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In storytelling, our number one job is to make readers care. We want to ensure that our fiction captivates them on many levels and that our characters seem like living, breathing people who continue to exist in readers’ minds long after the book closes.
So how do we do this?
Well, it may not seem like the obvious choice, but the setting can be one of the best tools through which to organically reveal truths about your characters.
Here are two quick tips on how to use the setting to characterize your cast for readers:
Choose Emotionally Relevant Locations
As the gods of our own little universes, we have the power to choose literally everything. But when it comes to the setting, the decision is often a halfhearted one—since the setting is just a backdrop, right? Wrong.
Every character has a history of blissful interludes, toxic run-ins, embarrassing moments, and traumatic episodes. And long after these formative events have been forgotten or buried, their settings will continue to hold significance for the characters involved.
For instance, let’s say that after being out of the romance game for a while, your heroine has agreed to go on a first date, and you need to decide on a setting.
Instead of falling back on a generic location for this scene, brainstorm some possibilities that hold significance for the character. Maybe her date has asked to meet at the same café where her fiancé once dumped her. Or in the park where she was mugged. Or at the bar where the guy she’s been in love with since tenth grade works as a bouncer.
Any of these settings can work because they’re already emotionally charged for the protagonist.
A first date can be difficult in and of itself; experiencing it in one of these places is going to heighten the character’s emotions and bring back old memories when she’d rather avoid them, ensuring that she won’t be at her best. When it comes to the important scenes in your story, complicate matters for your protagonist and tap into his or her emotions by choosing settings with personal significance.
Get Personal with the Details
Showing rather than telling is the most powerful means of providing insight into the personality of your protagonist and other cast members. Rather than explaining your characters through boring chunks of narrative, hone in on the personal details within a given setting that will tell readers about the people inhabiting it:
I surveyed Rossa’s spotless kitchen. Dishes in their racks—sparkling. Wooden counters—scrubbed to a stone-like smoothness. Rossa herself—hair perfectly arranged, clothes crisp even at this hour, the frivolous fall of lace at her throat. I crossed my arms and couldn’t help wondering, again, how she and Dad could be meant for each other.
Here we have a scene that says loads about its owner. Rossa is meticulous when it comes to tidiness—both for her home and herself. You get the feeling that she values propriety and appearances. And we learn something about the narrator, too: she isn’t so concerned with all of that. She disdains it, in fact, and doesn’t seem to like her Dad’s love interest very much. All of this we’re able to infer from the simple description of a kitchen.
Personal spaces can be quite telling. Make them do more than simply set the scene by zooming in on those details that reveal something about your characters. And for those vital scenes in your story, put your cast members on edge by thoughtfully choosing the settings—ones that add an emotional component or will up the stakes. Resist the temptation to settle for a generic setting and start putting your locations to work for you and your characters.
Cynsational Notes
Becca Puglisi is an international speaker, writing coach, and bestselling author of The Emotion Thesaurus and its sequels. Her latest publications are all about settings: The Rural and Urban Setting Thesauruses showcase over 200 different possible story locations, highlighting their associated sights, sounds, textures, tastes, and smells so authors can effectively describe them for readers.
Becca is passionate about learning and sharing her knowledge with others through her Writers Helping Writers blog and via One Stop For Writers—a powerhouse online library created to help writers elevate their storytelling. You can find her online at both of these spots, as well as on Facebook and Twitter.
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Shakespeare has inspired countless and varied performances, works of art and pieces of writing. He has also inspired music. In this 400th year since Shakespeare's death we asked five composers 'how did you approach setting the Shakespeare text you chose for your recent work?'
A huge thank you to everyone who participated in our big ROCK THE VAULT giveaway and to all those who shared the #myfavoritethesaurus pictures. I think we made thesauruses everywhere officially COOL. And also an enormous thank you to all the wonderful people who helped out with our launch, especially the Thesaurus Club (our street team). We are so blessed to have so many wonderful people support us. If you want to find some of these folks and their blogs, check them out here.
While we didn’t get to the 500 pictures shared that would unlock all prizes in the vault, we did see about 300 of them online, and so Angela and I, being the softies we are, unlocked most of the prizes. Winners have been drawn and are being notified. Once we have acceptance from these lovely people, Angela will post the list.
And for those of you who happened to buy our new books this week, thank you for welcoming our youngest offspring into the world! We hope that you have many light bulb moments when it comes to description and maximizing your settings.
They grow up so fast. *sniff sniff*
While Rock the Vault was a blast, Angela and I would be lying if we said we weren’t looking forward to getting back to a more normal routine. And today, that means me posting at the unbelievably awesome Kristen Lamb’s blog.
If you’re not familiar with Kristen, rectify that posthaste by following her on every conceivable social media platform. She’s one of the most prolific and knowledgeable bloggers out there as well as being an expert on all things networking and branding. If you’ve got a few minutes, drop in and see how Symbolism and the Setting Make a Perfect Marriage.
Hi all! Today I’m here with my good buddy and fellow pub crawler, Stacey Lee, to talk about one of our favorite craft elements—setting.
Stephanie: I love the feel of experiencing new places through reading. I adore being submersed in a scene—tasting and smelling and touching along with a character. When a story is full of vivid settings and unique descriptions, I feel as if I’m taking a magical (or sometimes terrifying) vacation.
Unfortunately, setting descriptions are also the parts that I often find myself skimming, and I imagine I’m not alone. Describing something accurately is not the same as bringing a place to life.
So, since Stacey and I both like lists, we’ve put together a list of our favorite tips for—
Putting Soul Into Your Setting
Decide the feel of your book.
Stephanie: Setting affects tone. A thriller set in the Black Rock Desert during Burning Man will feel different than a thriller set in Sweden’s ICEHOTEL. Just like a sci-fi set on a massive spaceship full of highly sophisticated technology (like Star Trek’s Enterprise) will feel different than a sci-fi set on a small, transport vessel that’s been described as a “load of worthless parts” (like Firefly’s Serenity). Each of these settings will attract a different cast of characters as well—which will also impact the feel of your book.
I once wrote a space opera and during an early draft I made the error of setting much of the book on a stark white spaceship, which not only lent itself to horrible descriptions, it was not a place where I wanted to spend time.
So choose your settings with care. An interesting or unique setting will naturally lend itself to more captivating and distinctive descriptions.
Make sure your descriptions reflect your character’s unique lens.
Stacey: Include unique details (a ‘face like a wet sponge’ is more memorable than a ‘face with big pores’), viewed from the lens of your character. Each character comes with her own quirks and biases. A description filtered through the character’s lens does double duty of describing your setting, and revealing character.
Example:
Weak description:
A glass-covered rose seemed to hang above the desk in the library. Beauty watched the petals fall, one by one.
This example is weak because it lacks unique details, and is unfiltered.
Improved description:
A white rose edged in red hung, suspended, in a glass cage. It was like the head of paintbrush dipped in blood, and as the petals fell, Beauty remembered the cruelty of time, and how she only had minutes left before someone burst into the library.
If I’ve done my job, this description should evoke the particular tone I’ve chosen (fairytale setting (see point 1)), and be memorable.
Leave room for your reader’s imagination.
Stephanie: When I’m composing descriptions, I go overboard, I write out every detail so that I can clearly picture the scene. Then I cut, cut, cut leaving only the most important and interesting details. That way, none of the most important details get buried. And the reader doesn’t need all of my descriptions, only enough so that their imagination can fill in the rest.
Take a look at your favorite book, and I bet you’ll notice that some of the most vivid descriptions aren’t the longest, but they probably inspire your imagination to take off.
The amount of time you spend describing a place should reflect how important that place is for your story.
