New moon on August 4, 2024
Today begins the Green Corn Moon. The theme this month is the journey by rail. At first blush, this appears limiting, appropriate only to a specific time or place, or fit for only a few genres. Indeed passenger rail travel was first recorded only in 1804, in Wales. Cargo, on the other hand, has been shipped by rail—usually from mines—since at least the 16th century. And the remains of wooden tracks dating as far back as 3,838 BCE have been discovered near Somerset England. Who’s to say no one road those rails?
As a feature in stories, the journey by rail has many uses. Because trains run on schedules and on fixed routes, you can use them to build tension or release it. Elmore Leonard’s short story Three-Ten to Yuma uses the train’s departure time to establish the goal of his characters. The main character has to deliver the captured outlaw to the station by 3:10 for transport to Yuma, where he will be tried and executed. The outlaw can likely evade this fate if he can undertake to miss that train. The closer we get to 3:10, the more tense we are.
Kotaro Isaka’s more recent Bullet Train builds tension by establishing early that the climax will occur when the train reaches the last station on the line.
Trains set a tone. It may be romantic, rustic, or quotidian. A steam engine evokes a different feel from that of high-speed rail. A route that crosses a wide expanse of desolate landscape implies possibilities and dangers that one crossing a dense urban sprawl does not. Is the train a refuge for the characters or a prison?
There’s also a social element to train travel. Cars are often separated by class. Snowpiercer takes this to an extreme, placing the lowest class passengers at the rear and at the thematic bottom of the society it represents.
Strangers meet by chance on trains. Because rail travel is leisurely, you can take your time developing different elements of the story. Early in The Idiot, Dostoevsky introduces us to Prince Myshkin via a conversation on a train, and we learn how unusual the Prince is by his fellow passengers' reactions to him. The scene is natural and communicates character well.
Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train uses the chance meeting of strangers to set up the story’s central concept: what would happen if two strangers agreed to swap murders, killing the other’s nemesis, whom they’ve never met? The rest of the novel develops the characters and the consequences of that thought experiment.
Travel by rail shows up across genres and media. Locomotives crop up in steampunk and similar speculative genres and are a staple of stories of the American West and Central America. England, Scotland, and Wales each have a special relationship with rail travel, given their history. The trope is at home in novels, film, comics (issue #2 of American Vampire is a favorite example), and more.
Trains are beautiful, and people are fascinating. Wherever your medium of choice takes you, we hope this month’s prompts inspire you in your work!