Following graduation, 2021 BookEnds Fellow Rachel León reflects on the focus of work with her mentor.
In her brilliant memoir In the Dream House, Carmen Maria Machado states, “Places are never just places in a piece of writing. If they are, the author has failed. Setting is not inert. It is activated by point of view.”
Machado reminds us of the exchange that should be happening between story elements. Setting affects plot, which affects characters, which affects point of view. All the elements should be in conversation with one another. Except they all must be present for the exchange to work, and setting was largely absent from the draft of my novel I submitted in December, the one my mentor, National Book Award finalist Karen Bender, read.
Karen provided thoughtful, generous notes on my manuscript, offering me a clear map forward to make the novel stronger. The manuscript was in good shape structurally, though I had too many point-of-view characters (thirteen at the time). My two main tasks were compression and expansion. There was plenty to cut, but also so much I needed to build. Karen noted how my characters were floating in space; they were rarely grounded in scene and setting, which I’d shied away from because I’d thought no one would want to read about my city.
The novel is set in my hometown of Rockford, Illinois, which often finds itself on lists like “Worst Places to Live in America.” Rockford is known for its high crime and unemployment rates, but what I think defines the city is its eternal optimism and dedication to improvement. I hadn’t considered how Rockford’s determination to triumph against-the-odds echoes the themes of my novel, which Karen described as a book version of The Wire focused on the foster care system.
Because I had so many characters and storylines, Karen suggested opening the novel with an overview of Rockford in a way that could introduce the different characters. Was there a way I could bring everyone together? Not really. The intersection of the characters’ lives happens gradually by circumstance. So I played around with the idea before writing an opening narrated by the city itself. I loved it, but ultimately, had to scrap it. Karen was right: it didn’t quite work. I needed to start with characters, in a scene incorporating the setting. Karen had said she’d love to see more of Ebony, a queer white teen in foster care. It turned out Ebony’s sarcasm and view of Rockford was the perfect entry point into the story.
But the failed attempt at an opening was, of course, not wasted. Not only was I able to rework some of my favorite sentences and sprinkle them throughout the manuscript, the exercise got me searching for places to infuse more Rockford into the manuscript. It also got me thinking about when the story took place, something I hadn’t previously considered. After writing about a citywide celebration held in honor of Rockford native Fred VanVleet after the Toronto Raptors won the 2019 NBA championship, I wanted to include that, too.
Once I had a time period, I began researching the weather and what was happening locally, information that altered the storyline. The novel opens around Father’s Day, but clarifying it was June 2018 made me realize that was during a torrential storm that devastated some residents and left others unscathed—a story opportunity. It also ended up deepening Ebony’s character as I needed a die-hard basketball fan, and making her a small forward on her high school team meant she could be obsessed with Kawhi Leonard, who was traded to the Raptors in July 2018. Ebony had much more depth when she was good at something beyond being sassy.
When Karen encouraged me to ground the manuscript, I had no idea focusing on setting would also add character depth and strengthen both the plot and themes of the novel. But like Machado said: places should be more than just places in our work, and that’s now true of my novel’s setting. Karen helped me see how “Rockford” my manuscript is—despite my characters being affected by economic and racial disparities, they rise up, striving for something better, which gives my novel a sense of hopefulness. In fully embracing Rockford as the setting—both the aspects that land it on the worst city lists, and its many virtues that go unnoticed—I finally activated all the story elements and made them work together.
Rachel León is a social worker and writer whose work has appeared in Chicago Review of Books, Fiction Writers Review, West Trade Review, and other publications.