Character Inspiration #4: North Dakota? Heck YES!

 

Can a place be a character?

According to a speaker I saw at a writer's workshop get-away in Bemidji, MN … heck yes, it can! Particularly (according to said speaker) if you're from the Midwest. He was from the south, and he said he found it "peculiar" how so many writers hailing from the Heartland brought the land, and the weather that comes with it, to life like a character playing a part in the story just as much as the humans.

North Dakota's vast stretches of prairie, pasture and cropland have spoken to me since childhood. Since my family's roots are from the Enderlin, Sheldon, and Alice area, I have deep-seated memories of traveling to both grandparents' places many-a-weekend from Detroit Lakes, MN. I preferred to sit in the way back of our Gran Torino station wagon with the dog most times, as opposed to "on the hump" between my older sisters and little brothers. In the summer, I would look out the back window and wait for a field of happy sunflowers to smile at me, or marvel at a sea of wheat waving in the wind. Everyone would holler, "Hey look, Julie! Horses!" And I would try to count them all along each trip. The round bales dotting the slopes, I always imagined, were crouched buffalo napping peacefully across the fields.

While my childhood memories spurred the setting for Nokota(R) Voices, my most recent travels to the Kuntz Nokota Ranch in Linton the past few years have refreshed my love and fascination for North Dakota. Buttes and valleys beckon me to explore. Abandoned, old farmsteads, crumpled from age and overgrowth, whisper mysteries of a day gone by. The relentless wind sweeps over me, testing the stuff I'm made of. The rain, and the mud that comes with it, sings a song of growth and hope. Even the sun's beating rays soak into my pores to brand every exposed inch of me, claiming me for a time.

And the clouds! Oh the clouds on the prairies of North Dakota …

Storm clouds loom on the horizon like snow-capped mountains. Cottony fluff clouds merge and wrestle into shapeshifting creatures. Wispy, white strands, painted in ethereal brushstrokes, sore across the endless blue canvas. These clouds, to this day, create stories in my mind where cloud-beings control the weather, and the cloud creatures of my imagination come to life. All of which you will encounter in my next book, Cloud City Sparkslingers!

So YES! Places become characters if you let them tell you their story in their own special way. Let Nokota Voices transport you to the wide-open spaces of North Dakota!

To learn more and to order your copy of Nokota Voices,

check out my website and BWL Author Page.