[MUSIC] The grocery store is one place that all of us often need to go, but so is the school room, so is the park, so is the subway, so is the train station or the fairy dock. But there's also the entire world of settings. It's like four people getting ready for a family dinner. This is from Alice Munro's famous short story, Labor Day Dinner. I want you to listen for the way in which the actions that the characters take opens up, and expands upon the dialogue. We see them, we hear them, and by those two things coming together, we get to know them. Eva and Ruth are decorating the dinner table on the veranda. Ruth is wearing a white shirt belonging to her brother. His striped pajama bottoms and a monumental black turban. She looks like a proud but good natured sikh. We talked earlier about the importance of physical description. And that strikes me as a great and whimsical example. I think the table ought to be strewn, says Ruth, subtlety is out. At intervals, they set orange and gold dahlias and beautifully striped pepper squash, zucchini, yellow gourds, corn. Under the cover of the music, Eva says, Angela has more problems living here than I do. She thinks that whenever our parents fight, it's about her. Do they fight, says Ruth softly. Then she says, it's none of my business. She was in love with George when she was 13 or 14. It was when her mother first became friends with him. She used to hate his wife and she was glad when they separated. But to Ruth, she worries even now. They have silent fights. We can tell. Angela is so self-interested she thinks everything revolves around her. That's what happens when you become an adolescent. I don't want it to happen to me. This is spoken by a young girl on the verge of adolescence. There's a pause in Angela's playing the piano and Eva says sharply, I don't want to leave, I hate leaving, do you? I hate to leave. I don't know what will happen. I don't know if I'll ever see Diana again. I don't think I'll ever see the deer again. I hate having to leave. And now that the piano is silent, Eva can be heard outside. Roberta hears what Eva says. In life, as in literature, eavesdropping plays a really important part. She can feel a danger. When George was pruning the apple trees she heard Angela say, my father's got an apple tree and a cherry tree now. Angela was on thin ice. This is a scene in which we see them, we see their context, we see the physical world around them, which comes up in some of our other segments under the heading of setting and place. And all of those things come together to give us a moment of awareness that is within the characters and that occurs inside of us as readers as well. Because we can see that two women, and the table, and the way they are dressed up, and the end of the summer. Because Labor Day in America occurs usually at the end of August and beginning of September. And that's what you want to do. That's what taking them to the grocery store does. It gives your character a chance to be in the wider world. Whether it is a great and magnificent mythical world, or a a narrow and mundane world. In the end, events do not make us who we are once we are adults. But events, even the most everyday ones, reveal who we are, and this is the section where we talk about, how do you reveal your characters most memorably to your reader?