Stacey: I once read a story that spent a good page describing a ‘bush riotous with blooms.’ Not only was it unfiltered and not interesting, it had nothing to do with the story. It left me feeling betrayed. Readers like to try to figure things out on their own, and they also like a good twist, but the twist should not come by way of tedious prose that goes nowhere. I still to this day have no idea why I spent so long reading about riotous bushes.
Use all five senses, but pay special attention to one or two.
Stephanie: Just like with going overboard on setting details, too many sensory details will cancel each other out. So while it’s good to have scenes that evoke all five senses, think about which sense you’d like to evoke the most, and pay extra special attention to those senses.
Cut the clichés but don’t overdo it.
Stacey: How much cliché is too much? Strive for less than one. You don’t have to be as militant as me, but remember that if you flex your writing muscle, your story becomes stronger. Having said that, you don’t have to go crazy in an effort to avoid the cliché. Do not write things like:
“The pizza enticed him, like a lover reaching out for a kiss with cheesy, greasy lips.”
Or
“As they danced the music turned darker, rougher, like the sound her bathroom pipes made just after flushing the toilet.”
Now for CONTEST TIME! Stacey and I had so much fun coming up with our overdone descriptions that we thought it’d be fun to have a contest. So, give us your most entertaining overdone descriptions in the comments and we’ll pick one winner, who we’ll send an awesome book prize pack to!
To get things started, here’s one more overdone description:
“She didn’t fall in love with him all at once, it happened gradually, like the way a man begins to lose his hair, strands falling slowly at first, until one day he looks in the mirror and realizes he’s lost it all.”
For today's post I thought I'd share how one of my goals for the year is going: Use one art book at a time completing ALL the lessons. The book I'm starting with is How to Draw Buildings, by Ian Sidaway. I chose it for a number of reasons:
It dovetails nicely with my other art goal and theme of drawing and painting doorways, especially those connected with my current WIP, Ghazal.
It give me a good foundation (no pun intended) for my weekend outings with Urban Sketchers.
I really, really want to learn how to use perspective better/correctly.
Being familiar with buildings and architectural detail will help me with some ideas I'm tossing around for illustrating picture books.
The more buildings I draw for practice, the easier it will be to sketch in my travel journals.
And more than anything, I just love buildings!
I particularly like the way this book is structured. Each lesson is divided into three: first is the main example with several pages of instructions followed by the suggestion to "Try Another Medium," and ending with a third prompt, "Try Another Building." The first chapter, and the one I've completed, is all about drawing simple small houses, beginning with graphite on white paper. I used a new 9 x 12 inch Strathmore Recycled 400 series sketchbook I bought for just this purpose:
Once I'd finished the drawing, I then moved on to Part II: try another medium. For this I chose to use an ultrafine black Sharpie on a heavier sketchbook page (Strathmore Visual Journal) that I had already painted with a background using my Japanese Kuretake Gansai Tambi watercolors:
The last section, "Try Another Building" provided a photo of what the book called a "stern little house," which it certainly was. For this piece I chose a sheet of student-grade watercolor paper that I had previously experimented on last year by placing a piece of crumpled wax paper face-down on the surface and then ironing the whole thing with my craft iron. After removing the wax paper and letting the watercolor sheet dry, I then painted it with a light wash of Prang watercolors (my super-favorite, ever-so-cheap but excellent brand for art journaling, etc.). The result was an interesting resist pattern resembling bare tree branches that also matched the photo in this last part of the lesson. I drew the house and filled in the "trees" with Faber-Castell Polychromos color pencils and white charcoal--doing my best to make the whole thing as stern as possible.
So there you are, three houses, three ways, and all ready for the Three Little Pigs to move in! Another interesting option might be to write a story or vignette based on each of these settings. Anybody want to try? I've set aside Sunday afternoons to be my "class time" using this and my other how-to books throughout the year. Next Sunday I'll be moving on to Lesson 2 and two-point perspective (the example shown on the cover of the book above). Already I'm feeling nervous which is exactly why I'm using this step-by-step approach. No more just buying books, looking at the pictures, and working on the "easy" parts. Instead, I'm "building up my courage" to go straight through from cover to cover, lesson to lesson. And because I've put that in writing, I'm now honor-bound to stick to my goal! (Taking a deep breath.) Tip of the Day: What difficult phases of the creative process do you find yourself frequently avoiding and therefore never learning to the degree you want? For me it was never attempting the "advanced" lessons in my art and other reference books. I've found that breaking a task down into easy steps is a good way to overcome and/or work with anxiety. For instance, gathering all your needed supplies for a project a day before you start can be be one step. Setting a timer to work on a portion of the project for just twenty-minutes at a time can be another. Whatever you do, keep in mind that the only way to learn anything is with steady practice, not "instant genius absorption." Good luck and have fun!
0 Comments on Goal Check-in: One Book, One Picture at a Time as of 1/1/1900
One of the books I’m working on now is a full on fantasy. Beyond the first, wild sweet rush of the initial chapters where I didn’t know anything but the broadest strokes of where the heck I was going, I had to figure out the inner workings and clock pieces of the world. Honestly, that’s true of anything you write.
It may not seem like it, but whether the worlds are contemporary and non-magical or something entirely fantastic and unfamiliar, the process of creating where your characters live and how they became who they are is essentially the same.
It can be daunting to think of everything at once, and if you're like me, doing the step-by-step can feel like it's going to hold up the creative process. When it comes down to it, there are four groupings of information that can act like keys to open up your story.
The Differences in Time, Place, Weather, and Atmosphere: Of course you want to know the basics, but instead of asking yourself an endless list of questions about how your every aspect of your world looks, smells, sounds, and feels in real life, you want to know how the people who live there make it different and made it their own. Know the big picture things, sure, but then then focus on the details that make it personal and make it unique, as well as on the way in which the characters see these details. Think about how the details change during the seasons and how that impacts them the rest of the year. Consider the small questions you wouldn't normally think of, and that will help the big things snap in place.
The Discriminators in Economy, Technology, Religion, and Social Structure: The place in which the characters move involves how they are positioned in society and everything that entails. But it’s not just a matter of thinking how and where they get their food, shelter, and clothing, or even what they believe, but also how they pay for it. What are the jobs and hobbies or extra activities that take away or add resources? It’s important not only to think about what is available to purchase or barter, but what isn’t. What can’t your characters afford or have? Why and how do they make do? What would happen if something changed? How do those who have feel about those who don’t have, and vice versa? How do different characters or factions within society believe in different things and how does this make them feel about each other? What are the biggest discriminators in your story? What creates allies and enemies?
The Recent or Upcoming Change: Obviously something has changed, or you have no story. Something is brewing. But why? What caused the situation? What could have avoided it? What would or will make it worse? And how would solving it make something else go so awry that it would be a nearly impossible decision between the two?
The Past Change and Differentiation: In fiction as it life, there is planning, but there is also luck—both good and bad. Nothing is wholly uniform and nothing goes entirely according to plan. For each of your society as well as your characters, things have gone awry or unexpectedly at some point in the past. Something that set them on some path that wasn’t the one they would have logically chosen. What was it? For what reason? By whose design? How do they feel about it? What does it change for the future and how do different factions from within the story benefit or lose from this?
There are no hard and fast rules, no insert tab A into slot B instructions, for how to create a world, contemporary or otherwise. But a fantasy world must be as complete as the real world in which we live, and the contemporary world of your characters must reflect all the aspects of the world that they’d encounter.
What Do You Think
For me, the best way into a world is through the characters. Once I know what’s important to them and how they live their lives, I can begin to push the boundaries of their immediate world out, and then start to squeeze them walls of the world back in around them.
The push and pull, the squeezing of worlds and characters, that’s what shapes them both. The harder we squeeze, the more we temper them and develop something truly unique and strong.
