Read A Writer's Guide to Active Setting Online
Authors: Mary Buckham
FIRST DRAFT:
The shop had awnings that were clean. In the windows was a display of winter sporting gear. Elmsbrook was a picturesque town.
The best that can be said of the above is that it's short. The reader will not walk away with a strong sense of a specific town or the emotional meaning behind what the POV character sees.
SECOND DRAFT:
The hunter-green awnings of the shop have recently been cleaned, and the windows are crammed with winter sports gear. Elmsbrook is the perfect town. It's always picturesque with clean sidewalks and clock towers.
Better. Now the reader gets a stronger feel for a lovely town where everything sounds nice, based on the word choices:
cleaned, clean, perfect, picturesque
. But that's not the emotional image Jonathan Tropper was going for when he wrote the passage below:
The hunter-green awnings of the shop, usually speckled with dried bird droppings and water stains, have recently been cleaned, and the windows, anticipating the fall season, are crammed with hockey, ski and snowboard gear. The mannequin in the corner is wearing a goalie mask, and in the ominous flicker of the fluorescent light he looks like Jason, the serial killer from those Friday the 13th movies. Elmsbrook is the perfect town for a serial killer, and I mean that in the best possible way. It's always the picturesque towns, with clean sidewalks and clock towers, where Jason and Freddy come to slaughter oversexed teenagers.
âJonathan Tropper,
This Is Where I Leave You
The above passage is not from a mystery or a thriller, but in a funny, heart-wrenching coming-of-age drama about a middle-aged man. By contrasting how idyllic and picture-perfect his town looks with a reference to a slasher movie, the first-person POV character reveals how he feels about the town and revisiting the place he most associates with his estranged father, who has recently died. Tropper's work is often described as dark literary humor. Can you see how the Setting above gives his writing this description?
An oft-missed opportunity to layer your story happens by ignoring the ability to foreshadow via Setting. Narrative Setting description that evokes emotion can help a reader understand a shift in the mood, as well as foreshadow what might be coming next. Using Setting this way can avoid abrupt emotional shifts in the story, where a writer jumps from one emotion to an opposite one.
EXAMPLE:
Paula petted the small kitten, listening to the gentle purr before telling her mother to take a hike.
The passage above is extreme, but as writers we can be so deep into our story we don't see the emotional shifts we're showing the reader.
Foreshadowing via Setting also avoids telling the reader how your character feels, instead of showing how your character feels. Let's see how some authors use the foreshadowing via Setting technique.
Here's a quick sketch of Setting where the POV character drives away from her comfort zone into an unknown environment, but maintains a certain level of security given she's a cop. Do you get a clear sense of where she is emotionally from how she feels about what she sees?
Merci drove out Modjeska Canyon through the leafless, quivering oaks, her hand tight on the wheel and her eyes fixed on the stripe that seemed to lap out of infinity at her. Black sky, black earth, black road.
âT. Jefferson Parker,
Red Light
Parker's example shows the emotional state of the POV character through her actionsâhand tight on the wheel, eyes fixed on the roadâwhich is then backed up by the Setting description word choicesâ
leafless
,
quivering
,
black
,
black
,
black
. He then foreshadows that the reason for her being on this roadâto confront a former lover, a fellow cop, and a man she suspects might be a killerâis going to end on an equally bleak note.
The reader is emotionally oriented via the specific Setting details of Modjeska Canyon with its leafless, quivering oaksâa familiarity to those who know Orange County, California, where the story takes place, and a contrast to what most people might think of when they see oaksâusually symbols of strength and steadfastness. Specific adjectives help focus the reader on the emotions the character is feelingâ
quivering
,
tight
,
black
. This is a very powerful use of Setting deep in a story, since this is the opening to chapter nineteen.
Parker could have had the reader jump from the character in one location into a new scene with her confronting the man. Instead, with two powerful Setting sentences, Parker layers emotion and foreshadowing into the story while transitioning the character through space at the same time.
NOTE
: Emotion drives or motivates action in a story. By using Setting to show emotion, the reader is able to understand future actions that come about as a result.
