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In a previous post, I mentioned the use of smell in description. Along with that, I'd like to hear about things people found, or find, interesting or unusual about where they live, or places they have visited. I'm particularly interested in what surprised people about a place, and what stood out. How did it feel differently from where you live now or expected? I think everyone can benefit from these impressions.
Differences like this are another thing that can enhance descriptions. Often differences in things is what brings a setting to life for readers when described. I'm particularly interested in foreign countries, but anywhere we live is foreign to someone else who doesn't live there.
To start out, I live in Iowa in the United States. The state is flat and covered with fields of mostly corn and soybeans as far as the eye can see in the upper two thirds of the state. The bottom third is hillier and is mostly pasture land, but has crop farms there too.
In the Fall, after the crops have been harvested, remaining stalks cut short bristle the landscape. In spring, the fields are plowed into black swathes, and remain so until the planted crops sprout.
Another thing that will strike people is the number of roads. There's a road almost every mile in the state, and if you were to see it from the air, it'd look like a huge chekerboard.
One other thing about Iowa that might surprise people is that Iowa is one of the leaders in the country for supplying the most energy through wind power to its residents. Currently Iowa supplies 5% of its power needs of the state by wind generators.
What that means is that there's huge wind farms here. The giant generators are spread out amongst the crop fields, and thrust up into the sky upwards of 120 feet. Their blades turn almost continuously as Iowa always seems to have a wind of five to ten miles an hour blowing. This is another thing that makes the state unusual, and bothers others from states with sporadic wind patterns.
So where do you live, or have visited, and what made it seem different or unusual?
[This message has been edited by luapc (edited April 07, 2008).]
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I live in West Virginia, at least the eastern panhandle. Contrary to the mental image of this state, I do not know any coal miners, nor does everyone live in obscene poverty. Instead, this area is really a northern suburb of Washington DC, and property values are adjusting every year to reflect this. Our summers are rarely ever that hot, and in the winter, ice has been a bigger problem than snow. The best time of the year is undoubtably true spring (I say true because even if it's a calendar spring, we can still get snow and ice) and fall.
When I went to Bermuda for my honeymoon, the biggest cultural shock was the price of everything. As tourism is the island's only industry, everything has to be imported. It was fifteen bucks for a simple sandwich lunch. Gas was insane (on British pricing). As a result, travelers often used the Pink Buses or rent a power scooter. Yes, the buses are really pink. Very pink. Everyone on the road uses the horn as often as they can. I think it gives them better gas mileage or something, as people just seem to enjoy mashing it whenever and wherever.
The ferries are also a slower, but very economical way to get around the island too. For the most part, they are very clean, which surprised me. People are allowed to bring pets and motorcycles on board as well.
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I lived in West Virginia for a couple of years a few decades ago. Lived on the other side of a hill in South Charleston, overlooking the Kanawha river. We could hear the barges at night in the summer, when we had the windows open. We could also hear millions of tree frogs.
The smell I remember best was a faint chemical tang from a plant on an island in the river.
One of my favorite sights was when I'd drive along the river after sunset and see the different colored lights of the bridges reflected in the water.
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I used to live in Albuquerque, New Mexico. My family had a house up in the foothills of Mt. Sandia with a driveway that faced the mountain and a bay window that looked over the valley. Every morning when I woke up, I could walk out to the living room and watch the shadow of the mountain slide slowly towards the house, creep over the stucco wall that encircled our meager backyard, and finally hit the house. In the evening you could watch the sun set, a massive fireball sinking beneath the distant mountain ranges. If it was cloudy enough along the horizon you could look directly at that beautiful red circle without your eyes hurting.
The view offered us the chance to look over the great expanse of the city, like a grey cancer on the brown earth. Hot air balloons could be seen rising up at all hours of the day to take the sky and make it theirs. It was the drought years, though, so there wasn't as much green as I've been told usually frequents it.
I was surprised; it was just like my previous home, Massachusetts, but with the ability to see for miles. Mass is covered in hills and forests, making it impossible to see more than a mile at the best, but in Albuquerque you could see the Earth curve away. For the first time in my life I got a sense of how big the planet actually is.
Another thing that shocked me, but was definitely pleasing, is the strict light pollution laws. In the city it's unavoidable, but up where we lived streetlights had a minimum distance required between them, and usually the city made them go even further apart. At night, if there were no clouds, I could see the sky much more clearly than anywhere else I've ever been. I even saw the Milky Way one night. Again, it gave me a scale for the rest of the universe.
quote:I lived in West Virginia for a couple of years a few decades ago. Lived on the other side of a hill in South Charleston, overlooking the Kanawha river. We could hear the barges at night in the summer, when we had the windows open. We could also hear millions of tree frogs. The smell I remember best was a faint chemical tang from a plant on an island in the river.