Building a fantasy world? Here are some resources you might find useful.
https://onestopforwriters.com First and foremost, for all things setting and character, not to mention a lot of other things, try the collaboration between the authors of the Emotion Thesaurus and the Character Thesaurus and the creator of Scrivener for Windows. It’s fully searchable by keyword and concept and gives you an enormous wealth of tools and libraries.
http://donjon.bin.sh/fantasy/world/ Want a map generator, fantasy name generator, or medieval demographics generator—or a few other things? Here you go.
http://www.sfwa.org/2009/08/fantasy-worldbuilding-questions/ Need a huge tool to help you think of every question before you begin to write? Patricia C, Wrede has this phenomenal resource at the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America site.
http://kittyspace.org/leviathan0.html The World Building Leviathan by Kitty Chandler is a huge 52 step process for building your world alongside your story.
Martina Boone is the author of Compulsion and Persuasion, out now in the romantic Southern Gothic Heirs of Watson Island trilogy from Simon & Schuster, Simon Pulse. Illusion, the final book, will be out in October of 2016. Martina is also the founder of AdventuresInYAPublishing.com, a three-time Writer's Digest 101 Best Websites for Writers Site, and YASeriesInsiders.com, a site dedicated to encouraging literacy and reader engagement through a celebration of series literature. She's on the Board of the Literacy Council of Northern Virginia and runs the CompulsionForReading.com program to distribute books to underfunded schools and libraries.
Delivering the eulogy at LJM's wake. Photo: Amanda Navasero
I have been in the Philippines for the past couple of weeks. It was a research trip which coincided with the funeral of my first editor and mentor, Letty Jimenez Magsanoc. I was glad to arrive in time to deliver a eulogy.
I also wrote in the Philippine Daily Inquirer about her profound influence on my writing (I was one of the Inquirer's two reporters when it started as a weekly, then when it turned into a daily, I became a desk editor). When the article came out on Boxing Day, it amused me that though I haven't used my maiden name 'Quimpo' for 27 years, my former Inquirer colleagues inserted it into my by-line: 'Candy Quimpo Gourlay'.
This visit brought me back to the world that I left behind since I became a writer of novels: a world of intense deadlines, cigarette smoke, clackety typewriters, too much coffee, and the everlasting hunt for a good angle.
The Inquirer newsroom pauses to remember LJM at a final remembrance service . I'm so glad I happened to be in the Philippines.
It occurred to me that in story terms, this was the Ordinary World that I left behind, the way Luke Skywalker left the moisture farm in Tatooine for adventure, Dorothy left behind black and white Kansas for technicolor Oz, and Harry Potter left behind the cupboard under the stairs for magical Hogwarts.
The Ordinary World is the first stage of the Hero's Journey, first articulated by Joseph Campbell in The Hero With a Thousand Faces, and later revised by Christopher Vogler, in a famous seven-page memo he wrote while working for Disney. The Ordinary World introduces the hero's world before he or she goes on an adventure.
The hero's ordinary world is essential to the reader's understanding of the story because it provides the circumstances upon which the hero's adventure can be enjoyed and understood.
One of the reasons for my current trip to the Philippines is to visit the setting of my next novel -- an isolated community in the Cordillera mountains. I came thinking that the task at hand was to feel, to smell, to see, to make the place I'd set my novel in more believable.
The rice terraces of the Cordilleras at sunrise.
Walking through mountains carved into rice paddies. The tubes are to deliver water from mountain springs to the lower paddies.
But walking on the narrow trails surrounded by magnificent rice terraces, searching for the sacred trees that stand at the edges of old villages, speaking to people who LIVE the world, I discovered much more about my story than I bargained for.
The Ordinary World is often defined as setting ... the place where a character begins an adventure. But it would be a mistake to focus on it as a bit of geography or a bit of background information.
The Ordinary World is more than geography and backstory. The Ordinary World is context.
Adventure lies in how the characters leave or change the Ordinary World. Without knowing the Ordinary World of a character, it can be hard for the reader to connect with the hero's adventure.
Readers want to be thrilled, they want to be moved, they want to care about what happens to the hero. Without seeing the contrast between the hero's Ordinary World and the world of the adventure, the reader cannot feel the heartbeat of the story.
We are extra delighted by Sophie's adventure with the Big Friendly Giant because we know that she is an orphan.
We root for Katniss Everdeen in the Hunger Games because we know how desperate life is in District 12.
We worry for Auggie in Wonder when he leaves a life of home-schooled security for real school.
When introducing your character's ordinary world, it is too easy to slip into explanation and description. What matters is whether you communicate the context from which your character is about to launch into adventure.
What I've learned from this trip to the Philippines is that in a story, even place is all about character.
Ultimately, the question we must ask ourselves is: am I merely explaining my character's ordinary world or is he living it?
0 Comments on The Ordinary World is About Context Not Setting as of 1/11/2016 4:17:00 AM
Hey, All! Stephanie here, with my good friend and fellow pub-crawler, Stacey Lee. Today, we are so excited to talk about two of our favorite things: writing and fun!
Stephanie: It’s the beginning of November, which means NaNoWriMo has just begun!
I love the idea of NaNo. I love that it’s a race to write fast, and one that everyone can win. So instead of competing, people are rooting for one another. A wide array of authors give inspirational pep talks. Strangers write together in coffee shops. Friendships are formed as people participate in group writing sprints.
NaNo is fun! And I think this is a key reason why it is so enduring. I don’t know about all of you, but whenever I’m feeling particularly stuck, uninspired, or that everything I’m writing is really garbage-y, I think it’s because I’ve forgotten to have fun with it. And I believe it’s nearly impossible to write a story others will love if you’re not feeling any love as you write.
So Stacey and I have put together a list of, Seven Ways To Bring The Fun Back Into Your Writing:
1. Fall in love with words again.
Stephanie: When I was younger, being the super-cool kid that I was, I sat in my room a lot and read my thesaurus. I loved discovering new words. I’d highlight the ones that sounded most interesting then write little stories around them. Sadly, my teachers often informed me I was actually using many of these words incorrectly—but that’s another story.
The point of this story is, I made an effort to uncover new words as if they were treasures to be found. I’m not sure when I stopped (probably around the time I started making friends), but lately I’ve started hunting for words again, and listing all the lovely words that I’d been neglecting. It inspires me—like finding the perfect party dress and deciding to throw a party because of it. Now it’s even easier to re-discover words with awesome sites like thesaurus.com.
I’m also a big fan of McGraw-Hill’s Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions.
This book also has a thematic index. For example, if you’re searching for a term to use in place of liquor store, you’d find: candy store, comfort station, filling station, guzzelry, happy shop, headache department, headache house, juice house, leeky store, LIQ, oasis, thirst-aid station.
2. Commandeer your setting.
Stacey: Stand up, and wiggle your shoulders. Roll out your neck. Now make fists and pump them toward the heavens and say, “I am Master of my domain!”
Now sit back down and examine the world you’ve created. How can you make it better? Don’t settle for what’s ordinary, or expected because when we do that, we put readers (and ourselves) to sleep. Make it more vivid, more memorable. How? By not just adding a crooked door to the cottage, but creating an emotional connection between the crooked door and your character. Maybe every time your character sees the door, she remembers how her dad kicked it down when her mom locked him out. Or maybe the door is always threatening to fall. You can create a lot of layers, and have even more fun with your writing, by commandeering your setting.
