I'm not from the south, but I have written a few short stories that take place there. One of them deals with the border so we're talking right on the line. However, I'm questioning my interpretation and representation of the south. How do I make my setting more southern? I've made a few silly mistakes like having a lobster roll special on the menu and haven't really mentioned any accents or shown as much in dialog. I don't want to seem like I'm trying to hard to set a story in the south, but I also want it to be more clear that these stories are set in the southern part of USA. What are some ways to bring out the southern setting of a story without going over the top?
First if you are talking about the border know that there is a big difference between the South like Ga, Al, MS and the Southwestern border states Texas, Arizona, New Mexico. Food would be Tex-Mex and accents different. There was a thread about this before. It is difficult to write about settings if you have no personal knowledge. I could write a story that takes place in New Zealand if I kept the culture out of it and have my MC be just as lost as I would be except for what I google, but I really wouldn't do a novel justice having a novel set in New Zealand when I have never been there.
I have been all over the country and do know there are many differences. The example I gave was just an example. I just don't want it to seem like I just dropped a story into the south. I actually want these to read with a southern flare. Does that make sense?
Which South? Why did you put a New England delicacy on a Southern menu? Part of the problem is that you keep talking about the southern states of the US as if they have something in common. They do not. First, pick a place and then try to figure out what would be regional there.
Yeah, New Orleans is very different than Charleston, S.C. So start as suggested with picking the place then research it. If you have been there before it would be helpful. Read their local newspapers, search menus of restaurants online and the reviews and listen to local radio stations online too. Speaking of New Zealand, when that mass shooting occured there I listened to the local Christchurch talk radio station online to see what the locals were saying. That can give you a feel for accents.
I’m from the southeast, but currently live about as far as I could be away from it, though not for that reason. Assuming a modern setting, here are a few things to keep in mind. You know all the Flannery O’Connor-type Classic literature that was set in the south? That was the south fifty years ago. That is not the south today, though everyone in the south has a vague idea that that was what their grandparents’ lives were like. The average person is religious. Likely a Baptist, Methodist, or a member of another Protestant group. They may or may not actually attend church, and have varying degrees of faith. Some believe in fire and brimstone. Some have beliefs that sound rather agnostic, but they’d never admit it. People who live alternative lifestyles are less likely to be open about it, because enough people will judge them to make them feel miserable if they are. Not everyone of course. More carnivorous options on the menu. BBQ more than vegan. Unique foods to the region would fall under “comfort food” or “soul food” elsewhere. Grits, stuff like that. Fried catfish is popular. More rural areas. Think small modern farms and trailer parks, not pappy’s cabin in the woods. The farms have electric fences and John deer tractors. Hunting is a popular pass time. If you put five people in a room, two are Republicans, one is “too conservative for the liberal Republican Party,” one is a libertarian with anarchist tendencies, and the other is a conservative Democrat. And for everything else: it’s 90% the same as anywhere else in the US. Southern accents are a thing but not everyone has much of one.
Here's the thing: Everything he just said can apply to Ohio. And that includes accents as we are surrounded on three sides by Kentucky and West Virginia and many people migrated from those places. If you want nuance, pick a place and research it. Ohio is not like New Mexico and New Mexico is not like Alabama, etc.
Or just make it up. Make it clear that you're writing about an alternate-reality South, and you can do anything you want. And the alternate doesn't have to be that "the South won" or anything big. Let a character talk about going to Walt Disney World in Macon, Georgia (why would anyone build a mega-theme-park in a swamp?) and everyone will know you're not in the South as we know it.
That could easily be out of place though unless the alternative reality has relevance to the story. Readers anchor themselves to the world that they know and allow divergences only when well presented. It would be a different matter if the story had a drastic reason to reorganize society, because readers would expect differences. But otherwise, their suspension of disbelief will be broken. If an author doesn't want to anchor their story in a location, they don't have to. There are plenty of examples of stories with ambiguous locations. And North Alabama isn't South Alabama. But wherever you go, the people aren't all that different. They're just people; broad assumptions are usually just stereotypes. Individuals are remarkably unique from each other, and those differences far outweigh regional quirks. There are cultural things, like the fact that a programmer on the west coast is going to wear jeans, a programmer in the south east will wear khakis, and a programmer in New York City wears a suit and tie. But many of those are vanishing and hard to nail down even to individual states. Mass media and the internet is homogenizing our culture. When people across the world talk to each other everyday, their ideas start to merge together a lot more than they did in the past. Geographic location is slowly becoming irrelevant.
