An Introduction to Silver Ridge

 In my post about helpful generators, I mentioned the town of Silver Ridge. This was a project of mine that started from an assignment in Advanced Poetry at Tusculum College (now University). I need to say this now. Poetry isn't generally my thing. I write primarily in prose and wouldn't have taken the class had I not needed to for my major. But, I am so glad I did. 

Even though my poetry wasn't great and I still don't feel confident sharing it, one of the assignments set was to write a poem about a small town. In addition to the poem, we had to come up with 50 assumptions (and they could all contradict each other) and a map. I mentioned a lack of poetic skills and my art skills are even worse. However, I'd recently gotten into creating maps using Microsoft Paint and knew that's how I would create the map. The assumptions and poem were going to be trickier. 

I started writing the assumptions with my hometown in mind. From there I began thinking about different parts of my hometown, different facets of living in a small Southern town in the heart of the Bible Belt and mining country (coal and iron, specifically). That helped with the assumptions because I was able to write about churches, small town drama, the house by the bank that looks like it's home to a few ghosts, a yearly festival celebrating a type of fruit, the museum in the basement of the courthouse, and of course, a mine collapse. 

From there, the poem came together without any problem. My town poem was so well-received that for the final poem of the class, which was personalized for each student, my professor assigned me to write another poem that revisited Silver Ridge and the characters met there. I enjoyed these poems so much that when we did a public reading at the Willow Tree, these two poems were the ones I chose to read. Even after graduating, Silver Ridge never left me. I keep revisiting this town and I revised the map, fleshed it out to be more of a town. 

For example, the map went from this when I first created it:

To this in its final version after I'd worked on it:

Is it perfect? No, but it does give me an idea of where things are in the town. 

I'm still working on Silver Ridge, but the map is mostly done. It needs to look better, but I'm proud of it considering I don't have any artistic skills. The map isn't the only thing that's been worked on. The subdivisions have names now, so do the variety of shops. That's where generators came in handy, naming the shops. The subdivisions were all named after things that can be mined (diamonds, gold, lead, cobalt, tungsten, etc.) and the town developed it's own personality. 

I said this was an introduction to Silver Ridge, so I'll share with you an excerpt I wrote about it. 

The quaint town of Silver Ridge, population 7,298, is nestled in the foothills of the mountains. Surrounded by trees, deciduous and pine, the town possesses several sets of forests as well as the untouched natural beauty of various other landmarks such as the Devil’s Eye and South Fork Catfish Creek. The infamous lake was created when the river was dammed, ostensibly to provide power for Silver Ridge and a lake to attract tourists. The locals say it was to keep the catfish in one place. The air here holds an untainted quality making breathing easier. Even the water from the creek is considered safe to drink, though the creek itself is not.
            Main Street bustles with the sounds of shops and shoppers. Kenny’s Bar is already open and serving lunch to a large crowd. Kenny has stepped out for a moment to Top Dollar Pawn just next door. There’s a few things he knows his customers have pawned and he had his eye on them. Amaethon Liquor Emporium has begun stocking their seasonal wines and one of the employees is putting out the sign advertising the wines and the wine tasting schedule. Across the street, incense wafts out of the open door to Dragon’s Keep Books & Tea. The witch from Apothecare just left, retrieving a book she’d ordered a week ago. The Blue Grove Spa has an advertisement going—“30% off first Acupuncture treatment with purchase of Spa Treatment”—and they’ve had a few people interested already. 
        Old Roy in his motorized wheelchair with Shep has finally arrived at Bull’s Eye Buck’s Target Practice Gun Shop so he can make sure his skills are still sharp. He doesn’t need to worry. He practices every other day. Meanwhile in Eye Catcher Tattoo Parlor, the artist is sketching a new design—a dreamcatcher in the shape of a skull, adorned with feathers and beads with a rosary dangling from the circle. This one isn’t for tattooing. It’s been haunting their dreams for weeks. 

This was just something I wrote as an introduction to Silver Ridge when I decided that I was going to keep working on it in prose format. Even if the introduction isn't included in the final draft, it helps remind me of important parts of the town, shop names, locations, characters, and gives an overall feel for the town. 

One horror trilogy that I read is the Serenity Falls trilogy by James A. Moore. The first book of his series is spent establishing important characters, locations, and history of the town because this history informs the plot of the whole trilogy as a long dormant curse is finally being unleashed. The town of Serenity Falls has a lot of skeletons in their closets and a lot of blood on their hands, though it's the innocent descendants who now have to answer for their ancestors' crimes. 

