Setting the Scene
I’ve been toying with the idea of talking about setting the scene for a while, particularly as I re-read the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon. It has felt like such a big topic though - Outlander is set at various points in Scotland, France, Haiti, Jamaica, the United States…too much to talk about in one blog post! The topic reared its head for me again when we read Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo for the podcast.
I won’t talk too much about the book, as the episode will come out on the 9th of March this year - you can listen at any of the places listed, as well as on this website.
Ninth House is set in New Haven, at Yale University in Connecticut. It’s a place that I am really unfamiliar with, my entire mental image of the university being completely stolen from the Gilmore Girls, a TV series I used to watch obsessively. Preppy mom-daughter drama doesn’t really touch the genre of Ninth House, which is often classed as a paranormal fiction or thriller….so you could say my mental image of the setting was wholly inadequate.
The Peabody Museum, an important setting in Ninth House. I didn’t see it as red brick in my imagination!
I usually don’t research a book too much before I read it, as I absolutely hate spoilers. I hit the web literally the moment I put the book down to try get a better idea of what we were dealing with. I believe most, if not all, of the places described in the book have a basis in reality, with many of them actual, named places. However, for me to fully go through and understand exactly what is meant, I’d have to have the Google machine up while I read the book, and every time a place was mentioned, get researching. It would kind of ruin the experience.
My imagination is good enough that I can take what I roughly know about the world in general and fill in the gaps without the author having to do too much. Obviously it’s not perfect, but it means that I am able to take the scene setting the author has provided and run with it. Similarly with the Outlander series, I’m sure the images I have in my head of everything that goes on is completely wrong, but for the purposes of the escapism the books provide, it doesn’t matter.
The Hutch from Ninth House, image taken by Leigh Bardugo and presented on her Instagram.
Basically, this post a complete adoration of talented authors, and their abilities to create enough detail so that the reader can imagine what is going on, without setting the scene so much that the reader is taken completely out of the story.
I know that many authors, including the two listed (see notes) do provide resources for those of us who want them, and give more information about their settings in interviews, the pre-publication hype, and on their own personal outputs (think social media and website). Authors are often also called upon when screen adaptations are made in order to ensure the original vision makes it onto the screen as much as possible.
Perhaps this is why reading calls to me - I can completely immerse myself in a good book, and a good book includes good scene setting where the barrier to entry into the world is so small as to actually make you feel like you are in it, without getting frustrated by the description. Authors, I am in awe.
Keep reading,
Corrie
Il Bastone, the Lethe HQ from Ninth House. Leigh Bardugo took this photo and posted it on her Instagram - the building in reality is “The Anderson Mansion”, the headquarters of a real life Yale secret society according to Wikipedia.
Notes
Bardugo provided a map of New Haven for the reader of “Ninth House” - but unfortunately I read the book on Kindle and it’s not the best medium for poring over a map while trying to also absorb a story. Obviously it’s copyrighted material, so I struggled to find it online, and it’s not available on her website.
She comes up trumps on Instagram though - plenty of resources there, including a pinned story of footage taken on her research trip to New Haven prior to publishing the novel. Find it here.
Diana Gabaldon’s website is a treasure trove of information, and I invite you to get lost in it here, for fear of spending the rest of my evening just trawling through the resources looking for ‘the best’ link. Good luck!
Boone, North Carolina, cited as one of the locations of Fraser’s Ridge in the Outlander series.