I am giving my Newsletter members, my blog readers, and others, another opportunity to read it. So, I am posting it once more. Enjoy.
On Setting…
Everyone who has taken an English literature class or a
writing course knows about setting.
Setting is the place and the time an action takes place. It is the where and the when of a story. It is what takes a reader to your world
and has them experience it.
However, as a writer, setting is not that simplistic. Images of place are difficult to
translate from your brain to the page.
Should every detail seen be written, every sound, taste, and smell be shared? If you set your novel in a real place,
how accurate must you be? Can I
describe the street where my character lives verbatim, especially the house I
saw which is a perfect match to where he/she lives in my mind’s eye? How should I approach setting? How much setting is too much? Is there a tried-and-true formula to
doing this?
At a conference in which I recently participated as a
panelist, a gentleman from the audience approached me to ask those very
questions posed above. He was
rather anxious, trying to find a formula he could latch onto in order to write
the perfect setting, and he was having difficulties trying to balance his
descriptive sections to his action.
I answered that every writer struggles with this, and tried to cover all
his questions as follows:
Is there a
tried-and-true formula to writing setting?
My answer, based on my experience (and I am talking about
mine alone), is no. You have to
find what works for your narrative style, for your genre, and for your work in
progress. Every novel is
different, every place you set your novel feels different, smells different,
sounds different. You are the
creator of your world (for fantasy, science fiction, and paranormal) or are a
witness to your world. Make sure
you know it, understand it, visualize it, but, especially, learn to explain
it. The explanation is the hardest
part. Find words that create
images rather than writing two sentences to describe what you want the reader to
visualize in one.
In a scene from my novel, The Coin, my characters are in a car chase through a road. My setting? Well, I worked with two at a time: the car they were in and the narrow road outside. Why two? Let me show you:
The
car gave another sickening lurch, but this time the rear was slammed sideways.
Gabriela’s head smashed against the window, her eyesight blurred, and she
tasted the rising bile in her mouth. To compound her horror, the car was now
out of control, heading straight for a fifteen-foot drop. There, a front-line
of grotesquely shaped trees seemed to be eagerly extending their gnarled
branches in hopes of grabbing them. Gabriela closed her eyes and thought, we’re
dead. We’re going to die.
When I wrote this, I needed to show that what was happening
inside the car was as important as what was happening outside. I broke the entire sequence, from
beginning of that scene to the end, picked and chose what part of the setting I
needed to include (and where), and what part of that setting would complement
the action. I needed the right
details to add to the suspense rather than detract from it. By sprinkling images of the setting
into my character’s reaction became critical to understanding her fear and for
my audience to visualize what she was experiencing.
In my current work-in-progress, about Detective Nick Larson,
at the very beginning of the novel, my character is making a concentrated
effort to stay emotionally detached from the crime scene he is about to witness. He has his reasons for doing so, which
the reader will find out a bit later on in the chapter. How could I achieve this? By bringing in a smidgeon of setting:
Nick
surveyed the glass enclosure, delaying and preparing for the inevitable. The sunroom used space and light
efficiently, especially in a backyard as big as a thimble and surrounded by
canyons of brick and steel. The
town homes and apartment buildings in this part of town were notoriously joined
like Siamese twins, and every backyard watched a mirror image of itself barely
ten feet away. No privacy, Nick
thought. He’d rather hide
within the solid walls of his apartment rather than be exposed to hundreds of
spying eyes, lurking ten feet away behind tasteful window treatments near the
horizon.
After thinking about how to write the scene, I described an
impression of the area through my detective’s eyes. Did I need to describe the backyard thoroughly? No. Why? It wasn’t
key to the crime scene or the crime itself. How did I come up with this brief description? I visualized, using my own reactions in
observing things, especially when I can’t concentrate or something I want to
avoid . What I usually do is I
stare into space and capture only the details necessary to give my impressions
of the whole. That’s what I gave
my detective.
Imitate
As a writer, first read what others have done on setting, as
well. Go back to the novels you
loved, the ones in the genre you are writing in, and dissect them. Where does the author interject his/her
setting: At the very beginning, a
chapter in? Does he/she use
setting leading to the introduction of a character and his environment? How often do descriptive passages break
up action? What details, and how
much of those setting details find their way into the narrative? What setting details are important to
the plot? Why do those details
complement these passages?