3. Let Your Imagination Leap Out Windows.
Stephanie: A couple weeks ago a former student of mine sent me this lovely quote:
Her imagination was by habit ridiculously active; if the door wasn’t opened to it, it jumped out the window. –Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady
When I read this I pictured a bored woman jumping out of a window. But I believe the author is really saying that writers should shrug off anything confining them and take bold daring risks that will bring them to frightening and dangerous places. This goes beyond breaking rules. It’s simple to say, “I don’t care about what everyone says, I’m going to start my book with my character waking up.” But mining deep within yourself, to find a subject that will not only force your reader to see some facet of the world through a different lens but stretch you as a writer, that is something else entirely. This might not be ‘fun,’ but it’s definitely exciting.
4. Find Reasons To Celebrate:
Stacey: I think sometimes we’re running so fast, we forget to stop at the rehydrating stations. Celebrations are one of the ways we can rehydrate, along with eating and sleeping and laughing. I book a spa appointment every time I turn a draft in on time—my own private pat on the back for making my deadline. And speaking of celebrations, Stephanie and I are preparing a celebration for our one-year anniversary on Tumblr because it’s basically an excuse to be merry and giveaway an awesome stash of books.
5. Pick a Theme Song
Stephanie: I know a lot of people do playlists, which are also awesome, but playlists usually encompass a variety of emotions. A theme song should be your anchor to one distinct feeling, which you are excited about threading throughout your entire novel.
For the first book I wrote, Hoppípolla by Sigur Rós was my theme song. It was whimsical and beautiful, and it made me think of make-believe things come to life. Whenever I felt as if my writing was stale, I would put that song on and it reminded me of what I was attempting to achieve.
6. Get into a good story.
Stacey: Nothing helps me rediscover the joy of writing like reading a good book, watching an awesome film or play. When I’ve reached a roadblock, sometimes just reading the words of others inspires me to go back and kick some roadblock bootie. Great stories I’ve experienced recently:
Phantom of the Opera musical (made me want to write a tragic love story!)
The movie The Martian (plotting brilliance)
Tiny Pretty Things by Sona Charaipotra and Dhonielle Clayton (the evil scheming ballerinas!)
7. Participate in NaNoWriMo.
We know the month has already started, but it’s not too late to join in the fun.
Now it’s your turn! We’d love to hear any tips you have that might help put the fun back into writing!
A story is nothing without setting. Even the most basic of tales include some elements of world building. Little Red Riding Hood went into the woods, Old MacDonald had a farm, the chicken crossed the road. Every novel - from fantasy to the most contemporary or contemporaries - benefits from a deeply imagined setting.
World building can, however, be a tricky thing. There's a lot of discussion below on using world building and setting to add depth and complexity to your writing, as well as ways to approach world building as a tool for generating even more content. There are also articles on the importance of setting to POV and tone, and ensuring your world building is grounded in something tangible for readers to seize. As always, there's a wealth of information in the AYAP archives... and we've collected the best of it below.
We're thrilled to welcome New York Times Best Selling Author C.C. Hunter to the blog today. She's here to share with us some wonderful insight into how to fully utilize your setting. Be sure to check below for her upcoming release in the Shadow Falls series: Unspoken!
Put Your Setting to Work: A Craft of Writing Post by C.C. Hunter
Setting. It’s just things, just the backdrop, just descriptions to prevent the reader from feeling like they are in a blank room, right? Wrong. If you aren’t putting your setting to work, then you are missing out on a great opportunity to add layers of richness to your work.
Where we are and what surrounds us helps define who we are. The same goes for your characters. Setting shows character. Our homes are supposed to be decorated in a way that expresses our unique style and personality. For sure, it expresses our incomes. What does your character’s home say about them? The clothes we wear are reflections of our personalities and even our moods. What do your heroine’s clothes say about her?
Let’s say you are writing a scene, and you show your character sitting down at a table, and she pushes something aside to make room for her glass of tea. Wait, is she drinking tea, or is she drinking a beer? Or is it hot green tea with a touch of mint? Or is it a glass of expensive red wine? Maybe a glass of wine that she just poured out of a box container? Or is it a Mason jar filled to the brim with Jack Daniels? Now, what does she push aside to make room for this drink? Is it her to-do list? Her Smartphone that her job requires she keep close at all times? Is it a stack of unpaid bills? A stack of romance novels? A gardening magazine? A magazine article on how to please a man in bed? Pictures of the cruise she just returned from? Her unsigned divorce papers? An unopened letter from her mother she hasn’t heard from in twenty years? Or is it a Colt .45?
It’s One Stop For Writers launch week, and we are celebrating up a storm! Have you entered for one of seven1-Year Subscriptionsto One Stop For Writers, or the Pay-it-forward Education Gift for a workshop seat in writing coach Jami Gold’s terrific online class? If not,follow this linkfor all the details, and good luck!
As some of you know, the heart of One Stop For Writers is our signature Descriptive Thesaurus Collection. Visitors to this blog (and The Bookshelf Muse before it) have watched Becca and I create highly-sensory, real-life description lists for many different areas (Character Emotions, Settings, Symbolism and Weather, just to name a few.) Delving deep to understand these aspects of description allows us to write rich, compelling stories. So, when writers asked us to, we started turning a few into books.
Now we’re writers, and we love books! But the list format we use isn’t always an easy read in digital format, and often requires a lot of scrolling to see an entire entry. We knew there had to be a better way.
Lucky for us Lee Powell, the creator of Scrivener for Windows, is a genius. He could see how the right medium would turn our thesaurus collections into a top notch resource for writers that would be super easy to use.
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At One Stop, each thesaurus is neatly organized and entries are easy to view. A Helpful Tip guides writers into thinking about how an area of description can be woven into the story to do more, and show more. There’s a tutorial for each thesaurus as well, helping writers understand the power of specific detail and how it can be used in the story for maximum effect.
(click to enlarge–a partial screenshot)
Setting is a big area of description. So much more than a backdrop for a scene, it is loaded with opportunities to convey mood, foreshadow, and act as a tuning fork for symbolism and theme. And that’s just to start! Using sensory details when describing your character in a specific location is important for pulling readers into the story.
You might be wondering how authentic the description is for each of our Setting entries. Well, whenever possible, Becca and I would visit the location ourselves so we could observe the sights, smells, sounds, textures and tastes first hand. The entire Setting Collection (once it is finished) will be around 250 entries. That’s a lot of research.
It wasn’t easy to visit some locations, but we were determined. As you can see in this photo…well, sometimes we had to go to great lengths to get exact detail.
(In case you were wondering, it is rather terrifying being arrested, even when it involves being set up by relatives with connections so you can get the “full experience” of being handcuffed and put into the back of police car!)
So, let’s just say the details in this particular entry are very accurate. If you like, swing by One Stop and check it out for yourself!
Before you head off with the rest of your day, there’s one more cool thing happening:
March To A Bestseller’s One-Day sale.This is where you can get a kindle copy of many great writing craft books (INCLUDING The Emotion Thesaurus) for .99 cents each. Yep, a buck! There are many great authors participating such as K.M. Weiland, Mary Buckham, Bryan Cohen, Jessica Bell and more, so if you’re looking to beef up on your writing skills, now’s the time.
No one likes feeling trapped and the desire to escape is an intense motivator and speaks to a universal need for safety. Readers root for characters to escape catastrophic or horrific danger. By limiting the psychological or physical boundaries, you increase the boiling point of your story cauldron by making it impossible for your characters to walk away.
There are obvious ways to use physical confinement: remote locations or being trapped inside burning a building, speeding train, or airplane. Characters may have to escape an asylum, a prison, a sinking ship, or a dying planet. At scene level, they may have to overcome other obstacles such as manacles or laser alarm systems or crawl through tight tunnels. Life or death stakes ratchet up the tension. Add a ticking clock, and you’ve escalated the conflict to Thriller level.
