How Real Life Settings Set the Stage for Readers of Fiction

Fundraisers come in all shapes and sizes, from Rotary Roses to all-night Zeitgeist parties. One of my favorite events is the Duluth Library Foundation's Libations at the Library. In addition to drinks, hors d'oeuvres, a silent auction, jewelry raffle, dessert and coffee, there were again options to attend eight different presentations, all of the interesting, from The Accidental Musher to discussions of interior design, genomes, and how to make whiskey. The event takes place inside the library, so if you love libraries you're right at home.

The presentation I was most interested in was titled Stride's Duluth. Author Brian Freeman took his audience on a tour of various settings around Duluth where murders have taken place -- not real murders but the fictional ones in his numerous books that have Duluth as their setting. For Brian Freeman is a writer of thrillers whose novels have won him many awards, found him readers in 47 countries and given him the opportunity to do what he loves, which is to be a creative story teller and get paid for it. The recognition and fame hasn't dimmed his enthusiasm either.

He set up his talk by sharing how important settings are. Good settings can increase the drama as the author drops the reader directly, and thoroughly, into the scene.

Every crime series seems to have its carefully crafted hero, whether he be Sherlock Holmes, MacDonald's Travis McGee or Mike Savage's Dave Davecki. For Brian Freeman, it's Jonathan Stride.

Death in the Afternoon, Evening and Night.
Freeman does Duluth.

Freeman's talk was about settings, but it touched on many features of crafting thrillers. Naming characters has to be fun. From the beginning of time people have been naming things, and the quest to discover new things to name is ever ongoing.

Freeman shared that most of his stories take place in Duluth, but he's working on a new series that has taken him to San Francisco. And since this talk was titled "Stride's Duluth" it seemed natural to focus on the places and spaces where deaths have occurred in his books. Throughout the talk he showed slides of these various landmarks.

Landmarks like the lift bridge set the stage, and he includes it in the first scene of Jonathan Stride's first book, just so we know where we are. "Stride and Duluth go hand-in-hand," he explained.

In his book The Cold Nowhere his character Kat Mates has been at a sleazy party in the William Irvin ore boat, which he's given the original name of Charles Frederick. (Outsiders: Chuck is editor of our Duluth News Tribune.) Mates barely escapes with her life after being chased through the bowels of the ship then finding her way to the top-deck from which she leaps into the water below.

The author said it's fun to explore these places and get details that one can only acquire through actually being there. The details are what make the setting so vivid in the reader's mind.

He described the access he gained to hidden parts of the Miller Hill Mall and other places where he's offed people in his numerous books. Someone asked, "When are you going to kill someone in my neighborhood?"

In addition to physical landmarks there are also experiential landmarks. That would include Grandma's Marathon, which he renames the Duluth Marathon in his book Marathon. The fun part is nosing out real places that fit the drama. Real houses. A green bench at the end of park point. (He shared that that bench is in a couple of his books, and yes, it is a real place.) He also spends a lot of time in cemeteries.

One section of his talk dealt with his approach to mapping a scene. He then outlined an incident that occurs in one of his books at a farmhouse on Lester River, and read a passage that left hearers almost breathless.

He's learned how to keep you turning pages.

He's evidently killed quite a few people in Duluth. Locations include Enger Tower, a beach on the Minnesota side of Park Point, inside one of the courtrooms of the St. County Courthouse, Fitgers Hotel, up at the antennae farm, out at Hartley Park, inside the DECC, atop the Blatnik Bridge and on some frozen lakes.

Wherever he turns he's got an eye out for creepy places where he can create another scene. The five creepiest, so far, which he's found include storage sheds, the Novitiate Building in Shawano, the William Irvin, the Graffiti Graveyard and the abandoned Clover Valley School.

I don't think this will be the end of the story. There are plenty of other places and spaces where Jonathan Stride will find crimework awaiting him.

The author is Brian Freeman. And maybe one day Hollywood will show up to do a Jonathan Stride thriller here, and the house where Stride resides will become a tourist attraction. The Visit Duluth website will have a map of Duluth points of interest like where Dylan was born and the house where Bob Dylan lived till he was six and Armory where young Robert Zimmerman saw Buddy Holly and the 94 settings where Brian Freeman had people killed in his Stride novels. Plus the green park bench out on the point where Stride reflected on all his adventures.

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For what it's worth, as a writer I, too, have loved researching settings. My young adult novel The Red Scorpion begins in Cuernavaca, one of my favorite places in Mexico, and then takes them to Tepotzlan, an even more fave place. The haunted house, a former bed and breakfast in Minnesota, is a hybrid patterned after a couple places out East with some interesting features. My short story Episode on South Street incorporated notes and observations from an evening on South Street in Philadelphia, which also had a Duluth connection when I found Sam Cook's first book in a used book store there. (A pair of film makers asked for permission to make a short film of the story, which is actually not too far off from the somewhat macabre storylines Brian Freeman has perpetrated on us. You can read the original story here and compare the two versions if you wish.

My favorite story setting that I went out of my way to investigated was for my story The Unfinished Stories of Richard Allen Garston. My narrator in this story strives to track down a character who was the last person alive to read the stories of a man purported to have been the greatest writer that ever lived, but his deal with the devil was that none of his stories would ever be published. The setting for this encounter was a Trappist monastery in Kentucky called Gethsemane. In researching the monastery I also saw the humble place where the remains of Thomas Merton have been laid. There is no better way to drop your reader into a setting than to actually experience the setting yourself, first hand.

This was the point Brian Freeman sought to impart to his hearers last Saturday night, many whom I suspect will be readers soon. As a writer myself I identified with every word.

Now, one suggestion for Mr. Freeman. Have you been inside the Armory? You mentioned "creepy places" where murders could be committed. I'm guessing that you can get some really great historical material there as well as some real drama. Opportunities for chase scenes. Hide and seek? Chills, spills and thrills? Just sayin'.

M