Restaurants can tell you about a location. I’ve driven from New Jersey to North Carolina a dozen times and I can usually tell what state I’m in by how frequently I see Hardee’s and Waffle House. The accent isn’t the only thing that gives away a southerner. They really do say “y’all come back now.” They doing say “how’s it going,” they say “how y’all doing.” The is a YouTube channel called Godless Engineer. He talks about science and engineering and the opitome of how a southerner speaks in my opinion. Check out a video or two of his and see if you can pick up in some other things that give away his southern ness.
Hardees and Waffle House are all over the Mid-West too. One other give away though, but not exclusive, is "Sweet Tea" and "Biscuits". On a trip with my Sister-In law and her husband through Tennessee, she was real put off by everybody calling her, "Gal". She's a grown woman. But that's what they do, I guess, they didn't mean any harm.
A few things I remember most about The South in comparison the The North: tornado's are more frequent, sweet potatoes are bigger, coffee is worse, catfish is sold in restaurants, Piggly Wiggly's exist. Also, summers are just terrible and everything shuts down if snow lands in the winter.
Tornado Alley is actually the mid-west like Kansas and Nebraska. Catfish is sold in restaurants probably in all 50 states, but not sure about Hawaii. Piggly Wiggly's is definitely the South. Don't know why coffee would be worse.
There are a lot of Tornados in Alabama / Georgia / Mississippi / Tennessee as well, and catfish is a pretty big deal. There are restaurants that specialize in catfish all over the place.
Yeah, I was just pointing out that tornadoes isn't South specific because Tornado Alley is actually the Mid-West. When you say catfish is all over the place did you mean only in the South or the U.S. in general? Catfish is popular everywhere in the U.S. In fact, I'm eating some right now with Collard's as my side.
Catfish is particularly popular in the south, kind of like BBQ. You can find either anywhere but it is very popular in the south. Kind of like how Seafood and Sushi are very popular in Seattle but still exist elsewhere too. From this map of tornado data we can tell that Alabama and Mississippi have just as many tornados as probably anywhere else in the US. Tornado Alley isn’t really an official term and can just refer to anywhere that has a lot of tornados. There were a couple counties where I lived that were actually referred to by that term, or something similar. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tornado_Alley.svg
They're not South specific, and the traditional Tornado Alley covers pretty much the whole Great Plains, but tornadoes and "Tornado Alley" are heavily associated with the southern plains. And of the southern plains states (Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas) two are considered Southern in a cultural sense. The shift of tornadic activity southeast toward "Dixie Alley" is only going to strengthen the association with the South. Likewise, catfish is pretty popular all around, but there's a strong association with the South.
If tornadoes were "Southern" they would be common across the traditional South, not the Central US. Which just underlines the pointlessness of trying to summarize a vague idea like "the South" to try and extract useful ideas for a story. Virginia is in the South, and if you fill it with catfish and tornadoes your piece will sound pretty stupid. Pick a place - not a vague region - and find out what is normal in that place.
Yep, were back to the original advice, OP. Pick a place and research it. I still say read the local newspaper and listen to local talk radio if you have never been there yourself. ETA: Next time you have a two week vacation (holiday), give yourself an excuse to go there and visit.
To people who live in these places though, it’s not about where tornados are associated with. It’s about hiding in a storm shelter several times a year, afraid that your house and everything you own might be swept away over the course of a few minutes. This was part of my experience growing up in the south. I’m sure it’s a thing in the Midwest too, though decidedly isn’t in a lot of places.
I vote for Nashville. In a fairly small region, you can have urban, suburban, and kinda-rural, liberal and conservative, and a major university and health center—for your plots and characters, I mean. And when you drive by green areas, you get the drone of...what are those things? Cicadas? That, and Tennessee barbecue, are the South for me. Another thing that makes me think Tennessee is huge grass yards with two shrubs and no flowers other than daffodils.
I went to grad school in Nashville and there are plenty of flowers. Cicadas come out in plenty of other places every 17 years. We had ours two years ago.