But let's step outside obvious physical limiations to look at a few examples where confinement is psychological. Emotional life and death stakes can be just as effective.
Dick might need to escape from a confining belief system, societal rules, or cult. This type of conflict fuels many dystopian and Science Fiction plot lines. It also works in literary and coming of age stories. She might literally have to escape to save her life or the lives of others. Sally can be confined by a family, a tribe, or a gang. The situation can be an abusive or an intolerable person she needs to flee from. She may simply need to escape to pursue the career she loves or marry the man of her dreams.
Confinement can force a character to deal with a person or situation because they can’t escape from them.
Dick can feel trapped in an airplane seat. Add an obnoxious rowmate and his discomfort increases. Replace the obnoxious stranger with an angry spouse and your characters are strapped in for a few hours of heated debate or icy silence.
Being confined in a car can have the same effect. Characters often have intense and important conversations while strapped inside. Being confined in a train, elevator, or waiting room can provide Dick with ample time to think something through as well. Dick might want to break free of romantic relationship or marriage. Depending on his personality type and childhood wounds, he might find commitment suffocating. It can be as simple as Dick not liking that his romantic options have narrowed or been eliminated, so he refuses to propose to a girl he loves. He’ll live with her but he doesn’t like the prison bars that marriage suggests.
If Jane sees marriage as a desirable bond, a sign that Dick values their relationship and promises to always have her back, she won’t understand his reluctance. This provides terrific tension in a romance or romantic subplot. Dick and Jane, as well as the supporting cast, can argue whether marriage entraps or frees them. Dick can overcome his internal resistance and give in. Dick and Jane can agree that their commitment to each other is more important than the piece of paper. Or, their differing belief systems and needs are a deal breaker and they end the relationship.
Sally might want to break free of a confining friendship. If Sally is the type of easy-breezy personality that loves to be around lots of people and considers twenty people her best friend, she might befriend Jane who values one tight, soul-sister over lesser acquaintances. Confine these two in an apartment or a college dorm and the conflict increases. Whether physically confined or emotionally confined, their differing needs and definitions of loyalty and trust provide obstacles to continuing their friendship. It can be explored in a sweet literary story about why friendships fail. Jane could cause problems for Sally, the protagonist, in other genres as Sally negotiates her exacting friend’s emotional neediness while solving an unrelated story problem. This claustrophobic dynamic has been explored in horror films about scary roommates, but it can also factor in virtually any plot line. Pairing friends with differing connection needs creates believable conflict.
Jane might want to escape a confining job. She may be afraid to leave a lucrative career but imprisoned by the monotony or lack of challenge. She may love the job but hate her boss or coworkers. The entrapment will either force to her make a life changing career move or renegotiate her reality within the confines of her job.
Family get togethers are rarely the love-fests featured in the sweet family stories of long ago. Reunions are hot beds of festering unmet needs and resentments. Personalities clash and clang and grate, fomenting snide remarks and truth-revealing tirades. The quickest way to exit an undesirable family event is for your character to make statements they know will stir the family pot and storm out during the ensuing verbal brawl. An investigator might stir the pot to get a suspect to reveal himself. If going home feels like entering a prison, Jane isn’t going to enjoy going there for a holiday meal, much less a week. She may be forced to return home to take care of an ailing parent. The situation makes her feel like she is being strangled, particularly if irritating siblings insist on visiting. Emotional bombs will burst. Setting and situation choices can force your character to make decisions or take actions they otherwise would ignore. As the character's social, psychological, or physical noose tightens, the reader's tension grows along with it and they keep turning the page to relieve their own anxiety.
For more ways to utilize obstacles to create tension in your fiction, pick up a copy of Story Building Blocks II: Crafting Believable Conflict in print or E-book version.
0 Comments on Confining Your Characters as of 9/11/2015 10:07:00 AM
Note from Erin: Today I’m happy to turn the blog over to NYT bestselling author Juliet Blackwell. Her latest novel, THE PARIS KEY, releases tomorrow, and Juliet’s been kind enough to share some of her thoughts on writing larger-than-life settings…
You’ve Chosen Your Setting – Now What?
Who cares where your story takes place? Just about everybody.
A well-chosen setting grounds your story in the reality of a particular place and time. It’s more than a flat backdrop against which themes and metaphors unfold. The setting is a character in its own right, and as such helps to propel the story forward, to reveal character, to heighten tension, and ultimately, to provide resolution.
CREATING THE SETTING
Who died and made you God? Setting is your opportunity for world-building. The importance of the right setting is most apparent in fantasy and science fiction writing, but is equally true for mysteries and mainstream fiction. A story’s setting forces the passage of time, unleashes weather, changes seasons and offers landscapes and skylines and history. It imposes restrictions upon your characters, as well as offering unique opportunities and challenges. The city of Paris, France, is real and familiar to many but in my novel, The Paris Key, I had to bring it to life for those who’ve never visited. Setting the story in Paris not only shaped what my characters could do and how, but allowed me to incorporate unique features, such as the city’s subterranean catacombs and the gargoyles high atop Notre Dame, as metaphors for my character’s journey as she unearthed family secrets and determined her own future.
Make it resonate: Evoking the texture of your setting is critical: make your fictional world as tactile and present to your reader as it is to the characters in the story. Address all five senses: sight, sound, feeling, taste—and don’t forget scent! Good or bad, our sense of smell is primal and evocative. An American in Paris may initially be struck by the beauty of its historic architecture, the grand museums, and well-tended parks, but will always remember the aromas of fresh baked bread from the boulangeries, sweets at the patisseries, coffee at the sidewalk cafes, the fresh rain on the pavement and the sometimes funky-smelling waters of the Seine.
Propel your story: Run out of ideas for your character halfway through your story? Look to your setting to ratchet up the emotional stakes for your character and move the story along. In The Paris Key, my protagonist can’t slip easily through her days because she is in a foreign country and has limited language skills. She struggles to understand—and to make herself understood—and even simple tasks are made challenging by a new language, different customs, and France’s legendary bureaucracy.
YOUR MOST IMPORTANT CHARACTER
If you make your setting the heart of your tale it will pump warmth or frigidity, comfort or strife, familiarity or strangeness through the entirety of your story.
Reveal character: Use your setting to reveal aspects of your protagonist’s character, whether through comfort with the surroundings, or conflict, or both. The Paris Key is essentially a tale of reinvention as my protagonist struggles to cope with being a newcomer, a fish out of water, a stranger in an unfamiliar (yet charming, this being Paris!) culture. The sights and sounds of Paris surround her and dictate her internal conflicts. Everyday activities pose new and unexpected difficulties and the struggle inspires constant questions: Is it worth it? Should I give up and go home? What have I done?
Different Time, Different Place: The unique history of the time period is, of course, a crucial part of your setting. Storylines from different eras might take place in the same physical setting, but the passage of time changes and affects the surroundings. The contrast between two different time periods can help tell your story: how have social customs and expectations, governments and communities changed? A secondary tale in The Paris Key has to do with a character damaged by the Basque struggles against the legacy of the Franco dictatorship; his presence in the City of Light, so far from Spain, brings the fight to the streets of Paris and echoes the brutality of World War II. On a personal level, his story becomes part of the family secrets the protagonist find buried in the catacombs.
Heighten conflict and find resolution: Setting can be the catalyst for plot development. Literally and metaphorically, our environment molds us. We may all be the same underneath, but think how different the life experiences of someone born and raised on a farm in California, compared to someone born and raised in Paris. The protagonist in The Paris Key has always held herself apart from others, but she finds this impossible in Paris, partly because of a culture of neighborliness she find herself in, and partly because the foreign setting makes her dependent on the kindness of strangers. As the novel progresses, the catacombs and the streets of Paris are the setting for the story’s resolution, as they reveal their secrets and the protagonist is forced to come to terms with her mother’s story, and the truth about her own past.
