Sense of Place in Short Fiction

When crafting a story, a crucial element for writers to consider is the evocation of a sense of place. Sense of place is different from setting. Sense of place goes beyond that. When crafted effectively, sense of place in a story becomes a character in itself, one that is always in a kind of dialogue with the characters. By dialogue, I mean interaction. Just like real people in real life, characters must have an awareness of their environments and respond to those environments. Again, the response of real people to the environments they inhabit can inform everything from current mood to decision-making. It can even inform personality and identity if that environmental habitation is a prolonged one (being born and raised in one place, for example). These responses to environment are contributing factors to how people relate with, and construct, a sense of place.

This construction is not a conscious one, and defining that construction is difficult. Sense of place is, effectively, a psychological evolution in many ways, one that has its roots in childhood. It is not even something we are ever really aware of. We don't walk around wondering what our sense of place feels like today. All we have, deep in our subconscious, is an awareness of what a place feels like to us, what it evokes in us, and what we expect from that place. Little details include the smells of a place and the noises we associate with it. The look of a place, also, can have a profound effect. Bear in mind, sense of place can change from season to season or even day to day. What a city feels like in the summer is not how it feels in winter.

When crafting short fiction, taking into account seasonal changes is unlikely to be a feature. Short fiction, essentially, exists in moments. That doesn't mean one particular moment. It can be a moment in a character's life or a series of moments across a period of days or years. In short fiction, these moments form the basis of the story itself. The need for plot, or even a standard beginning, middle, and end structure is minimal at best. With short fiction, there is no beginning, middle, or end. The aim is to hone in on one particular event, happening, or occurrence in one character's life, one that produces what James Joyce considered to be epiphany.

Regarding the evocation of a sense of place, it is the reader who must be made aware of it. Like real people in real life, a character's sense of place will be on a subconscious level. It is for the reader for whom the setting must become inseparable from the emotional tone of the story. Achieving this level of immersion is key to creating a short story that resonates long after the reader has finished the final sentence.

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