Capturing Landscape in Fiction with Linda Cracknell – 18 January 2023

Getting the verbs right: the essence of interaction

We started with Jim spread-eagled across the bonnet of his car, then travelled past a walker intrigued in conversation with a dry-stane dyke on Schiehallion, before being scratched by the coastal convolutions of northern Caithness.

In these examples of her fiction, Linda demonstrated the misnomer of our session’s title; we don’t capture the landscape, we interact with it, and in doing so describe our surroundings much more effectively, and more economically.

In her short story, The Fall, Jim was the leader in his family. Marjorie followed in his wake, at first resigned, accepting and the verbs used showed this clearly. As time passed, and they climbed a steepening hill, she relaxed, enjoyed smelling, touching, seeing her surroundings. Marjorie’s interaction revealed the shift in her mood and details of the route they took, especially as she doubted and questioned.

You’ll have to explore Life Drawing, Linda’s first collection of short stories, to discover the denouement and the way Linda tells the remainder of the tale.

Linda was disappointed that The Beat of Heart Stones didn’t make it into her walking recollections in Doubling Back. “It’s got a talking wall,” she was told by the publisher, “so it’s fiction.” But the conversation between walker and wall illustrated the way interaction conveyed mood, information and detail without resorting to potentially dry description.

Fortunately, this cameo story appears in its own compact edition that Linda illustrated herself.

By the time we joined cartographer Maggie on the Caithness coast we understood the implications of being scratched by an environment inflicting an abrasive rawness. (Whoops, adjectives and adverbs creeping in there.) Linda explained how Call of the Undertow evokes and embraces a location that braces itself against the elements, and animates stories revealed by a child’s own map, created as he interprets the area’s history and mysteries.

An academic applauded the creation of “Linda’s Caithness,” epitomising as it did her own interaction and interpretation of what she experienced, rather than a mere description.

Looking at the notes I scribbled, while listening intently, and trying to distil the uisge beatha from the evening, I’m sure I won’t be alone in carrying the following observations and advice, forward into our writing:

• The landscape surrounding us is animate. There are lots of verbs in it, and we’ve just got to look for them.
• Using those verbs displays an active involvement, revealing the character of both the landscape and the person within it.
• Listen to what your landscape has to say. Giving a voice to something helps us see what it’s got to say for itself, and the mood and tone it uses.
• Use the power of the senses to get the place and its character across in the way we interact.

Neither should we forget the value of notebooks (and pencils) said Linda. By carrying even crudely stitched scraps of paper between the covers of a folded postcard, we observe, capture facts, create reminders, all of which mean we are interacting on the move.

If all this sounds prosaic and practical, don’t forget, Linda shared some beautiful writing that’s out there to be enjoyed.

Thank you.

Nigel Ward