I was honored to sit on a writers’ panel not long ago where the moderator asked an interesting question: “If you walked through a magical portal that could take you anywhere, where would you want to go, and what would you hope to find on the other side?”
My fellow scribblers, geniuses all, had scintillating thoughts of rousing adventures and notable figures, long dead, with whom they’d like to share a meal or a conversation. My answer? Magical portal? Nope. Don’t trust it. Who put it there? Why? Could the person who opened said portal be counted on to keep it open if I leapt through, changed my mind and wanted to leap back?
What if I got caught on the wrong side of that Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe door and got stuck in Elizabethan England without anywhere to charge my phone, hail an Uber or get egg rolls delivered on a Friday night? Who was going to have my back when I got branded a witch and chased out of the village after trying to explain the iPhone in my pocket to the vicar of Dibley, or whoever?
A fantastical portal, long and short, is, for most of us, far too scary a proposition. If we’re being truthful (and why wouldn’t we be, we’re all friends here) most folks stick to the tried and true, the safe and easy, the familiar.
Barring those adrenaline junkies who bungee jump over Victoria Falls, scale Everest or harass sharks in the Great Barrier Reef, most of us poor schlumps get our kicks a little closer to home. We stick to the same old haunts in the same old neighborhood. In the case of my protagonist, Cass Raines, PI extraordinaire, she sticks to the same old diner booth in the same old haunt in the same old neighborhood. She’s South Side, born and raised. And she likes her side of town just fine, thank you very much.
Do I stick to the Chicago tourists see from a double-decker bus as it lumbers its way up Michigan Avenue, or do I turn that bus around and head it south, or even west, into the neighborhoods?
Which brings me to my topics for today—how to choose setting in a novel, cover all the bases in your chosen location and give your reader a glimpse into the not-so-familiar, as well as a healthy dose of what they might expect.
There are a lot of places to highlight in a city like Chicago. This is a vibrant, eclectic, complicated town. A person could hit all four corners, traveling from Bronzeville, the Pullman District, Pilsen, Greektown, Ukrainian Village, Chinatown, and back, and not risk running into the same things twice.
When I began writing about Cass, there was never a doubt in my mind where I would put her. I’m a Chicagoan. I know this city best, so, bam, Chicago it was. But deciding which Chicago to feature was the delicate dance. And it still is.
Do I stick to the Chicago tourists see from a double-decker bus as it lumbers its way up Michigan Avenue, or do I turn that bus around and head it south, or even west, into the neighborhoods? Not a lot of tourists travel that far afield, and those that do likely approach with caution and suspicion, as though someone had just dropped them on the surface of Mars and they’re anticipating a full-on Martian attack.
I went with the neighborhoods, by the way. Infinitely more interesting.
So out of the glitz is where Cass mostly plies her trade. She’s a PI, after all. Shadowy figures. Dark alleys. Yada, yada, yada. Why is Cass a South Sider, as opposed to a North Sider or a West Sider? Because that’s how she introduced herself to me, and I’ve learned to let characters have their way. Unhappy characters tend to mope and give you the silent treatment, and I need these people to talk to me.
In book one of the series, Broken Places, Cass legs it around her own patch, South Chicago, searching for the killer of a beloved parish priest. This side of town bears little resemblance to the Gold Coast or the toney North Shore, so I tried to bring out its uniqueness:
Once an industrious steel mill community good for steady, long-term work at good union pay, the silos of the old mills, now empty, stood rusted and abandoned, reduced to hulking post-war, art-like installations towering over the flat landscape, a painful reminder of just how hard the fall from prosperity to ruin had been.
The working-class Poles, Irish and Italians who worked the factories and mills fled farther south and west when the jobs dried up and Hispanics moved in. Mexicans, blacks, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans and those too poor to pull up stakes and run, lived here now, trying to eke out a living and raise families on mom-and-pop mercados, sagging storefront health clinics, discount mattress emporiums and payday loan places that operate just this side of usury.