DON’T TACK IT ON
Whatever you do, make your setting integral to your book. Give it a purpose. Whether a story is set on a distant planet, in a spaceship, in a small American town, or a large French city, reveal the setting slowly over the course of your story, as you would any character. Allow your readers to “meet” your setting with fresh eyes at first, and uncover the complexity of the environment slowly, through the interactions of the story’s characters. Let the setting help you to frame and arrive at your resolution, as the environment makes its impact known. Remember, your setting can reflect, embody, or fight with your characters, but at the very least it will affect your novel’s emotional landscape, from first word to last.
JULIET BLACKWELL is the author of The Paris Key (Berkley/Penguin; 9/1/15), the New York Times bestselling Witchcraft Mysteries and the Haunted Home Renovation series. As Hailey Lind she wrote the Agatha-Award nominated Art Lover’s Mystery series. She is past president of Northern California Sisters in Crime and former board member of Mystery Writers of America. For more, visit: http://www.julietblackwell.net.
I’ve been reading lots of manuscripts lately and a common problem keeps arising. As a reader, I keep wondering, “Where am I?”
The plot and characters are often interesting, but I’m lost. I need a map to figure out where I am. In other words, setting is crucial to keeping your readers grounded in your story.
When?
Often, the problem is that I don’t know WHEN the story is taking place. This could be anything from what century to what season of the year. The simple detail of a Christmas tree might be enough to reorient me to the setting. Or I might need details of clothing worn in 1492 to understand the setting. Either way, the relevant details must be woven into the story. However, you can often just add a simple phrase to indicate time: early that morning, an hour later, or meanwhile.
Where?
The WHERE question can be much more complicated because it should be woven into the story seamlessly. One writer recently said that she was afraid to bog down her story with lots of description. That fear kept her from adding details that would keep the reader grounded. Novels aren’t screenplays or movie scripts; for those, you expect the production to fill in the blanks. For novels, though, you must play the movie in the reader’s head for them.
Beats in dialogue. This is especially important in dialogue or conversations between characters. Another writer had nice dialogue, but it was all in isolation–talking heads. You must remember that the characters are people who fidget, move around, blunder around or just nod their heads. Of course, sometimes you DO want a section that focuses on words. But even there, the right detail at the right time can emphasize a point, add comic relief, or make the story more believable.
Setting comes alive when you have the right details, usually sensory details. If you were a character in the story, in this particular scene, what would you see, hear, smell, touch, or taste? Description comes down to the careful use of our senses to put the reader into the scene.
Often, I’ll create a sensory details worksheet. Down a side of a page, I’ll write the senses: See, Hear, Smell, Touch, Taste. Then, for each sense, I try to find three details unique to the setting. I’m also trying to do it in language that would be used by the POV character.
Be specific as you do this.
Not: dog
Instead: Pit Bull
Notice that I didn’t say, “Big Dog.” The use of modifiers–adjectives and adverbs–weakens a story. Instead, I search for a more specific word, such as the name of a dog breed. Only after the verb or noun is as specific as possible do I allow myself to add modifiers.
Not: dog
Instead: Pit bull
Even Better: pit bull with a white-tipped tail
Be reasonable. Sometimes, “dog” is enough, depending on the story, where you want the reader to pay attention, and the intended audience. For a toddler’s story, Dog would be reasonable. Mostly, though, writers need to be more specific and avoid those adjectives that work as a crutch, but really add nothing to the description: good, nice, big, small, etc.
A special note on Touch/Feel: Often writers want to translate this into emotions. Instead, I mean this as a physical sensation of touch, usually temperature or texture.
Not: I loved my lunch.
Instead: The chili burned my tongue.
Once I have a list of sensory details, I like to start a scene with a unique detail. I search the imagined setting for something that will make a reader stop and pay attention. Here are some descriptions from the first pages of my Aliens, Inc. Series. The series is for 1st-4th grade readers, and each story begins in art class. Use the links to download sample first chapters to read more.
“I bent over the giant state of Texas.” from Kell and the Giants(Listen to the audiobook sample), Book 3, The Aliens Inc. Series
“My hand dripped with blue paint.” from Kell and the Detectives (audiobook sample), Book 3, The Aliens Inc. Series
Balancing Description and Narrative
It’s impossible to tell you how to balance the narrative descriptions, dialogue and action. As an author, you need to learn which area you are strongest in and which is your weakest area. If you consistently get the response from readers, “I’m lost,” then you need to provide more description. Don’t fear the descriptions. They won’t slow down the reader unless you really go overboard. But they can sure LOSE you a reader, if you get them lost. They won’t trust you to tell the story and will stop reading.
In other words, listen to your early readers. If they are confused about what is happening, your descriptions are weak. If they are drowning in detail, the story will feel slow-paced. Work to find the right balance for your story and your readers. Just be sure they never get lost.
Hi folks, I'm starting a series that will last for the summer. It's called Publish and is in conjunction with my TEENSPublish workshop at the Ringer Library in College Station, Texas. This is the fourth week and I'm covering setting. I think some of this will relate to any creative life.
One piece of the publishing puzzle is an authentic setting. The tribe attacked setting this week with fever. Setting is about perception. It is the creation of the exterior world within a novel or short story. Setting is the sensory experience of a story. The best stories understand the importance of sensory experience.
The first exercise we tackled this week was the bird's eye view. Crayons and pencils were passed out; and the students were happy to take flight in their imagination and draw the bird's eye view of the setting in the first scene of their stories. This exercise is important because it forces the creator to go beyond the four walls. Is a nightingale singing outside the room of the house? Is the wind picking up outside and whistling in the cracks? Is there a rose arbor outside the window? Are ninjas hiding outside the window? The bird's eye perspective can enrich a scene.
Next we explored how language truly affects our setting. Word choice is important when creating the mood of a scene. We described our scenes with hard consonants with long vowels and then with soft consonants and short vowels. The meanings of the words were similar but the scene changed with careful word choice. The upshot of this exercise? There is a poetic element to setting that must be addressed.
Last we watched a video on world building. Some of the tribe must invent partial or whole worlds to write inventive stories. This video is a good place to get started with is here. To me what is important about world building is limiting what is different from the real world. What we love about other worlds is how they remind of us home. You may travel to the far reaches but what resonates is when you meet someone from your hometown or you find out the banana pudding is just like home. It's what brings us together that is important, not what separates us. Good advice for world building and life, too, I think.
I hope that you think about setting this week as you create master works. I research the settings of my books. Here is a public board on Pinterest for the setting of my book PLUMB CRAZY. You might find this informative. Click on the link in the side bar if you want to know more about the book.
Hope you create master works this week. Next week we will take a break from the nuts and bolts and sneak in a contemplative blog about the universe, creativeness, and such. See you then.
Here is a art.
And finally a quote for your pocket.
Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm. Abraham Lincoln.
0 Comments on Publish: Setting as of 6/27/2015 1:18:00 PM
Point of view is one of the things that writers frequently forget to include when developing a setting, but because setting can help you unlock so many different aspects of character, POV is critical. Based on who they are and their individual experiences, each character is going to see the setting in different ways, and the objects and aspects within the setting will raise memories from their lives. Giving thought to those connections and varying perspectives within a setting will, in turn, help you create the fine details that bring the setting to life. The connection between setting and memory is one of the most powerful and most often forgotten tools in the writer’s arsenal.
