The Power of Place by Jeanette Grant-Thomson

 

Some of you may have noticed I love creating a sense of place. The setting of a novel can produce a definite atmosphere and can almost be like one of the characters. It can drive the plot, although not the underlying story. If you’ve read all my books, you’ve particularly visited Launceston, outback Queensland with Yandina and Nambour, Brisbane during the 1974 floods, New Ireland (PNG), and King Island or its counterpart in Moreton Bay.

I love immersing myself in the setting, then seeing it through the characters’ eyes. I’m not alone in this interest. Have any of you read Poison Bay (Belinda Pollard)? Or James Cooper’s interesting Something about Alaska? And so many others. In Belinda’s novel, I felt the setting (the wilds of southern New Zealand in the Milford Sound area) was almost the main character. The awareness of that dangerous place dominated all the characters and, by its nature, steered important parts of the plot as well.

Then there was The Light between Oceans, Stedman’s moving story about a couple keeping a lighthouse on Janus Rock. Where would that novel be without the highly unusual setting?  (Obviously it wouldn’t be, as the story depends on the place.)

In The Lost Man, author Jane Harper brilliantly brings to life Australia’s bare, scorching, unforgiving outback as a necessary backdrop and plot-driver of her story.

 In Lantern Light, I’ve created a strong sense of place describing the brooding jungle with its sights, sounds and smells. The dangerous water areas, too, add a sinister feel to the atmosphere. This is then ‘fleshed out’ (well, typed out) in the ensuing events. The timely flood of the Brisbane River reinforces the underlying dark, ominous mood. Both these settings and the incidents resulting from them were times and places I’d lived through myself so I was well equipped to write about them.

Admittedly, I checked some of the exact details of the flood on microfilm in the State Library. The machine kept sticking and delaying me, or whizzing past the dates I hoped to look at. Frustrating! The library assistant was very helpful though. 

I realise we all know this, but it’s so important: to create a place with atmosphere, the writer needs to appeal to more senses than sight. How often has a whiff of salt air taken your thoughts to the beach? Or the song of a magpie reminded you of a happy spring day? All the senses – sight, sound, smell, touch and taste – are intrinsic parts of a particular place.

 Walking along a jungle track, I was aware of the strange sweetish smell of rotting leaves underfoot as well as the colourful collage they made. The chittering of small animals and the sudden shriek of large birds. The mounting heat and heaviness in the air as the day grew hotter. I intended all this as a backdrop to the plot and a motivating force in Lantern Light.

In some of the books I’ve mentioned, the setting provides obstacles so the theme is partly man against a hostile environment. (Poison Bay, The Lost Man). In others, the environment affects the characters’ moods and decisions (as in Lantern Light).

The plot of Lantern Light ‘lives out’ the feel of dread, the sense of ‘Before and After’ that even the characters acknowledge. This feeling of something sinister is echoed by the jungle with its dim, seductive paths and ever-encroaching growth.

   Apparently AI can now do your descriptions if that is not your forte. But that would lack the author’s own voice and types of observations. Those nuances of atmosphere.  I love slipping in bits of description that nudge the characters in the right direction. As far as I know, at this stage AI can’t interweave those reactions to environment that I love writing. Please let me know if I’m wrong there.

Above all, when one chooses an unusual place to set a novel, the question arises: What might happen in a place like this?

Does anyone else enjoy creating settings? Or reading novels where the sense of place is an important feature?

Jeanette Grant-Thomson is a North Brisbane based author who has been writing and having work published since her childhood. Currently she is writing a novel set at beautiful Kenilworth where she lived part-time for about ten years.

You can find her books on www.facebook.com/jeanette.grantthomson

Omega Barnabas and Encouragement Awards open for nominations!

Every second year the CALEB Award includes two extra-special categories of awards designed to encourage and lift up Christian writers - the Barnabas and Encouragement Awards.

These awards are a little different.

For these, there are no books to submit, no manuscripts to polish. These awards are about recognising writers for who they are, their commitment to their craft, and their often selfless input into other writers.

The Barnabas Award

The Barnabas Award is a cash prize award that recognises the input Christian writers make into the lives and work of other writers. It’s about celebrating and giving credit to writers living out the heart of CALEB* by mentoring, encouraging, cheering on, supporting and spurring on others in their writing journey.

(In case you've forgotten, CALEB is Christian Authors Lifting Each other's Books.)

Encouragement Award

The Encouragement Award is a sponsored award that seek to encourage emerging writers who may be struggling but are putting in the hard yards to hone their craft, writers who may not be winning other competitions but who Omega Writers members want to encourage to keep going!

