I've always been like this. As a kid I used to draw maps of made-up towns and sketch crude blueprints for the houses described in the stories I wrote. It annoyed me when I'd read a book and visualize a scene, and then the author would throw in something later that didn't jibe with my image (wait, the front door is to the RIGHT?) and I'd have to go back and re-imagine it. Or, I wouldn't, I'd just go with what I already saw in my mind and blatantly ignore the author, which sometimes led to all kinds of problems as the plot continued.
This still happens to me. Maybe I should be talking to a shrink about this...
ANYWAY, I ended up getting a degree in TV/Film, which further developed my reliance on the visual when telling a story.
One summer day two years ago, I came across an abandoned farm while riding my bike. Luckily I had my camera with me. I wish I'd gone inside, but I was scared of snakes, rotting floors, possible trespassing laws (although there were no signs, people!), that sort of thing.
Below are a few of the many photos I took.
When I got back on my bike, I thought to myself, "I'm going to write a ghost story about this place." And I did.
This setting was the inspiration for GHOST FARM.
These are GREAT pictures! And I feel just like you did. I want to go in but I DON'T want to go in. Now I want to read where this imagery took you.
ReplyDeletePT, (thanks for letting me know this was you :) )
DeleteMaybe one of my next books could be about a family that rennovates an old church in a tiny Kansas town...then they discover it's haunted!
W.
Yay-ya! Awesome pix, Wendy! Definitely a creepy, spooky feeling going on here. But what is that weird hose-like thing coming out of the door in the third photo? Anyway, I can totally relate to your kid impulse of drawing maps of towns and floor plans -- I did the same thing when I was writing my own stories as a kid. And sometimes tore pages out of magazines that had images I wanted to recreate too. In fact, your pix are flashing me back to an old memory...the way I remember it, I was about 8 or so and (I think I must've been) taking a drive with my family, presumably on some country road, in Washington state, where we lived at the time, and seeing a rundown abandoned house just sitting in the middle of a field. We must have gotten out to look at it because I remember looking in a window, glass broken out, and seeing the place still had old furniture & stuff in it. The thing I most remember (or did I make this up somehow?) was that there was a table with things on it, like a plate, silverware, coffee cups, etc., and thinking how weird that was. And wondering what would cause the people to just leave with everything left as if right in the middle of a life going on. That house and that table are visual setting images that I can mentally still see pretty vividly. So did I make them up or were they really real...??? Hard to know for sure at this distance in time, but if not real, where did they come from?...But it just points out the power of setting, real or imagined -- it can really haunt (or substitute any other vivid applicable verb) the reader when it's done right! Thanks for the cool old (presumably) resurfacing memory!
ReplyDeletePD, love your story. Seems like I've seen a photo of an abandoned place similar to the one you describe, maybe from Chernobyl. Creepy, right?
DeleteSetting is like a character to me, I guess. Invokes all kinds of thoughts and feelings.
Yes! This is exactly the way I pictured it in my mind having read your wonderful story. Seeing the pictures after the fact is almost spooky. You are so good at creating atmosphere and setting. Thanks for sharing the pictures...and yeah, what is that hose thing? We can only imagine.
ReplyDeleteSusan, glad to hear you pictured it this way. I spent hours trying describe the layout of the house exactly right but found it impossible to explain (clearly its been added on to randomly and several times...). Opted to just go for the general feel, the windows, the peeling paint, the boards hanging at crazy angles. Glad it worked
DeleteYeah, the hose thing is weird. And how 'bout how the bottom half of the garage (guess it's a garage, 'cause of the bball hoop) has totally collapsed into the ground, but the upper half is intact? Bizarre.