Read A Writer's Guide to Active Setting Online
Authors: Mary Buckham
FIRST DRAFT:
The wardens led me to a room and left me there.
Pretty bland description. The reader is not deep into this character's POV because the character is not experiencing the room.
NOTE:
Showing the room through deeper POV allows the reader to experience the room on a more immediate level. The reader is in the room with the character.
SECOND DRAFT:
I'm conducted to a room and left alone. It's the richest place I've ever been in.
Better because now we're given a little more insight into what the POV character is feeling based on the response to the room. But we still have no idea why the character feels this way. Nor can we see the room. Plus instead of being shown the place, we're only told about it.
Let's see how Suzanne Collins used the Setting to enhance the opening of her story:
Once inside, I'm conducted to a room and left alone. It's the richest place I've ever been in, with thick deep carpets and a velvet couch and chairs. I know velvet because my mother has a dress with a collar made of the stuff. When I sit on the couch, I can't help running my fingers over the fabric repeatedly. It helps to calm me as I try to prepare for the next hour. The time allotted for the tributes to say goodbye to their loved ones.
âSuzanne Collins,
The Hunger Games
Here we have more Setting details that allow the author to show some characterization of the POV character and reveal emotions based on her interaction with this room, all by adding just a few more details of Setting. The Setting information is also bracketed by the emotion of the paragraph, like this:
Can you see how the author uses Setting to give the reader a breathing space, deepen the emotional stakes of the story, and then move the story forward?
Here's another example. This passage is from a debut author who, instead of telling, shows the reader that the POV character has arrived at her husband's new home. It's a home that doesn't look like much but is better than anything she's ever had.
We drove up to the last cottage on the back end of a strip of land. It had funny brown shingles peeling away from the clapboard, and the roof looked a little saggy. I had only lived in a trailer all my life, and this was a real house.
âJoyce Keller Walsh,
Strummin' the Banjo Moon
In the above example, the author did an outstanding job of letting the reader see a house that's not all that greatâ
back end, strip of land, peeling shingles, saggy roof
âsince these negative words are qualifiedâ
funny brown, a little saggy
âthen follows with the clear qualification that the character had never lived in a real house before. This allows the reader to see that, for this particular character, this not-so-great house was better than she'd ever had. A whole lot of characterization is revealed via Setting.
NOTE:
As in painting, when you use a cool ultramarine color, and then dab a spot of warm orange on the blue, it makes it pop. The reader can suddenly be “popped” deeper into the POV character's head with a clearer picture of how she sees and experiences the world.
Have you ever attended an event with a friend or family member and later, in discussing the event, discovered that based on the friend's description, you each seemed to have been at a totally different event? Mystery-writer Agatha Christie used this ability to great effect. She allowed her characters to focus in on what matters to them in one of her Hercule Poirot stories,
Cards on the Table
. The Belgian detective asks half-a-dozen participants of a party to describe the room where the murder took place. All of the characters, because they come from different backgrounds with different interests, they describe highlights of the room from totally different perspectives. One notes the very valuable and esoteric collectibles scattered around on the tabletops. Another, a soldier who spent many years in the Middle East, could tell the detective the tribal names of the woven rugs on the floor; another character saw the room in terms of colors, and another could describe the type of period furniture.
Now if the reader had not already “seen” the entire roomâin all its detailâthrough the detective's eyes, but saw only the small snippets from the individual secondary characters, the reader might see only a room with knick-knacks or just a room with carpets, but no furniture. By letting the audience see the whole room through Poirot's POV first, and then revisiting the room through each character's POV, the reader is led to solve the mystery of who killed the victim because only one character “saw” the weapon that was at hand.
NOTE:
The Setting you create will be seen only through one character at a time, so it's important to make sure that what your character sees matters.
Let's revisit an earlier point to see how a POV character that is miserable in a school environment will not see or notice the same items as a POV character who finds that same school a sanctuary and the center of his world. The first example will be through the POV of a character visiting the principal's office. See how quickly you get the emotional tenor of the passage and what else the passage reveals about this character?
EXAMPLE ONE:
I strolled down the empty hallway, hearing the slap of my hard soles against the worn linoleum, remembering the all-too-many times I had crawled this same route to Mrs. Pendragon's office.
One slap; you're in trouble.
Two slaps; shouldn't have got caught.
Third slap; loser.