At a Margie Lawson workshop I attended a year-and-a-half
ago, I found what helped some writers in their works-in-progress was to
highlight setting and action in different colors. That doesn’t work for me, but it is not a bad idea to do at
the beginning. Seeing pages of
green (setting) with a scratch or two of pink (action) at a stretch is not
something you want everywhere, especially if you are writing a thriller. If you are writing a historical, you
may want to see half and half. If
you are a pseudo-Dickens, or an Austen, or a Hardy, well, you would have more
than a couple of pages of green.
But, then, audiences now are not much into a plethora of setting descriptions,
especially in contemporary novels, which brings me to my other point…
Stay true to your
world
I always think that those authors who create their own world
have a slight advantage over those writers who set their work in the real
world. If you create your setting,
you don’t have to worry about street placements, surroundings, traffic
patterns, or how long it would take a subway ride from Times Square to Queens
Boulevard in NYC. You don’t have
to Google map your setting. You
don’t have to spend your vacation in the city where you set your novel in order
to describe it accurately. You
invent your own streets, your own surroundings, your own panorama.
However, there is a caveat, and this applies to all
settings, real or invented, but especially invented. If you create your world, stay true to it. Make sure you have copious notes on
what you created, where you created it, how it came to exist, what it looks and
feels like, how you move around it, what structures are where, if there are
magical elements to it, and why do things react the way they do. If you don’t, and you begin
contradicting yourself by making setting mistakes, your readers will catch it. Trust me, they will. And you may find
that those readers desert you.
In my second novel, The
Book of Hours, part of my setting is in northern California and the other
is in London. It had been years
since I had last visited London, but to make it more of a challenge, I set the
novel in 1997, so I had to be not only accurate in the setting details,
especially changes in the topography, but I also had to be careful I was not
describing details from 2014 London.
I had to verify where everything was, but especially when everything was, including the New
Scotland Yard building and the area surrounding it.
All I can say is, thank you, Google Earth.
Historical details
Tricky one.
This is the one area where the gentleman was having an issue. He was writing a historical fiction
novel, where his character’s life and experiences were fictional except when he
encountered real historical characters and events. He needed to show the setting of a street where the
historical character lived and then describe where his fictional character
lived nearby. He wanted to take a
house on the street and make it the character’s home.
I told him to be careful with this.
If the area where the historical character lived is still
basically the same and has not changed at all, don’t use a house on that street
as your own, unless you have permission from the owner to use it. Invent a cul-de-sac where your house
sits nearby. Or place it somewhere
around the area. For the
historical character’s house, you have to be accurate. It’s as if I were to describe a meeting
with Hemingway, and describe the Deering Estate instead of Hemingway’s house in
Key West. Stay true to history,
but make your own for your characters.
Learn to be
self-critical
Now the dissection comes for your own work. Where are you placing your setting
details? As you read your words,
do you find that you stumble because you created an obstacle for the reader to
stop and climb over? Was it too
many details in the middle of an action scene? Too little to set the scene? Are you giving the wrong setting details, describing too
much of the interior of a bathroom, when all you need is to give minor details
of the inside? Does the setting
you are describing work with the world you created? Are you giving important impressions of the setting at the
right time? Did you choose the
wrong one to complement your plot?
Even more importantly…
Show your work to
others
This, I think, is the hardest part. This is where the editing of your work
comes in…painfully so. Learn from
whatever constructive criticism is given to you. Remember that what you don’t see in your work, others
will. Learn to discard, and revise,
but also, learn to keep as well. Not
everything has to be edited out of your narrative. The ultimate choices are yours, especially for the world you
have envisioned.
My last bit of advice?
Keep learning as you write.
So write, write, write. And
keep on reading as well.
Maria Elena
Alonso-Sierra is the author of two novels, The Coin and The Book of Hours. She holds a Masters in English and is
currently working on her third novel.
he loves to hear from her readers.
You can contact her at the following:
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