain animal. The girl on the other end of the line knows I have not dug a den and drug the phone outside. This is where suspension of disbelief becomes enjoyable. I want you to think of the video we watched earlier in this course, “Wild Child” by W.A.S.P., where suspension of disbelief was a burden.
Here, suspension of disbelief is enjoyable. We’re not in a den. We’re in his mind.
This is what it’s like to write a fantasy book. You have to create a believable enough setting that it doesn’t get in the way of the character and the plot, and it doesn’t dominate the story. If you read Liefdom, there is the description of the city in the beginning of the book, and it’s overwhelming but it’s rooted in the character’s experience, which is exactly what’s happening here. I’m in a fantasy setting. I’m in a den. But it’s rooted in my experience. The den is not overwhelming.
Emotional setting
Excerpt from Teardrop Road
Emotional, the entire setting has become emotional as I talk about the clouds, the rain, the wind, it all becomes an emotional setting.
Girl as Pegasus, we’re in the air now.
Is it night time? Is it day time? It’s all fuzzy and mystical.
As the first conversation between these two characters, we are setting up a relationship of fantasy and shifting settings. Every time this girl picks up the phone, she will wonder where she is going to end up. Imagine the emotional impact of that. You pick up the phone when it rings and you have no idea where you’re going, what you’re gonna be, where you’re gonna end up. And you’re a sixth grader, and as we read further, you’ll see there’s no telling where you’re going to land in reality.
Imagine what this is like for a sixth grade girl talking to her first boyfriend and this is how it begins. She’s told within the first three minutes of the conversation that she’s more magical than a unicorn. She’s told within the first three minutes that she lives in a place where the clouds hold back the tears of the night. Within the first three minutes of this sixth grade girl’s first conversation with her first boyfriend, she finds herself in the middle of an emotional setting. She is a Pegasus talking to a werewolf. She’s not even herself anymore, and he is nothing she’s ever seen before.
This is how her romance begins. At this point in the relationship, I had never spoken a word to her. Everything’s been letters and rumors. This is Ruffle’s first romantic moment. Imagine the impact this had on her. And then try to imagine the impact that this sort of thing will have on your reader.
Can you keep this up through the duration of the piece?
She’s just been ripped from a fantasy setting and now she’s in an emotional setting. What does this do to her equilibrium? Three minutes, two separate places, redefinition of her boyfriend, redefinition of herself. What’s about to happen to her will be so jarring and so intense she will be left reeling, and she will never forget.
As a writer, in this situation you have complete control.
As an oral storyteller, your motions and tone have total control.
As a twelve year old boy, you’re pretty much fucked.
Reality setting
Excerpt from Teardrop Road
“Do you want the truth now?” Artist said.
“What?”
“Do you want the truth? Do you want to know where I went to be alone with you?”
“Not really. But sure.”
“I am in the dark in my bathroom. I crawled in the dry tub so that I could be with you. A hard place for a soft heart.”
“Oh my God,” she said.
Ruffle had just fallen in love with Artist. But it was a doomed love. For no woman but the woman can call to rest the heart of Smear, Lord of Ire. And Ruffle was not the woman.
In this scenario, the reality has splashed cold water in the face of the girl. This breaks all of the magic before it and creates a place of comfort for her.
The journey from fantasy to emotional to reality creates a delirium where she has no idea what to expect next.
Imagine what she says to her friend the next day.
None of this is my fault. I wasn’t trying to throw her into delirium. C’mon, I’m not that guy. I was just crazy. Never fall in love with a crazy person. You’ll find yourself traveling through this kind of nonsense.
Always fall in love with a crazy person.
In the end we can say that setting is a character all by itself. Setting has just as many options as character.
If a character is alone in a setting, in reality there are two characters in the story: the main character and the setting.
Does your reader want this based on the genre they have chosen?
Writing Assignment
Write a setting for this classroom right here that is a fantasy or emotional setting. Due in three class periods.
Reading Assignment
Reading assignment for next class: “Strong Urge to Fly” chapter from Teardrop Road
Seeds of Tarako will have to be read by Class 17.
—Prince
Jesse Teller 
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