Nothing like the smell of the chemical plants in that area. I'm from Kanawha Falls (near Montgomery).
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When I moved to Houston, I was surprised at how bright it was at night. It never actually gets dark. There is always a kinda sickly yellowish, smoggy glow. I have always lived in real cities, but there was a lot of light regulation and awareness of light pollution.
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Sorry this is a little long, but I'm editing my book and it felt good to do a little actual writing.
I grew up mostly in a farming community in the extreme southeast part of the Texas panhandle, a couple miles from the optimistically named Red River.
On the rare occasion I get away from town, the closeness of the stars far from city lights takes me back to my childhood. The clean smell of rain, the gritty fog of a dust storm, or the not unpleasant odor of aged cow manure that reminds me of my grandfather's barn catch my attention now and again.
But perhaps my fondest memory is of lying in bed late at night in that old farmhouse that belonged to my grandparents and then my parents, watching and listening.
Beyond the neighbor’s farm and their neighbors’ farms sat an old airfield, a legacy of World War II. At dusk every day someone turned on a rotating emergency beacon just in case a troubled plane wandered by. Over and over, a bright, white flare followed by a dimmer, greenish blink called out a steady beat of comfort to pilot and boy.
Between the airfield and the farm ran the railroad. At its nearest point the railroad lay a mile or two away. But the properties of the canyons and draws leading toward the river channeled the gentle purr of diesel engines from points much farther away.
On a quiet summer night, when the horns sounded their obligatory warning to motorists unlikely to be about that late, the boy listened through open windows for the reassuring resonance of purposeful power and gazed at the steady pulse of the beacon, all under a canopy of God’s stars.
I can still catch a glimpse of the beacon from the highway when I go back to visit. And I can listen to the train run from a relative’s place on the other side of the tracks from the farm where another family lives in a new house. The sights and sounds are still comforting, but now they’re echoes from a time when on a warm, quiet summer night everything was just right.
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I think that the most surprising, inspirational and interesting scenes I've viewed "with my own eyes" are the various natural scenery found in the islands of Hawaii. On "the garden isle" it seemed that every curve in the road opened up a new vista to delight the eye and cheer the spirit. But the most remarkable sight was when we were walking in Volcanoes National Park. To a person used to living in the Midwest United States, used to greenery, that field of lava was shocking...it felt like the hottest place I'd ever want to be...even the bottom of your shoes felt WARM... I realize that, because of the difference between the scenery I was used to and what I was looking at, I'm likely exaggerating here. However, it seemed like you could see black, warm, barren rock for MILES.
At one point, I glanced down and saw a fold in the lava rock, and peeking out of the crack was a single green plant. It was probably a weed of some sort and it was only about 4-6 inches tall, but it was truly an amazing sight to me. It served to remind me that one can overcome great challenges and see the sun of another day.
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I think one of the keys to this type of imagery isn't trying to describe the smell or the sound exactly. Rather, that you are engaging the reader's full battery of senses.
If I write about the smell of a Sierra Leonean evening, as the winds die down, and the jasmine blossoms start to open, I doubt I'll try to describe the aroma. Instead, I can show how the character experiences it in a way that most people can relate to. Something like,
"As the sun fell past the horizon, the heat of the day was finally breaking, and the humidity was starting to settle in the shady spots like a sopping wool blanket. As I pedaled to the top the little rise and started to coast down towards the ford, the smell of jasmine floated towards me, rising up the hill on the breeze. The further I went down the the hill, the more smothering it became. It reminded me of being trapped in an elevator with a woman that had put on too much perfume. The scent seemed to fuse itself to me, and even after I pedaled across stream and up out of the valley, it still clung to my clothes. It simply emphasized what an odd and alien place I found myself in, and how much it both fascinated and amazed me, while at the same time refusing to make any sense..."
Although some people may not know what jasmine smells like, they can likely relate to being trapped in an elevator with a woman who took a bath in perfume. In this case, it is likely more important to show how intense the aroma is, and use it as a vehicle to relate back to the conflict.
I don't think it's enough to just describe the smell or the taste. I think it has to mean something to the character in order for it to be effective.
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The smell of dandelions always make me think of summers back home in Virginia. It's not presence, there's a lot of cut grass from June to August, but that's not summer, that's just cud. There's no word to describe it--fancy ones like redolent or fragrant--you can leave them to the rose garden, but dandelions? Nah, it's the barefoot kid sitting in the grass with a little yellow nose from smelling sunshine all day that make me wish for dandelions. I'd pluck it, wave it below my nose like a snifter of wine--greet that summer child like old friends--then drop the dirty flower, brush my suit, and find some old tissue to wipe the stain away.
Association works as well as odor--that imagery does your smell evoke in your character?
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are the various natural scenery found in the islands of Hawaii. On "the garden isle" it seemed that every curve in the road opened up a new vista to delight the eye and cheer the spirit.
