Tina Ann Forkner ~ Guest Blogger

Tina Ann Forkner writes contemporary fiction that challenges and inspires. Originally from Oklahoma, she graduated with honors in English from CSU Sacramento before ultimately settling in the wide-open spaces of Wyoming where she now resides with her husband and their three children. Tina serves on the Laramie County Library Foundation Board of Directors and enjoys gardening and going fishing with her family.


Glimpses of Nature in Your Stories


Sometimes nature can inspire stories and descriptions in completely unexpected ways. It’s my way to try and escape the confines of my house by looking for spots of nature in the city, so last week I went walking at a city lake. I was rounding a corner, enjoying the soft lapping of the water when I spotted a momma duck and her babies.

The lake was a little high that day and the family was busily splashing through the grass and trees that were, at least for a time, submerged in lake water.

I glanced down for a second to stretch, when I heard a really big splash. I glanced back up and the babies were gone, as if momma duck had told them to hide. Momma, who suddenly seemed very distressed, was watching a massive creature flopping around in the water. It kept dipping and swimming in large circles through the grass. At first I thought it was an otter, but when I saw slick skin and fins on a creature as big as my waist, I realized it was a catfish. A big catfish splashing around, apparently hunting for baby ducks! Could that be possible? I thought fish ate worms and bugs!

I called my dad on the phone because he is an avid fisherman and I described to him in great detail how big the fish was and how amazed I was to see it splashing around so near the bank. Surely catfish don’t eat baby ducks do they? He assured me that they will if they get a chance. He went on to tell me that’s how he thinks people got the idea for the infamous, and actually popular, Snakehead movies. Someone, he figured, probably saw some big fish cavorting in shallow bank water and thought it looked like a monster fish walking in the mud.

I’d never heard of a Snakehead, but I did a Google search and it ends up that the movies are set around beautiful fishing lakes and the Snakeheads look like giant catfish that walk on land and terrorize – and eat – the people (not just helpless baby ducks) in the lake communities. Yes, my dad was right. It was the perfect, albeit very weird, example of how experiencing natural settings firsthand could inspire unforgettable stories. Too bad someone else thought of Snakeheads first (can you see me writing about monsters?), but it also made me think about how some of the best novels include some kind of natural setting.

Think back to some of your favorite novels. How many of them have natural elements in the setting? Remember the pecan tree in Watching the Tree Limbs? The peach orchard in The Secret Life of Bees? The Smoky Mountains in Christy? And then there are the novels with obvious natural settings like A River Runs Through It, Peace Like a River and the newer, but I’m sure lasting, Garden Spells. We remember novels like these for many reasons, not just the natural scenery, but the scenery is part of the sensory experience that can make a novel unforgettable and bigger than life.

As a writer, have you ever thought about the natural scenery in your novels? Even if your novel isn’t set in nature itself, putting well-written glimpses of God’s creation in can add life to your story and help pull your readers in a little deeper. Whether it’s a clay pot filled with perfect, lavender pansies on a city stoop or a sweeping vineyard in the Sonoma Valley, you can try adding nature to your own stories.

I write most frequently on my laptop at a desk facing my back garden. At least I call it a garden even if it really is just a back yard with a few scraggly flower beds and a large plot of dirt containing some brave tomato plants, last year’s Shasta daisies and a wealth of seeds that are just peeking their heads out of the warming soil.

This scene is what inspires me in the morning when I sit down to write, so I wasn’t surprised when I first figured out that one of my primary characters in Ruby Among Us would be a gardener and that her backyard would be filled with roses and flowers. Of course, there is actually no resemblance between the look of my own gardens and the garden settings in Ruby Among Us, but I think my experience at having my hands in the dirt and watching things grow helped me to better describe the natural scenery in my novel.

So how does a writer deepen natural elements in a novel when they are a city person or don’t know much about nature? It’s as easy as taking a walk. You can even experience nature right outside your door or windowsill and it will no doubt make your stories better. Emily Dickinson did it very well when she wrote a poem about hearing a fly buzz. She wasn’t writing about the fly buzzing, she was writing about dying.

Dickinson took a small image of nature and used it to emphasize something profound about life and dying. Every time I hear a fly buzz, I think of that poem and imagine Dickinson sitting quietly one day, perhaps after the death of a loved one, hearing a fly buzz in the window and the poem taking off from there. Of course, we will never know how she really came up with it, but I can imagine it because nature can inspire deeper thought and a more sensory experience.

So, if you want to insert some of God’s glimpses of nature into your own stories and do it well, you need to experience nature yourself. You can’t only read about it in a coffee table book or watch it on the Travel Channel, although that’s a start. Get outside and find a pot of dirt, pick some flowers, hop on a paddle boat or go fishing. Pay careful attention to the sights and smells around you so you can remember them later when you write your stories. And oh yeah, while you are at it, watch out for Snakeheads.

Sometimes, the key that unlocks your future lies in someone else’s past…

Set in the lush vineyards of present and past Sonoma Valley, Ruby Among Us weaves a story of three generations of women and the memory that binds their hearts together. Journey with Lucy as she searches for a heritage long buried with her mother, Ruby, in this stirring tale of remembrance and redemption. From Waterbrook Press/Random House.