No tourist is taking a bus to see that, but it’s Cass’s job to follow the leads wherever they take her, and it’s my job to describe those places to you so that you can see them, smell them, hear them, almost reach out and touch them.
Sometimes I think I can just about pull that off. Other times I look at Chicago as though I’ve never seen it before, and suddenly, I can’t think of a single thing to say about it. Should I write about my favorite hotdog joint? Who’d care? Should I have Cass visit that landmark high-rise downtown or put her in a janky warehouse way across town? Yes. How many times can I mention Lake Shore Drive or the El and get away with it? Don’t know. Still counting.
I can’t always stick to the South Side either, though Cass was born there, went to school there, lives there, set up her office there. Eventually, she has to venture out—take a leap through that portal. Maybe she’ll even leap all the way to, gulp, the North Side. (Cue ominous music.) Dum-dum-dum.
Note: Non-Chicagoans? That North Side/South Side rivalry is real, but only sort of.
So, north or south, east or west, through the magic portal or not, as writers write, we’re always looking to mix it up, give people a little of this and that, putting our spin on things.
It’s a playful, friendly, family rivalry, no real heat to it. In other words, it’s not Stark v. Lannister or even Sharks v. Jets or Hatfield v. McCoy, but it is still sort of a thing. Personally, I’ve got nothing against the North Side. It’s nice. Pleasant. It’s just not the South Side, which is kind of great.
Still, we peg a person (playfully, don’t forget that) by which side of town they hail from. Also, by which team they root for, Cubs or Sox, whether they’re Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts, deep-dish pizza or a good old-fashioned gym shoe sandwich. What? You’ve never heard of a gym shoe?
I feature it in my third book, What You Don’t See, but I’ll fill you in now, since I just gave it a mention. A classic South Side gym shoe is corned and roast beef, onions, cheese, gyro meat, all griddled up together, and then dropped onto a sub roll. The cause of your impending coronary is then topped with shredded lettuce, mayonnaise, tomato, tzatziki sauce and giardiniera. Bam. The Gym Shoe. Find THAT up north in Wrigleyville. I double-dog dare ya.
Now, where was I? Oh yeah, giving readers a sense of a place. I agonize over setting; I think a lot of writers do. I want just the right place for every scene. Why? Because setting informs a reader’s understanding of character. Take Heathcliff and Cathy out on the Yorkshire moors, windswept, star-crossed, doomed. No way Wuthering Heights would have had the same punch had the couple played out all that drama in a murky coal mine, plus the title would have had to change.
Setting matters. Only the right one works.
So, first book, South Side. Nailed it. In book two, Borrowed Time, I push Cass out of the neighborhood into a fish-out-of-water situation. She is hired to find out who might have dispatched the scion of a wealthy North Shore family, and her inquiries take her way out of her comfort zone. Up north. Where she never hangs out. She’s South Side, remember? The lethal gym shoe?
The Ayers’ place came up at me at the end of a country lane, looming large behind a high stone wall covered in English ivy. A black iron gate barred the circular drive, and entry here was strictly monitored by use of a discreetly placed intercom box…I punched the button, marveling at the castle beyond the gate, counting windows, losing interest after reaching twenty; waiting for someone to holler back. There was also a camera on the box, which, of course, made sense. If you live this exclusively, you’d want to see who you let beyond the velvet rope, or what would be the point of moving all the way out here?
Needless to say, Cass doesn’t stay long. Horse trails? Please.
So, north or south, east or west, through the magic portal or not, as writers write, we’re always looking to mix it up, give people a little of this and that, putting our spin on things. And we keep the portal wide open, unlike that dodgy keeper of the gate I mentioned earlier. Walk through, explore, walk back, come again, bring a friend.
And really, the North Side is very nice. It’s lovely, in fact. There’s a zoo up there, an arboretum, a very nice beach.
It’s just that the South Side is pretty cool, too.