Here's an example from a Young Adult (YA) novel. The POV character, Liesel, is a young girl whose younger brother has died and was recently buried alongside a railroad track somewhere in Germany during the early years of World War II, shortly after the girl's father was arrested as a communist. Now her mother has abandoned the girl, as this was the only way she could give her child a chance of surviving. See how powerfully the author, Markus Zusak, shows the young girl's emotional state, while creating one for the reader, with a few Setting details.
First, let's approach this scene with a hypothetical first-draft version.
FIRST DRAFT:
As Liesel sat in the car, she looked out the window at rain clouds but there was no rain.
In this version the reader can see the Setting, but it does not foreshadow anything except the possibility of rain.
SECOND DRAFT:
Liesel felt cold and alone as the car drove down the street.
Here the readers are told the emotion of the POV character, but they don't necessarily feel the emotion. Plus there's no Setting shown.
So let's see how Zusak creates a one-two whammy by hinting at the feel of the landscape from the young girl's perspective while he also brings home the emotion of the Setting.
The day was grey, the color of Europe.
Curtains were drawn around the car. Liesel made a clear circle on the dribbled glass and looked out.
âMarkus Zusak,
The Book Thief
Every time I read that, my heart aches for this little girl. The author gave the reader a much stronger emotional investment using Setting instead of simply telling us Liesel was sad as the car drove to the home of her new and unknown foster parents.
Let's take this last Setting example and change it up for a different emotional feel.
Here again is the original:
The day was grey, the color of Europe.
Curtains were drawn around the car. Liesel made a clear circle on the dribbled glass and looked out.
Rewritten version showing different emotions:
The day dawned in sherbet hues of pink and orange.
Curtains were tucked around the car windows as Liesel made a clear smiley-face circle on the sparkling glass and peeked out.
What emotions does the second example give you that the first did not?
Another rewritten version:
The sun peeked over the far horizon as if it feared facing the day.
Curtains hunkered tight against the closed car windows. Liesel ached to make a handprint on the dribbled glass but was lashed into her seatbelt and couldn't reach anything.
Can you see how the Setting word choices in the rewrites are very different from the original?
NOTE:
Determine the emotional mood of a passage before you write it, or during your revision process, to ramp up your use of Setting.
Here's another powerful Setting description. The POV character is following up a lead on the whereabouts of a paranormal threat. She is traveling down a familiar country road near the town where she lives on the way to a confrontation. These are her thoughts as she notices the Setting around her. Do you get a sense of the emotional state of the character by what she sees and how she thinks of the Setting?
Grapevines, bare in their winter guise, lined the wall. In the moonlight they looked like a row of dead men, hanging arms spread wide and crucified on the frames that supported them.
âPatricia Briggs,
Moon Called
The Setting above not only orients the reader to the change from one environmentâthe city of Richland, where the story takes placeâto the outlying farm area, but it also deepens the readers' experience of what the character is feeling. The author sets an emotional tone with the use of key words:
bare
,
dead men
,
arms
spread wide
,
crucified
. What if Briggs had chosen to streamline her Setting description?
ROUGH DRAFT:
As Mercy Thompson drove from Richland through the farmland, she noticed the grapevines which hadn't sprouted yet.
Whole different emotional feel, isn't it?
One more example to show it doesn't take a lot of words in a Setting description to get the emotional feel of a passage across.
In the distance, cypresses rose, their bloated trunks grotesquely fat, like old men with beer guts squatting in the mud. Sunrise was due in half an hour, and the sky and the water glowed the pale gray of a worn-out dime.
âIlona Andrews,
Bayou Moon
Only two sentences, but the reader feels the threat of the location and the feel of the day.
Setting and how the character interacts with it are great ways to reinforce the themes in your story. By using contrasting reactions between characters and the Setting, and contrasting emotions, awkwardness, or confidence in a character's interaction with a Setting, you can highlight a story's theme.
In the Setting passage below, the POV character realizes the love affair she's been having with a priest is making her terribly unhappy. A secondary character, a man who knew her years ago and recently met her again, has shared that he always thought of her as focused, one-dimensional, and pretty straight-laced. These words enhance her feelings that she always played it safe, was never spontaneous, and maybe missed out a lot on life.