Why did I bring that up? Because the Serenity Falls trilogy evokes the same mood that I'm going for with Silver Ridge: unnerving, strange, and filled with buried secrets and bloody history watered down for the masses. I'll talk more about mood in a different post, though, if you'll recall from the world-building post a few weeks ago, "30 Days of WorldBuilding" had a few exercises about mood involved as well. 

My point is, the Serenity Falls trilogy was an example of world-building done right. The author never revealed more than needed but established the history of Serenity Falls, how it differs from the story known in modern day, key locations and characters, all while advancing the plot in the first book which was, again, primarily a history of Serenity Falls. It established all of this and set the mood. 

Most people think of books as being about a character or about an event. Very rarely will they think of a book, let alone an entire trilogy, as being about a place. Oh, perhaps a particularly engaging fantasy or science fiction setting, but not one set in the modern real world. The Serenity Falls trilogy is a trilogy that is about the town. Not a handful of people from there, though they are important, and not the mysterious character that is needed to help save them or his shape-shifting car, but the town. The town of Serenity Falls is a more important character than the human ones because the plot would not exist without it. It is a vital part of the story and thus the world-building was needed to make it seem real and give it a personality that you could feel while reading. 

That is what I hope to accomplish with a prose version of Silver Ridge. 

Since I've talked about how the idea for Silver Ridge all started as a poem, I'll go ahead and share it as well as the sequel. So, enjoy "Silver Ridge" and its sequel, "Night in Silver Ridge."

Silver Ridge 
Sunday evening finds the good pastor Williams
on his barstool at Kenny’s where in hushed tones
they say he was baptized in a brewery.
Laura Beth just walked in, faded sash over
periwinkle bathrobe, and broke down crying
into her gin and tonic when she saw her other
half chatting with the seven-year stranger.
Legends and ghosts leave this whole town haunted.
Mrs. Marley doesn’t know how the town still exists.
Maybe festivals:
the Apricot Festival then the Feast of Wendigos when autumn hits.
Only here would a mine collapse
spark an annual celebration.
The courthouse bell begins its chant and
the woods echo it while Dave on the corner
mumbles, “They’re in the mine…”
and the town gathers on the cobblestone,
all except Lynn, drunk on apricot wine in
the back room of the gas station.
Side by side and silent, they look to the
clock and at once begin to wail.

Night in Silver Ridge 
Lynn sashayed staggering from the backroom, the scent of apricots
and alcohol on her breath, and swayed at the register.
They were back. Third time this week or maybe the fourth—
they always came back more in the fall.
Pale skin stark against the black trees, denim
uniforms tattered and stained
dark with dried blood. Teeth
serrated and gleaming. Sightless
eyes reflecting the streetlight.
She took a drink from her flask,
turned her attention to the door when the bell chimed.
Three kids from the high school sauntered to the cooler,
probably gonna grab a six pack then head up to the lake.
They’re nowhere now, but they always come back.
She’d lock up early tonight, no one else would be by.
Give her more time to go through her stock of wine that no one
ever bought. The kids just wanted their Budweiser and
Miller Lite, and gas to get them there and back.
They paid and left, off to feed the fish.
She saw them watching from the forest and heard crazy Dave
across the street mumbling his eerie refrain.
She’ll go back to her room, back to her bottle of apricot wine.
They’ll go back to the mine.

Those are the revised versions of the poems that started it all. Maybe one day, I'll post snippets of a prose version of the town of Silver Ridge, but for now the introduction is all that exists of that (and you all still got part of it) and then the poems. 

For now, I'll leave with this: Even if something isn't your style and you don't think you're any good, try it anyway. Poetry isn't my forte, but because of Advanced Poetry, the town of Silver Ridge was created. The assignment to come up with 50 assumptions about a town helps get ideas down on paper that you can use as a springboard to write more. They might serve as inspiration. Drawing inspiration from a real place you've lived or visited is helpful for those because then you can have a thing, like the Strawberry Festival from my hometown inspired the Apricot Festival (which took the apricot theme further than the Strawberry Festival does), that makes your place unique. 

Again, even if you don't think something is your style, try it out. If you're more poetic, try to write a little something in prose. If you're like me and prose comes easier than poetry, try poetry anyway. Will you change from prose to poetry and never again write prose? No, but it might help with something you're stuck on. It might, like the assignment did for me, help you create something you like so much that you want to keep working with it and expanding on it.