Stories Steeped in 'Place'
Stories Steeped in ‘Place’
By Julie Tollefson
Jeff Esterholm’s short stories paint a picture of a Wisconsin where the past and present come alive through keen observations of the qualities that make the region and time period unique. Here, he offers five ways to think about how setting — everything from music to landscape to physical and economic climate — affect character and story development. Jeff’s second short story collection, Tollund Man, releases this month from Cornerstone Press.
1) Hook readers with a realistic “feel” — Most of Jeff’s short stories are set in northwestern Wisconsin, both in his hometown of Superior and a nearby fictional town called Port Nicollet. The stories span decades, from the middle of the last century to the present.
“I want the details to be right and hopefully identifiable in some fashion to the reader,” Jeff says. “A city or neighborhood from out of their parents’, their grandparents’, or even their great-grandparents’ past, somewhere perhaps meaner and rougher than, say, in this crazily horrific twenty-first century we’re stuck in.”
To get that authenticity in his stories, Jeff pays attention to concrete details: “period tavern and beer signs and barroom decor, dirty snowbanks, slippery sidewalks and streets, paint peeling on the wooden frame of a storm window, cars from the past.”
2) Avoid the generic — “Place” invites your reader in and, done well, entices them to stay awhile. And that means portraying the setting in a way specific to you and your perceptions. Hear the name Raymond Chandler and you’ll likely think L.A. Likewise, Jeff points to Dashiell Hammett (San Francisco), Elmore Leonard and Stephen Mack Jones (Detroit), William Boyle (Brooklyn), and Megan Abbott (Upper Peninsula of Michigan). These authors have created such lasting and compelling versions of the spaces their characters move through that author and setting are permanently linked for readers.
“If place in the story is generic, I’ll continue to read, but the buy-in can’t help but be limited,” Jeff says.
For his own work, Jeff enjoys the research needed to bring a personal take to his settings, everything from perusing old black-and-white snapshots to interviews with his “personal historical society,” AKA his parents.
“They’re both in their nineties and have vivid memories of the Twin Ports of Superior-Duluth,” Jeff says.
Jeff also uses traditional sources — online searches, of course, and books specific to the region, such as Portrait of the Past: A Photographic Journey Through Wisconsin by Howard Mead, Jill Dean, and Susan Smith, and Wisconsin’s Past and Present: A Historical Atlas by the Wisconsin Cartographers’ Guild.
For recommendations relevant to your own setting, check with your local libraries and museums if you don’t have access to a personal historical society like Jeff’s.
3) Rain is just rain…or is it? — Jeff uses the proximity to Lake Superior in his Wisconsin settings to turn up the heat, sometimes literally, on his characters. Temperatures and conditions can differ wildly depending on how close he puts the action to the lake. Summers can be cool on shore but hot and humid only a few miles south. In winter, the lake can blunt the worst of a storm or dump a few feet of snow. These unique characteristics not only ground readers in the setting, but they offer many opportunities for Jeff to increase the challenges he throws at his long-suffering characters.
“Some writers are anti-weather, and I get that,” Jeff says. “I see it as another wrinkle in the havoc I create for my characters. Lake Superior is a beast of a character that goes unnamed but lives just down the street.”
Jeff likes to think that his setting, even when it’s “brutalizing” his characters, makes them stronger, at least in the moment.
“They manage to somehow live out their lives in one of the harsher environments — economically and physically harsh — of the country, some successfully, some not,” he says.
4) Create a soundtrack for the times — Taking a page from the movie-making playbook, music plays a big role in Jeff’s stories.
“I love how Martin Scorsese has made use of music in his movies, locking down a specific time period, the overall mood of the film, or a particular character,” Jeff says.
In his stories, boomboxes (remember those?) blare the Rolling Stones and David Bowie as a character is marched to his death on Superior’s Wisconsin Point. An older character sings Neil Young songs while walking the dog. An alert reader will find other, subtle references to music scattered throughout both of Jeff's story collections.
“The reader may ‘know’ the singing dog walker. The reader may have partied on a beach at some point in their life and heard similar songs,” Jeff says. Small details, maybe, but they help the reader identify more deeply with the time and place.
5) Aim for the heart — Each detail of place — music, weather, economic conditions, bar decor, landscape — help Jeff connect with readers, but the ultimate quality he writes toward is more difficult to pin down.
“I aim at the story’s characters and setting having heart — heart is the big thing — no matter that they may be at loose ends in life, drug addicts or alcoholics, unemployed and playing the Lotto of Life,” he says. “If my readers pick up on some specific that they can relate to, traits calling to mind a relative who brought a case of Cold Duck to every family holiday gathering, a dodgy old high school friend calling out of the blue, whatever, I’m happy with that. But it’s not something I necessarily click into place like a puzzle piece. I’m just rolling out the story and hope they come along for the ride.”