Creating the perfect setting: with author Kerry McGinnis

Author Kerry McGinnis talks to Pamela Wilson about:

• How to write the perfect setting for your characters;
• How to help readers see the world through characters' eyes, without saying much at all;
• Managing the highs and lows of writing;
• How even Blind Freddy can see when your story is good enough for publication.

“I write about the bush because I am not qualified to write about anything else,” Kerry McGinnis says, explaining how she chose the setting for her latest novel, Wildhorse Creek.

“You figure out it has to have a background that you are comfortable with, that you know have got right.”

Wildhorse Creek is the story of Billy Martin, a teenager who runs so far from his troubled home that he finds himself working as a station hand on a property in the Gulf of Carpentaria in northern Australia.

Having lived most of her life in the Gulf, and droving with her family since the age of 12, Kerry's knowledge of the setting she chose for Billy is second-nature.

“When we lived in the Gulf country, I used to say we lurched from one crisis to the next... so it is not hard to organise when it is happening all around you. That might be the ideal way to pile on the pressure and to get the conflict going (in a story), but it is also very true."

Kerry has always written what she knows. Her first two books, Pieces of Blue and Heart Country, are memoirs, while The Waddi Tree is a fictional tale of two branches of the McAllister families who run cattle stations in Central Australia.

For her latest book, however, she took her character from his home in the lush, rolling, green hills of dairy country – country she has only ever passed through – to the land she knows.

Saying little can mean so much

By truly understanding and picturing Billy’s 'country', or what she calls his belonging place, Kerry was able to help readers see this harsh new environment of the Gulf through his eyes.

“I filled my vision with what (dairy country) looked like so I could write about it. You often do a lot of that preparedness for a book,” she says.

“It gives you more awareness of who your character is if you physically know where they come from. For me, knowing where people come from means their country, their belonging place... not their circumstances.

“That sort of gives you an edge when you are describing it through his eyes because he is conscious of the difference and you’re conscious of the difference even though you haven’t told the reader.”

Rather than 'telling' her readers how different this environment is to anything Billy has ever known before, she shows them through the questions he asks, his conversations and the observations he makes.

His skin was slicked with sweat...

"It always this hot in April?” (Billy asks.)

It was a beautiful day under the clear arch of the Autumn sky with the wattle coming into flower, and the seed heads of the grass ripening in swathes of pale gold. The water lilies were out in the swamps...

“It’s worth it, isn’t it? The heat and the hard yakka. Ivy said this country was magic. She was right.”

Riding the peaks and troughs of writing

For Kerry, magic is something she experiences every time her writing is going well.

“It’s like being in love. It’s just a really, really good feeling. When the writing is going well, your whole life is wonderful,” she smiles.

“Then (the character) says something or does something or something doesn’t turn out right and you feel like you could kill yourself.”

It's at times like this that Kerry knows she needs to take a break. This usually involves a cup of tea and some light ‘forgettable, frothy’ reading from a magazine or a pile of books collected from the library.

“If you get lots of forgettable stuff from the library... it rests your brain and it really takes you away from where you are at with the book, and if you go back afterwards often you can see where you were going wrong. You have to go through that process to get to the points where you know it was wrong.”

Knowing when the story is good enough

Equally, there is a process Kerry takes to getting it right: multiple drafts, lots of edits, plenty of rewriting.

“You can see the distance you’ve come from when you first began to rework it. Blind Freddy could see it, actually,” she quips.

“You think every draft is wonderful, but when you have had a little distance from it and the input of an editor you can see even before they start to tell you that, ‘Yes, this is wrong. This is too long, etc.’ With their help you know after a while that you are improving it all the time.”

And, just like that, when the writing - or editing - is going well, Kerry gets that really, really good feeling again.

For more information about Pamela Wilson or WriteSmart, log on to http://www.writesmart.com.au/

Wildhorse Creek
By Kerry McGinnis
Published by Penguin Australia
March 2010