A Writer's Guide to Active Setting (26 page)

Let's examine how the author, Lee Child, layers in Setting details that build tension and anticipation step-by-step as the character waits with baited breath.

There is almost a page dedicated to this buildup using Setting. Let's pull it apart to see exactly how Active Setting is maximized. Before this page, readers watched the POV character arrive at the Pentagon; we know how much is at stake, and we tracked the character to the next point:

This is the power of Active Setting. It uses all the individual elements we focus on in this book to create narrative description that doesn't slow, or stop, the forward momentum of the story. Instead, it enhances what the reader experiences as the POV characters live through what's happening on the page.

This next scenario also comes from a mystery novel. Mystery writers need to know how to juggle action and Setting, and there are a lot of great examples in this genre. All writers could and should use Setting with a light hand when keeping the focus on the action of a scene, but what often happens for newer writers is that the Setting is skipped altogether. That's okay for a first draft, but in a final draft you should not short-change your reader by skipping over Setting details that can enhance the reading experience.

Before we get to the final draft, let's assume the author, Julia Spencer-Fleming, needed to do some research to get her details right. In this scene, the POV character, a law enforcement officer, follows an ambulance from a small-town hospital to a location where a medical evacuation via helicopter can happen.

This might be how the author approached her initial draft.

This is where too many writers stop and move on to using dialogue or internalization to flesh out the scene for the reader. That's a shame because, without adding too much detail, a good writer can bring this scene to life. As it is, the reader has no visual of what or where Barnstrom's Field is. Unless it's already been described, one reader might think a playground with grass, another an old ballpark with packed dirt, while a third sees the action unfolding in a series of soccer fields. If this place did not matter to the overall story, the writer might get away with the vagueness; but if, in a few sentences or paragraphs, the writer has the characters standing on blacktop, what's going to happen with those readers who visualized something totally different? They're going to be yanked out of the story to wonder, how did the characters move from the field they envisioned to this different location?

So let's try again, with a little more detail.

If your eyes have not glazed over by this point, you're more dedicated than the average reader. In this last version there was way too much focus on the history of Barnstrom's Field. These are unimportant details that, though fascinating when the writer discovered them in her research, kill the pacing of the scene. What the author wants to convey to the reader is the action—the movement from hospital to a medical-evacuation helicopter, and then weave in a hint of the emotional tone of the Setting. Let's see how she did that.

Notice how in the final version the author keeps the focus tight by using specific details that bring the Setting and the action to life. The first sentence transitions the reader from the hospital (the paragraph before) to where the characters currently are. It's telling, but that's fine, because she shows to enhance the telling. The second line is the meat of this Setting, with very specific details—lights blazing, station bays, garaged fire trucks and emergency vehicles, blaze-reflective strips, a helicopter hunkered on asphalt. This one sentence adds fresh visuals as well as a specific detail—
glittering off the blaze-reflective strips on the life-flight helicopter
—which is a shout out for any reader who has ever worked around medical evacuations. It places him, as well as the average reader, into this Setting. This is a small detail, but a telling one that not only ratchets up this Setting, but makes it feel very, very real.

Here's a different example from an amateur sleuth mystery. It has a slightly slower pacing because of the reader's expectations for this particular sub-genre, but the descriptive Setting still shows the reader so much. The POV character is meeting her circle of women friends the day after a young boy appeared on her doorstep, announcing he is the illegitimate child of her husband.

Let's see how Nancy Pickard moves her character through a specific Setting, one that plays only a small part in the whole story. But by showing it clearly, the reader is anchored into the larger world of the POV character.

In the example that follows, Pickard lets the reader know the POV character is passing through a restaurant where she is meeting friends. After the emotional upheaval and conflict in the opening, where the character discovers her husband has an unknown illegitimate son, the description intentionally slows the pacing to indicate the POV character is going through the motions of her day, grasping for normalcy. Instead of simply describing a dining room that could be any IHOP or chain restaurant, Pickard focuses on the type of food served and where it is as the character passes it, which is a fresh and active way of placing the reader deeper in the scene.

Look at how Pickard shows the relief of the POV character in not recognizing any fellow townspeople, while at the same time showing the type of people in the area by what they are wearing and eating. Notice also how the directional internalizations keep the action moving. The character does not walk in, stop, view the restaurant, and then move forward:

Now let's see how she might have originally approached this passage:

Stop for a minute and visualize what you think the author means here. A fast-food restaurant? A small bistro? A gathering place within a hotel where all the town's movers and shakers eat lunch? Because there's not enough detail, the reader creates a rough sketch in his own imagination. The author loses a chance to reveal character insights and characterization if she skips the Setting details. If your reader visualizes a fast-food chain restaurant, a burger joint, or a takeout sushi bar, that gives him a certain impression of your character and her world that might actually work against your story.

Now you get a little more visual through some specific details. But the story feels slow because you're focused on the Setting in a vague sort of way. It lacks a strong sense of space, or at least a specific kind of space. The action also stops dead as we get the narrative description and monologue. Since this story is an amateur sleuth mystery, the reader expects to get to know the world in a deeper way, and see this particular sleuth's power of perception. The above description doesn't do that.

Once again, look back at what Pickard does so well.

Now let's move to an example where the author could have chosen to tell versus show, but by showing via action and Setting, the reader experiences the story on so many more levels. Remember, we're looking specifically at movement through the Setting. Also check the emotions created, how characterization is shown, the subtext messages, transition of time passing, and questions raised by the author that make you want to keep reading. The POV character, Pike, has been notified that an alarm was triggered in his apartment and has gone to check it out.

Let's look at how a master of Setting description approaches two short paragraphs. By slowing the reader, and showing them how Pike approaches the Setting of a potential confrontation with a person hunting him, the author reveals a lot about Pike's character. The author also builds the tension and conflict in the scene, foreshadows that the reader should take the threat seriously, and most of all, never stops the narrative flow of the story with a dump of narrative description.