HENRY CHANG

Setting and Atmosphere: Writing from the Element and Writing in the Elements

HENRY CHANG is the author of the acclaimed Chinatown trilogy Chinatown Beat, Year of the Dog, and Red Jade, featuring Chinese-American NYPD detective Jack Yu. He is currently at work on the next book in the Detective Jack Yu series of investigations.

 

 

Writing from the element. It’s true that many good writers can create bestselling novels without ever having to get out from behind their desks or laptops.

I’m not one of those.

For me, there’s nothing as vivid as being in the moment, where reality spikes the imagination, and creativity is visceral, emotional, rather than intellectual. This is precisely why some writers will ride along with cops on patrol or with firefighters on an alarm run. This is why war correspondents get themselves embedded into combat units, to get an intimate perspective on the hell of war.

This experiential methodology worked for me because I’d grown up in New York’s Chinatown (where my crime mysteries are set) around street gangs, gambling houses, bad cops, tong gangsters, dope peddlers, and Chinese organized crime. The Chinatown beat was a natural for me.

I’d already experienced violence on the mean streets of Chinatown, a world of poolrooms, karaoke clubs, and after-hours bars. I was well acquainted with the neighboring precincts, cruising along on predatory road trips through the various ethnic enclaves of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. I was living in and knowing this element, even before I found the voice with which to tell and write the stories.

Story-wise, there wasn’t much I had to dream up.

My writing style is very organic; I like to feel and experience, as much as possible, the environment I’m setting my characters in. (More on that later.)

Recording the Chinatown underworld in action—the images, the people, the emotions—was another matter. Normally, you’d carry a pocket-size recorder and camera, just to get things right. But when you’re cruising the criminal underworld, those tools are forbidden.

Obviously, you can’t pull out a pad and start taking notes when you’re in a gambling house or drug factory, with tong managers and gang members all around. You need to observe, soak up the environment, and participate in it, unless it’s a danger to yourself or others (in which case look for the nearest exit). I’ve been able to condense an hour’s observation into a few sentences and key headers hastily written on my forearm during trips to the restroom. Seems clandestine, undercover, I know. I’ve jotted down numbers and symbols on my palm when I couldn’t find a scrap of paper. I’ve taken disposable items from the location, like a matchbook or a playing card, if I feel it’ll spark a memory, an image, an idea later on.

Basically, you rely on your memory, however splintered it might be after a night of carousing with your questionable companions.

The opportunity for recall came for me, many times, in the wee hours between three and six a.m., after the gambling houses and after-hours bars had closed, when dawn drifted wearily over Chinatown. This was when we gathered together in the all-night Chinatown dives, hungrily ordering up hot Cantonese plates of rice dishes, with the street boyz teasing me about my furious jotting-down of notes onto stacks of paper table napkins.

They’d trusted me by then.

“Telling tales again,” they’d snicker.

“Got to,” I’d answer, “our stories are too important not to tell.”

Nights with my Chinatown brothers, my hingdaai, were always spiked with extraordinary urban experiences that were dark and gritty, with sexual visions and violent vignettes. I’d been a victim, and I’d dealt out some retaliation as well, so how I’d been able to channel the fear and anger from those incidents becomes apparent in the rendering of my characters and their actions. You never understand those emotions as clearly until men with bad intentions come at you with knives, until someone points a gun in your face.

Experiential. Empirical.

Again, I don’t recommend conducting such dangerous research, but if it comes with the territory that you’re writing in and writing about, then try to capture those emotional or physical traumas. Those experiences will help you to understand the human condition and to render the emotional landscape in your settings and characters.

Writing in the elements. For the main components of my stories, I prefer to be out on the streets, to feel the wind or rain or sun on my face as the Chinatown New York City milieu unfolds.

Consider the settings in your story. In what season(s) do key events take place? If it’s an outdoor setting, consider how it might look and feel if the weather changes.

In New York City we experience the four seasons, which are noticeably distinct from one another. Winter, spring, summer, and fall all feature different weather. Whatever the elements are in your setting, the weather can be used to your story’s advantage. You will need to know the particulars about the environment you’re creating, and the details you choose to include will enhance the authenticity of your story.

It wouldn’t be unusual to see me writing in the rain, under an awning on Chinatown’s main drag. This is what I’d see.

The rain starts to pound down and it affects everyone on the street. There is a fresh sense of urgency as Chinese people walk faster; deliverymen have to hustle, even as truck and car traffic slows down. A few people don’t mind getting wet and they proceed at their own pace. The sidewalk merchants roll out their carts of umbrellas for sale.

I’ve seen this stretch of street before, seen how it looks different under two feet of snow in January, with the locals going about their business around the piles of dirty slush and ice. But in July, when the heat ripples up from the black tar street, the locals move much slower from the oppressive temperatures and humidity. The same street is alive with celebration during the Chinese New Year. The colors of luck and good cheer—reds and golds—everywhere. Fireworks. Lion dancers and floats with beauty queens and marching bands. It’s so crowded, you can’t even walk down the street.

These observations give me a creative choice about how to use this setting. Plot-wise, does something dramatically different happen because it’s subzero freezing cold, instead of heat-wave 105-degree hot? How does the change affect your character(s), who live in this environment?

In a key shootout scene from Year of the Dog, this is precisely what happens; the weather conditions have set off a chain reaction of violent and fatal events.

In Red Jade, the weather figures in everything, but for more on that you’d have to read the book.

EXERCISE

Select an exterior location that figures prominently in your story and observe that setting during various times: morning, noon, rush hour, evening, and so on. How differently do people act during those times? How could what’s happening during those different times affect what your characters will do in a scene?

What does the location look like in winter? How does it feel in the summer, or in the fall? What happens there during a thunderstorm? What seasonal/traditional events (a street fair, a parade) regularly occur there? The answers to these questions will give you added creative flexibility to enhance your story components.

Always take notes, mental or otherwise.

Again, observe, but also engage all of your senses.

What colors do you see? (Bright and cheery, or muted?) Is it an emotional setting (like a funeral procession)?

What sounds do you hear? (Traffic noise, different languages, street music?)

What do you smell? (Savory aromas of food, the scent of flowers, the stench of garbage?) One reviewer of Chinatown Beat wrote, “You can almost smell the tofu cooking.”

What does the air feel like? (Hot or cold, sticky, humid, wet?)

Are there any food items in the location that will allow you a taste of the setting? (A fruit market, a bakery, a sidewalk food vendor?)

These exercises will help you get an organic feel for your chosen environment, a visceral understanding of how that setting can be made to work for you and your story. Try to apply your imagination against the vivid background of the setting, which, it’s often noted, can be a character as well.