When I started creating Watson Island, for example, I began with the history of South Carolina and I wove in different events from the area and how they touched on the descendants of the three privateers who settled there. Since my main character is a Watson, I was focused particularly on her family’s history, but since she knows nothing about that history when she arrives, I had to tell that history partly from the point of view of members of the other families. Each book within the trilogy changes the historical narrative to show how the family perspective and facts that have been passed down have changed the story and the families themselves.
And that’s the fun and challenging part about any setting. Each family, each person, is going to remember history in a way that flatters them. Not every fact gets passed down from generation to generation, and many not-so-factual things do get passed down: likes, prejudices, habits, perspectives.
As we are constructing our fictional words, we have to remember the bare bones—the basic worksheet:
Place
Season/time
Role in the story
Unique features and general history
Particular things of interest
Sounds, sights, smells
Associated characters
Things it reveals about the story
But we also have to look at the setting from the perspective of each of those associated characters. Each of them will have:
Sounds, smells, objects within the setting that trigger particular memories
Attitudes toward the setting and objects within It that tell us about that character
Ways of describing the setting and the objects in it that reveal how the character’s are changing as the story develops
As a writer, the more you think about the setting from the point of view of different characters, the more you will reveal the story to yourself. Setting gives us endless opportunities to weave together all the other elements of story: character, plot, theme, and mood/atmosphere.
THIS WEEK'S GIVEAWAY
Seeker by Arwen Elys Dayton Hardcover Delacorte Books for Young Readers Released 2/10/2015
For readers of A Game of Thrones and The Hunger Games comes an epic new series.
The night Quin Kincaid takes her Oath, she will become what she has trained to be her entire life. She will become a Seeker. This is her legacy, and it is an honor. As a Seeker, Quin will fight beside her two closest companions, Shinobu and John, to protect the weak and the wronged. Together they will stand for light in a shadowy world. And she'll be with the boy she loves--who's also her best friend.
But the night Quin takes her Oath, everything changes. Being a Seeker is not what she thought. Her family is not what she thought. Even the boy she loves is not who she thought.
Hi, folks, this month I'm focusing the blog on the writing journey of PLUMB CRAZY. I'm calling this series: PLUMB CRAZY Journey -- The Good, The Bad, The Ugly and The Transcendent. I'm going to dig deep into the generation of my novel and dynamics of that creative journey. Be aware that I write as Cece Barlow for this work. It will be released at the end of this month.
This week I'm focusing on the good of writing my book PLUMB CRAZY. It was the fifth novel I've written (the other 4 are unpublished) and it is the closest to my real, every day life. There is much good that wraps into a book like this. Here are some of the layers.
One layer of good comes from basing a book in a world close to my own. The setting was easy to visualize. You really know the space you are working in. I know what it feels like to drag in after a seventeen hour day, my hands bleeding and back aching, even though I'm just a girl of seventeen. I know the heat of Texas and understand it is actually a character on the stage in this part of the world. I know how a drill feels when it jams and then beats against my fingers. This knowledge of setting saved some research hours, added authenticity, and gave this writer needed confidence.
Another layer of good that comes from basing a book on a world close to my own is all about mining memories. I mean we all have gold in our hilly pasts or even mountainous pasts. It was good to reexamine my younger days from the perspective of adulthood. I see things differently now than I did then. The Dragons that roared at me as teen seem like puny lizards now. My drama feels bland. I also see strengths in myself that I didn't realize at the time. I found myself celebrating who I am. Any journey that causes that is a good one.
The last layer of good that I'm going discuss (but by no means the only good I found) is all about the redo. Fiction is not exactly life. Life isn't always interesting. It doesn't always make sense. Good doesn't always triumph in real life. Writing a story gives you the freedom of what if. I found that writing PLUMB CRAZY reopened a few old wounds but then allowed them to really heal. Writing from the heart of my life helped me appreciate who I am. This is such a good thing. You might try it.
I hope you come back next week for more of the PLUMB CRAZY journey. I'm glad you dropped by. Happy creating.
It's Easter. Here's a whimsy doodle for you: Superhero egg designs.
Put this in your back pocket and bring it often.
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. Walt Whitman
0 Comments on PLUMB CRAZY Journey -- The Good as of 4/4/2015 2:23:00 PM
If you're writing contemporary, you've got it easy regarding setting, right? No need to research for historical accuracy or imagine and detail a whole new world. Ah-hem. Jaye Robin Brown, author of No Place to Fall, is here today to share with us how we all -- especially those writing contemporary -- can use setting to great effect in our novels. Thank you, Jaye!
Using Setting for Tone in Contemporary YA: A Craft of Writing Post by Jaye Robin Brown
Sometimes I feel a bit like a cheater for writing contemporary young adult fiction. I don’t have to make up elaborate structures of law, or create lands, or mythical animals. There’s no need for mechanical knowledge of space ships or the why’s and how’s of a black hole. It’s just what it is. The here and now.
Writing contemporary comes with its own set of challenges, though. The biggest being that your readers, though they may not know the setting exactly, will know the rules of the land. So what are some of the tricks to sink them so deeply into your story they forget to look for familiar landmarks? There are many—your characterization, a zipping good plot, a smoking love interest—but perhaps the quietest and most subtle of the tools available is your setting.
cmctecosystems.wikispaces.com
In my debut, No Place To Fall, I wanted to show Amber Vaughn’s small mountain town as both suffocating and freeing. She desperately wants to leave but it’s also a bit of a cocoon for her. The scenes where she feels the freest, she’s out hiking looking at vistas. The scenes where she’s fretting, she’s down low, surrounded by small minds with no view out. Simple, yes, but it might not have been a conscious choice in the early stages of my writing.
Here’s a trick. Take a really generic setting. Let’s say, your neighborhood grocery story. Now take a few different genres, contemporary romance, contemporary suspense, contemporary horror. What would be the things in each setting you would choose to write about? What would your MC notice?
For example, in a contemporary romance, maybe she’s picking up two oranges at chest level when her love interest walks by (there’s a meet cute of awkward!). Or she sees an elderly couple giving each other a sweet peck on the lips, the love light still in their eyes. It’s sunny outside, the light is good in the store, and everything is clean, glistening, and smells great (the bakery!).
from lobshots.com
In your contemporary suspense, maybe the fluorescents are flickering, maybe the lines are too long and too slow, maybe the one item she needs isn’t available or is expired. Maybe she barely misses slipping on the just mopped floor and the guy with the wet floor sign leers at her. For horror, you’d take the same sorts of things as suspense but amp up the fear factor, beady-eyed live lobsters in a tank, bumping into a display of gruesome Halloween masks, etc.
In short, your setting shouldn’t be a Barbie house to set your characters inside of and move them around and make them talk and interact. Your setting should be as dynamic and alive as all the other hard won parts of your novel. Each setting, each change of scenery, you have an opportunity for carefully thought out details. Why choose something random when you can choose something to enhance and highlight the tone and mood of your story or scene?
So next revision pass, focus on your setting. Are there places you can draw the mood out more? Objects or background moments that can serve as symbolism or metaphor for your main character? Setting is a gold mine of opportunity to take your story even deeper, especially if you write contemporary fiction.
About the Author:
Jaye Robin Brown, or Jro to her friends and family, lives in the mountains outside of Asheville, North Carolina. A dreamer by nature, she knew life wouldn't be complete until she was surrounded by land, horses, dogs, and one cantankerous goat. When not writing or playing on her fourteen acre farm, you can find her in the art room at the public high school where she teaches.
The Sky Is Everywhere meets This Lullaby in No Place to Fall (HarperTeen), Jaye Robin Brown's poignant debut novel about family, friendships, and first romance. As good girl Amber prepares for her audition at the North Carolina School of the Arts, her relationship with her best friend’s older brother gets more and more complicated. When the bottom drops out of her family’s world in an afternoon, Amber faces an impossible choice, being there for her family, or following her dream as an artist.