Nominations

If you’re a paid member of Omega Writers, we’d love you to nominate a fellow Christian writer for an Encouragement or Barnabas Award! Writers eligible for nomination for the Barnabas and Encouragement Awards are:

• Christian writers currently living in Australia, New Zealand, or the South Pacific.
• Can be published or unpublished writers in any genre.

Here’s how:

• Think of an eligible writer or writers you’d like to nominate.
• Make sure you are a paid Omega Writers member (but the writer you nominate does not need to be a member).
• Email caleb @ omegawriters.org with the following by 30 June 2023:
  • • Your name and email address
    • The name and email/website address of the author you’d like to nominate (so we can contact them if they win).
    • The Award you are nominating that writer for: Encouragement Award or Barnabas Award
    • Up to 200 words explaining why you believe this writer should receive this prize.

The Barnabas Awards are awarded on the merit of nominations received by the CALEB Committee.

Let's Speak Gold and Silver Words, Instead of Alloys

I've no doubt we're living in the era of the positive affirmation. A glance at the self-help section of our libraries and book shops makes this clear. Best-sellers on this topic abound, from the writings of Louise L Hay to "The Secret" by Rhonda Byrne and her team of experts. Others with similar themes, such as "Think and Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill have been around long enough to attain classic status. This is the thinking climate those of my generation have grown up in and publishers are still churning them out.

For years, I'd studied these books carefully. I'd decided the theory behind them made sense. In a nutshell, if your conscious mind is bombarded with a beneficial message over and over, your subconscious mind will eventually be worn down to join the party too. Furthermore the metaphysical theory behind this tells us that we attract similar vibrations (aka vibes) to those which we subconsciously give out. The world is our mirror, so to speak. If we think prosperously, prosperity will be drawn to us. Although some fellow Christians seemed to think this dodgy and new-agey, I thought it seemed harmless enough for me to give it a go.

My books are best-sellers.
My kids are thriving in their goals.
We are able to travel overseas.
By dd/mm/yy I will have an extra $20 000 in my bank account.
We own a 2-storey home with a stunning view and my own study (LOL)
We never scrape the bottom of our bank account.

So what happened? The same thing that happened sometimes to seeds I tried planting seeds in my garden. I don't have a green thumb. Mostly, my plants would give a half-hearted spurt of growth and then bite the dust. People would say things like, "You should've fertilised them with blood and bones/chook manure/cow manure... kept the harsh cook manure away from them... tried putting them in a more open/more sheltered position, planted them during the summer/winter, etc." To summarize all this, I didn't really have a clue. So I assumed that the paltry returns on my affirmations meant that I was clueless there too.

I believe that was true, in a way I didn't expect. In a thought-provoking article by American pastor, Tom Brown, he remarks that our world has become like Babylon, using the messages of confession to get what it wants. People are using Biblical truth principles (it is all based on truth!) in a very watered-down and limited manner. I'd been right. I spent all that time trying to plant seeds without giving them the quality of water, fertiliser and sunlight they really needed. 

His article goes on to explain that the affirmations we speak must be found within the pages of our Bibles; God's Word to us. This is the only word which is still as pristine and powerful as it originally was during the creation of the world. The words spoken by men and women who are spouting the 'affirmations of the day' from these books have lost part of the original 'zing' they contained before the Fall. They are perishable and often likely to fizzle out. When we speak out our own dreams, imaginings and desires as affirmations without checking to see whether they line up with God's words, we might fail to receive what we're believing for because our words are weaker, like metal alloys whose quality can't be trusted. God's Word, on the other hand, is still like the most pure, flawless gold and silver.

It's not the mere positive confession per se, which brings results into our lives but the confession of God's words. My days of declaring and confessing just anything that sounds good and expecting it to come to pass are over. God's Word hasn't promised to give me a specific sum of money by a certain date or a house with a view or a new car. This is just jumping beyond what His word promises.

What He has promised is to be my healer (Exodus 15: 26), supply all my needs (Philippians 4:19), finish the good work He started in me (Philippians 1:6), surround me with favour as a shield (Psalm 5:12) and bless the work of my hands (Psalm 90: 17), among many other things. Charles H. Spurgeon said that whenever God has made a promise, we can reasonably expect Him to make it good. This has nothing to do with metaphysics, manipulating God, witchcraft, mind-over-matter or sorcery.

Thank God for giving us His Word, the imperishable seed, for when we make His words our own and declare them in faith, then our words are imperishable too. I believe that when we declare the same words about ourselves that God speaks, we'll soon see results in our lives.

Paula Vince is the award-winning author of nine fiction novels set in her home state, South Australia. She also writes articles, blog posts, reflections, book reviews and creative non-fiction. She loves to dig around in old classic literature and consider its relevance for our 21st century era.