The would-be author will do well to study typically-American authors, with a view to observing their use of local colour—particularly those who wrote some of their best work before the motor-car and telephone exercised their levelling and linking-up influences.
To name one or two: Mary E. Wilkins and Sarah Orne Jewett have specialised on New England village life; Charles Egbert Craddock (Miss Murfree) on the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee; George Cable on Louisiana; James Lane Allen on Kentucky; Amélie Rives, in her earlier books, on Virginia; etc.
And it is worth while noting that such writers give, not only pictures of the scenery about them, but also an insight into the native character. Thus both Mary E. Wilkins and Sarah Orne Jewett depicted the rigid pride of the New Englanders, as well as the poor but picturesque quality of the soil. George Cable showed the temperament of the Southerner as well as the tropical glamour of the Southern States. Owen Wister has made us love the large-hearted, child-like, primitive cowboy, as well as feel the vastness and the very air of the plains and the mountains of Wyoming.
Such work is local colour at its best, since it gives us the human traits as well as the scenic conditions predominating in a locality, and enables us to form a mental picture of the people and the place as a whole.
Closely allied to this, is that most fascinating study—the effect of climate, scenery, and general environment on character. But as that subject is outside the purview of this book, I merely suggest it to the student as something well worth following up, if there be an opportunity for first-hand observation.
For the novelist who specialises on temperamental delineation, it has wide possibilities.
Creating Atmosphere
Have you ever seen a landscape painting that was one expanse of correctness in detail, and yet seemed either utterly dead, or to walk out of the canvas at every point and hit you violently in the eye? Such a painting often has a bright-red tiled roof—every tile visible and in its proper place; a violently blue sky decorated here and there with solid masses of apparently unmeltable snow; grass an acute green; trees emphatic as to outline, every branch clearly defined in its appointed place; sheep standing out like pure-white snowflakes on the acute grass; the smoke from the cottage chimney a thick grey mass suggesting a heavy bale of wool; each brick, each window frame, each paling emphasised with careful exactness.