I meet the Best People doing what I do – for example Chicago writer, colleague, fellow teacher and SCBWI kin Barbara Gregorich who authors fiction and nonfiction for adults and children in a variety of formats on a variety of subjects.
You can read a sample chapter of Guide here. To celebrate Barbara’s newest book, I invited her to share a Wednesday Writing Workout and lucky us – she agreed! Scroll down to read, enjoy and try Barbara’s exercises that demystify the all-important narrative element SETTING. Thanks, Barbara, for so generously sharing your smarts!
Esther Hershenhorn
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Give Me Place, Lots of Place Two summers ago I taught a week-long course on novel writing to 25 students: the youngest was fifteen, the oldest eighty-five. On our last day of class, three students read the first three pages of their novels-in-progress to all of us. All three novels were fantasy: two had human characters, one did not. Even now I remember those three stories vividly. Through skill, serendipity, or maybe even through my teaching, each of the students offered a piece in which the sense of place was palpable, and I’m convinced that one of the reasons I remember these three stories, their characters and conflicts, was because the settings were so well depicted.
One of the three was set in a dungeon, and the writer (the 15-year-old) was able to make us feel the environment. The prison cell was dank: we felt the chill and the damp. We saw the gray-green moss clinging to the wet stone walls. The bars were thick, rusty, and unbendable. We felt their tormenting power just as we felt the cold sea air that entered at will, just as we recoiled at the thin, gray, tasteless gruel delivered through the food slot each morning.
In fiction, place isn’t just something for the reader to experience vicariously — though it is partly that. Place is the world the characters live in, and it helps shape these characters. Put your characters in a different setting, and they will behave differently.
A writer who can create lifelike places through a few carefully chosen words that appeal to the senses is also well on the road to creating empathetic characters. When we see how place affects a fictional character we empathize, probably because we realize how real-life places affect us — isolated windowless work environments; cluttered, dog-hair-covered, stale-food-smelling cars; un-shoveled, foot-high hummocks of ice on city sidewalks; the welcome coolness of wet sand just below the scorching top layer on a summer day.
Place, as I explain to my students, should never be depicted in such a way that it seems more important than the characters within that place. No description for description’s sake. Setting lets readers enter the world the characters live in and helps readers understand where the story is taking place. More than that, the more palpable the place, the better readers can see how setting influences character and how character modifies setting. In the dungeon story, for example, the place limited what the prisoner could do, but the prisoner also had an impact on the setting: he nurtured a small plant inside the cell, and he moved one of the stone blocks to where he could stand on it to look out the high, barred window.
Here are some exercises I gave my 15-to-85-year-old students.
Perhaps these, or modifications thereof, will inspire your and/or your students to think about the importance of place in fiction, and how setting and character shine light on one another.
Keep the Character, Change the Place
Ask students to take an existing story and change the setting completely. Have them rewrite the first two or three pages of the story with the new setting. Then compare the two stories: how does the character change? What is it that setting does to character?
Comfortable Place or Not? Do your students tend to place their characters in places where the characters are comfortable? Say a dancer in the dance studio, or a great basketball player on the court? Or do they place their characters outside the comfort zone? Say a boy who has never, ever helped in the kitchen suddenly finds himself obligated to work in one to help his best friend. You might ask students to write a comfort-setting story first, and then rewrite it as an outside-the-comfort-zone story. It’s instructive to note how happy or sad setting can make characters feel, how good or bad, how confident or unconfident.
Same Place, Different Characters
Yet another approach to place is to have students write a two-different-POVs story, first from Character A’s POV, then from Character B’s. Both characters are in the same place at the same time. But are their reactions the same? How does setting impact each character? My experience has been that when students are asked to treat the setting as more than background information, they excel at bringing places to life and at showing how characters function in a particular setting.
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Opening a novel in an interesting way is crucial. I often see stories-in-progress with weak openings. This week, I happened to pick up a copy of the classic Jurassic Park, and I was stopped on the first page with the economy of language. In two brief paragraphs, Crichton sets a scene, introduces a character, puts us into the character’s life, and places us in a Costa Rica fishing village. He accomplishes so much in a brief passage. Let’s look at it to see if it gives us tips on starting our own stories.
Opening of Jurassic Park
The tropical rain fell in drenching sheets, hammering the corrugated roof of the clinic building, roaring down the metal gutters, splashing on the ground in a torrent. Roberta Carter sighed, and stared out the window. From the clinic, she could hardly see the beach or the ocean beyond, cloaked in low fog. This wasn’t what she had expected when she had come to the fishing village of Bahia Anasco, on the west side of Costa Rica, to spend two months as a visiting physician. Bobbie Carter had expected sun and relaxation, after two grueling years of residency in emergency medicine at Micheal Reese in Chicago.
She had been at Bahia Anasco for three weeks. And it had rained every day.
(First two paragraphs of Jurassic Park, Prologue, by Michael Crichton.)
Weak openings leave me confused, wondering where I am and what is going on. Crichton starts with a specific setting. The second word is “tropical,” which narrows down the location on the globe, while also explaining the type of rain. A “corrugated” roof probably indicates a lower income area where cheaper materials are used for construction.
Notice the great verbs which animate that first sentence: fell, hammering, roaring, splashing. And it ends with a strong descriptive word: torrent. This is masterful selection of language. After one sentence, I know approximately where I am and what is happening.
Next, Crichton focuses on the point-of-view character for this section. Because it’s a prologue, this character won’t be important in the story proper, but he takes the time to give us some of her background, which implies much about her state-of-mind.
She is an ER doctor, just finishing her residency in Chicago, and she thought this trip to Costa Rica would be a vacation. Notice that she’s an ER doc. The old sayings is that you should never put a gun in Chapter 1, if you don’t intend for it to go off sometime. Crichton put an ER doctor in the first paragraph because someone soon would require emergency medical attention. We know Roberta/Bobbie (Notice how he named her fully, then gave us a more casual nickname) is skilled in medicine, but she’s also tired and disappointed with this location.
As far as setting a mood, the torrential storm sets up the possibility of something happening. We’d expect that a “torrent” would bring other problems with it.
Finally, Crichton actually names the locale: Bahia Anasco on the western coast of Coast Rica.
Setting, mood, characterization, anticipation–Crichton sets up so much in just two short paragraphs!
Applying Crichton’s Lessons to Your Story
Setting. Readers need to be oriented immediately to the location of your story. While you describe the setting, use language to create a distinctive mood and set up anticipation. Don’t be afraid to name a location directly.
Mood. Choose language that sets up a distinctive mood. The torrential rain is described with evocative verbs and language. Strong, forceful, a force of nature–you expect something to happen, and soon.
Characterization. It’s important to know something about the character. Crichton gives us a name, place of origin (Chicago hospital), and something of her inner life. Bobbie is a strong-willed woman or she wouldn’t be an ER doctor; but she’s tired because of the “grueling” residency. Bone-weary, maybe. The impending emergency that will require her skills will challenge her, not because she’s not capable, but because she’s so tired. That’s great characterization for one paragraph!
Anticipation. How can you not turn the page? Crichton has set up an interesting enough scenario, and populated it with an interesting character that I’m hooked. I would read on! Wouldn’t you?
Avoid weak openings! Study Jurassic Park for hints on how to take your story’s opening to a new level.
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JULIET BLACKWELL is the author of The Paris Key (Berkley/Penguin; 9/1/15), the New York Times bestselling Witchcraft Mysteries and the Haunted Home Renovation series. As Hailey Lind she wrote the Agatha-Award nominated Art Lover’s Mystery series. She is past president of Northern California Sisters in Crime and former board member of Mystery Writers of America. For more, visit: 
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