The Anatomy of a Story by Laura Trentham

[Note from Frolic: Today, we welcome author Laura Trentham to the site. Take it away, Laura!]

Before I landed in Highland, Georgia, I wrote a series of six books set in the town of Cottonbloom. It was a town which straddles the state line of Mississippi and Louisiana and is the definition of quirky with a split personality. I knew Cottonbloom inside and out, but it was time to move on, and I was tasked to come up with a new small-town series by my agent. Not an easy task! I mulled over it for a good month while I worked on other things, wanting to come up with a town that was just as unique and quirky.

Then, one evening while I was making dinner, a commercial came on. It was advertising a car, but the gist of the mini-story was that a grandson picks his grandmother up from the airport and she says saucily, “I did a lot of shopping in Italy.” From behind her luggage steps an Italian gentleman with a huge grin on his face. The grandson is shocked but loads the man’s luggage into the (spacious) trunk and drives away from the airport with his grandmother and her new Italian boyfriend. Of course, my writer brain kept wondering what happened next and twisted it into an entire story!

So, I had the bones of a story, but I still needed a town which in my books is a character unto itself. I knew it would be in the South. I’m a Southerner, and I understand the people and the cadence of speech. I started by eliminating Southern states where I had already set series. (Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, and North Carolina were out!) I then did my favorite thing and got out an old-fashioned paper atlas and focused on Georgia and South Carolina.

By this point, I knew the “grandmother” in my story wouldn’t be bringing an Italian home, but a Scotsman, because…kilts, duh! Then I spotted Helen, Georgia on my map and everything clicked. If you aren’t familiar with Helen, it was transformed into a German Village forty-plus years ago to be a tourist draw to rural north Georgia in the foothills. They celebrate Octoberfest every year, and it’s super cute and fun.

I twisted that concept and created my little town of Highland, Georgia. It was a typical down-on-its-luck small town losing residents to bigger cities and dying a slow death, until the town is reinvented into a Scottish-themed village to draw tourists ready to spend money. Every summer sees Stonehaven, a large estate at the edge of a state forest, hosting the Highland Games. The shops along Main Street have embraced everything Scots. There’s even a kilt haberdashery. In A Highlander is Coming to Town, the third book in my series, the heroine introduces the Scottish tradition of a Burns’ Night Festival to Highland. 

Come visit Highland, even if it’s only in my books!