With the demise of extended families, elders were seen in our society as useless and, like old horses, put out to pasture.  With all us Baby Boomers turning wrinkly and silver, though, that paradigm is shifting. Grandparents in other parts of the world have always had an honored place in their societies.   It’s nice to think that’s begun to be the case again in our own culture. Older people have the wisdom of long experience for which there is no real substitute.

I’ve been thinking about how many of my favorite children’s stories have wise elders in them.  Some are wizards such as Dumbledore in the Harry Potter books and Dalben in Lloyd Alexander’s Pridain series.  Some offer the main character a safe haven and a listening ear, such as Hannah in Witch of Blackbird Pond, Matthew and Marilla in Anne of Green Gables and Crane Man in A Single Shard.  All of them add richness, texture and depth.

Do you make a point of putting older people in your stories?  I often do.  It just seems natural and right to have an elder or two somewhere in the mix.

Elders make good writers, too, expecially for children.  Many authors begin their careers late and/or continue writing into their seventies, eighties and nineties.  Scott O’Dell was sixty when he wrote Island of the Blue Dolphin, his first children’s book.  He penned nearly thirty more children’s books before his death at the age of ninety-one.

I found a list of books on starting a writing career later in life at September University, a good site for creative aging in general.

So don’t get discouraged if you are an elder who wants to write.  And if you are a writer, remember to include a few elders in your cast of characters.  Your stories will be the better for it.

What would Harry Potter be without Hogwarts?  Just another dorky kid in a broom closet.  Right?  And don’t you just love the way the Secret Garden changes and blossoms, little-by-little, just as Mary and Collin do?   The big woods and broad prairie of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s childhood are as crucial to her stories, and have just as much of an impact on her, as Ma and Pa and Mary.

In all these examples, the setting is more than window dressing.   It is, in essence, a character with which the people in the story interact.

A particularly good example of setting as character is The Talking Earth, by Jean Craighead George.  The main character, Billy Wind, has to come to terms with a very remarkable setting–the Florida Everglades.  As with all George’s books, the setting is described in such loving detail and is such a  key component of the plot that it truly becomes a character in its own right.

How do you make your setting come alive?  The same way you make your characters come alive.  With specific and carefully chosen details.   Wind should never simply blow.  It should howl or whisper, burn or freeze, help your protagonist’s ship sail to a safe harbor or carry her to Oz.   Is there a  tower in your story?  What kind?  Ivory or granite?  A stalwart lighthouse saving sailors’ lives or a haunted wizard’s den luring travelers to their doom?  A forest can be friendly or menacing, a seashore bleak and lonely or sun-drenched and cheerful.

Describe your setting with these kinds of telling details and you will not only ground your characters in a specific time and place but will create a setting that lives forever in your reader’s memories–as all good characters do.