Do you ever read something that sparks you up, waking you to insights and lessons on the craft of writing? That’s how I feel having started reading Elizabeth McCracken’s fabulous short story collection, The Souvenir Museum. An award-winning alumnus of the Iowa Writers Workshop, McCracken knows what she’s doing, and The Souvenir Museum is truly a master class in dialogue, character development, setting, plot, metaphor – it’s exquisite work.
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Studying Setting
If you’re looking for something to study the craft, it doesn’t have to be this book. We all have different styles. But read something that’s the best of the genre you write, and keep your focus on one particular craft element.
For example, in McCracken’s “Proof,” a grown son takes his father on a trip to Scotland. Really what the story is about is the son’s awareness that his dad is not always going to be there. Let’s dive into how this powerful story approaches setting.
An Excerpt From Elizabeth McCracken
“What beach this was Louis wasn’t certain. Rock and sand, a harbor town, and everywhere the sort of broken pottery he combed for as a boy in the 1940s, let his brothers fill their pockets with sticks and shells, ordinary sea glass. He knew how to look for the curbed ridge on the underside of a slice of a saucer, flip it over and find the blue flowers of Holland or China a century ago or more.”
“Once on the beach outside their summer cottage down the Cape, he found two entire clay pipes, 18th century, while his six older brothers sharked and sealed and barked in the water. Beyond them, he could see almost the ghosts of the colonists who had used the harbor as a dump, casting their broken pottery out so he could find it in his own era and put it in his own pockets. But this wasn’t the Cape or even Massachusetts. His brothers were mostly dead, that is, they were all dead, but in his head mostly, they washed up alive every now and then and Lewis would have to ask himself, ‘Is Phillip alive? Is Julie? Is Sydney?’”
As you can see, in just one paragraph, we find out so much, from a sense of the beach setting to the character’s lifespan. Right away we see Louis reflecting on his childhood, how he was different from his brothers, how he found treasure in the midst of other people’s junk – all of this already telling you so much about this man and what the story is going to be.
You can even predict some places this story is going to go, how he’s estranged from these brothers and he’s out of his element. He’s not at the Cape, he’s not in Massachusetts where he normally lives. He’s in Europe.
Studying Craft on Your Own
Whether you choose to read Elizabeth McCracken or another author, pick something that is the best of the genre you’re writing and study it this week. Choose a paragraph and really take it in, even hand-writing it out onto paper in an exercise we call “modeling.”
Feel what the author is doing here. Study it closely. It’ll help take you to a new level in your writing.