I posted recently an excerpt from an interview with William Kent Krueger about his latest book, "Vermilion Drift." There's another bit I want to share with you because it's an interesting take on conflict. Normally we just think about conflict between individuals but even a setting can imply conflict. In this case, the setting for his latest novel, "Vermilion Drift," is Minnesota's Iron Range. Here's what Krueger says about it:
"It’s conflict that drives a piece of fiction. When I look at the Iron Range, I see a landscape sculpted by great forces in conflict. The hand of man pitted against impervious rock. A growing nation’s hunger for iron at odds with the horrible devastation of a pristine world, which was the result of satisfying that hunger. The birth of thriving communities with good jobs and well-funded resources for raising families viewed against the ultimate cost of boom-and-bust economies. In so many ways, the Iron Range seemed to me the mother lode of conflict. How, as a storyteller, could I ignore that wealth?"
Of course that conflict plays out eventually embodied by individuals, but what a great starting point to select a setting that grew out of conflict and has echoes of conflict going back many years. It's obviously an element very important to Krueger. In the interview, he gives a preview of the book he's writing now, again featuring Cork O'Conner:
"The story finds Cork and his family on a houseboat vacation on Lake of the Woods, one of the largest and most inaccessible lakes in North America, a lake that contains more than 14,000 islands. A rare, treacherous storm of hurricane force sweeps across the lake, separating Cork and his daughter Jenny from the others. They find themselves stranded on a remote island, where they quickly discover that the wind has ushered in a human darkness far darker and more deadly than any storm.The story is an opportunity for me to showcase the Northwest Angle, a remote area of this country that even most Minnesotans know little about."
Are there settings that could add a background of inherent conflict to the story you're writing?