Watch how Tess Gerritsen uses a long Setting description to show a life rigidly controlled and focused on work, versus a life of spontaneity and joy. We experience the passage from the POV of Maura Isles, a character who lives in Boston and is familiar with winter and snow. Here she views snow in Wyoming by watching how secondary characters react to an unexpected snowfall. The Setting gives a hint of who the secondary characters are by how they react to the Setting, and the emotional feel gives a motivation for the POV character's decision to take an unexpected tripâone with deadly results.
During the night, it had started to snow, and by the time they loaded their luggage into the back of the Suburban, three inches of white fluff coated the cars in the parking lot, a pristine cloak that made the San Diego contingent ooh and ahh at the beauty of it. Doug and Arlo insisted on taking photos of the three ladies posed in front of the hotel entrance, everyone smiling and rosy-cheeked in their ski clothes. Snow was nothing new for Maura, but she saw it now the way these Californians did, with a sense of wonder at how clean and white it was, how softly it settled on her eyelashes, how silent it swirled from the sky. During Boston's long winters, snow meant tiresome shoveling and wet boots and slushy streets. It was merely a fact of life that had to be dealt with until spring. But this snow felt different; it was vacation snow, and she smiled at the sky, feeling as giddy as her companions, enchanted by a world that suddenly looked new and bright.
âTess Gerritsen,
Ice Cold
This is a great example of using Setting to show emotion. Notice it's completely active and doesn't slow the forward momentum of the story. We are engaged in the shifting realizations and emotions of the POV character. Now let's dig into it to see how this passage reinforces the story theme that premeditation or careful planning in your life can have negative consequences, just as spontaneous, poorly thought-out actions can.
During the night, it had started to snow, and by the time they loaded their luggage into the back of the Suburban, three inches of white fluff [
Specific word choice.
] coated the cars in the parking lot, a pristine cloak [
Specific word choices continuing the idea of snow as a nice thing.
] that made the San Diego contingent ooh and ahh at the beauty [
Showing followed by a telling explanation.
] of it. [
Here Gerritsen could simply have stated that it had snowed and how much since the previous night. But by adding that the secondary characters loved the beauty of the snow, which is in direct contrast to the POV character's emotional mood up to this point, the reader gets to experience the story on a deeper level. The emotional contrast is between the character, previously called focused and one-dimensional in her calculated approach to life, and the actions of the secondary characters, who are reveling in the unexpected.
] Doug and Arlo insisted on taking photos of the three ladies posed in front of the hotel entrance, everyone smiling and rosy-cheeked in their ski clothes. [
And here the addition of the words rosy-cheeked is a nice detail that anyone who has been around chilling temperatures knows very well. Plus it's a word choice that evokes positive, happy emotions.
] Snow was nothing new for Maura, but she saw it now the way these Californians did, with a sense of wonder at how clean and white it was, how softly it settled on her eyelashes, how silent it swirled from the sky. [
More positive descriptive words. Gerritsen also reveals to the reader that the POV character is familiar with snow, which readers of the series already know, but then she follows up this telling with showing and contrasting in the next sentence. The close third-person POV directly reacting to the Setting makes it clear to the reader that the Setting is mirroring her emotional state and the theme of the novel.
] During Boston's long winters, snow meant tiresome shoveling and wet boots and slushy streets. [
Different specific word choices to show snow in a very different light.
] It was merely a fact of life that had to be dealt with until spring. But this snow felt different; it was vacation snow, and she smiled at the sky, feeling as giddy as her companions, enchanted by a world that suddenly looked new and bright. [
Lovely contrast between where the POV character was when the story opened (unhappy) and her current emotional response (delighted, charmed, engaged). This indicates that this venture is meant to be fun, which is very different from Maura's everyday world. As the story progresses, the reader will see that Maura is throwing herself into the spontaneity of the moment by agreeing to go on this unplanned road trip, which will create unexpected consequences. This reflects that people need to find balance in their lives, rather than an all-or-nothing reaction.
]