The stink of sweat and cheap cleaning supplies gagged me back then and did the same today. The flicker of a fluorescent light sent a shiver down my back. But I wasn't sixteen anymore and heading down the fast slope of trouble even as I stopped before the closed wood-and-glass door of the principal's office.
Did you notice the key details used? Word choicesâ
empty, slap, hard soles
,
worn
âand sensory details (sounds, smells, visual cues) and then ending on a story question raised via the POV character's internalization about the Setting. The above example is all it took to layer a lot of subtext on the page using Setting.
Here's the second example.
EXAMPLE TWO:
The sounds caught me first. Laughter ricocheting off the metal lockers, the low rumble of a guy's voice changing timbre, the kick slam of tennis shoes hitting stubborn locker doors. Then came the memories. Hand-lettered signs promising the next school dance, an orange and black banner urging the football or basketball team on to new heights, the crepe paper streamers still hanging from the last Pep Con. I'd been gone twenty years and in the space of twenty footsteps this hall tugged me back to the best times of my life.
A world of difference based solely by what the POV character is seeing in this Setting and his response to it. That's the power of Active Setting.
NOTE:
Subtext is the underlying message the reader receives from a passage. Dialogue or action may say one thing: all appears to be fine, but the reader understands from other cuesâsuch as the Settingâthat the subtext is saying something else.
Remember to think of Setting as the stage that contains your story. Keeping the Setting lean and mean is important, but it can be dangerous to stuff all the details into one paragraph that's describing only Setting. Often this will bring your pacing to a halt. However, this method can work if your pacing is so strong that all the reader wants to do is get back into the story. For example:
It was a sunny April day. But Stark Street looked dreary. Pages from a newspaper cart wheeled down the street and banked against curbs and the cement stoops of cheerless row houses. Gang slogans were spray painted on brick fronts. An occasional building had been burned and gutted, the windows blackened and boarded. Small businesses squatted between the row houses. Andy's Bar & Grill, Stark Street Garage, Stan's Appliances, Omar's Meat Market.
âJanet Evanovich,
Seven Up
Let's break down the Setting in the above example into specific elements. First, Evanovich describes this Setting in depth because it is the first time her POV character arrives at this new location and she wants to make her character's world vivid to the reader. This is one of the places (pun intended) where the reader will allow the author to slow the pacing a bit in order to see where the character is. Doing so allows the reader to feel and be in that place with the character.
Now let's examine how Evanovich uses her descriptive phrases to create the world of New Jersey bounty-hunter Stephanie Plum. The author does not leave it to the reader to guess about the neighborhood; she uses key details to make it come alive.
It was a sunny April day. [
Orient the reader to time of year and a general sense of time of day. It's not night or early morning, given that it's sunny. Also, this acts as a contrast to what comes next, which makes the reader take notice.
] But Stark Street looked dreary. [
The author “tells” (versus shows) what the POV character thinks about the Setting, but then goes on to show with specific details. Telling alone is shorthand, and too much of it holds the reader at a distance from the story. But when telling is used with showing, it can be effective. By telling us, Evanovich gives us a direction from which we can interpret what we're going to see next on this street.
] Pages from a newspaper cartwheeled [
Action verbs, as opposed to passive “to be” verbs, make stronger, more concrete images in the reader's mind.
] down the street and banked [
Action verb.
] against curbs and the cement stoops of cheerless row houses. [
Specific types of housesâthese are not bungalows or 1980s ranch style homes. The reader can start to see the Setting more clearly by this small detail.
] Gang slogans were spray-painted on brick fronts. [
Very specific details showing the neglect of the area and how the buildings were made, which offers a distinct image. Change this one detail, from brick to concrete or faded lap siding, and you have a very different image of the houses.
] An occasional building had been burned and gutted, the windows blackened and boarded. [
By repeating the termsâburned and gutted, blackened and boardedâthe author hammers home the images in this specific world.
] Small businesses squatted [
Action verb.
] between the row houses. Andy's Bar & Grill, Stark Street Garage, Stan's Appliances, Omar's Meat Market. [
Notice the male names most common in the 1950s. This tells the reader these are small, family-owned, and probably older businesses.
]
Now what if Evanovich had simply written:
INITIAL DRAFT:
It was a sunny April day. But Stark Street looked dreary. We looked for Omar's Meat Market and found it.
The reader would have felt rushed, and, while knowing they were on a particular street in New Jersey, since the story is unfolding there, they would not have any sense of this world. Instead of seeing the world of Evanovich's story, the reader could be inserting images from a Kansas town or a French city, especially if the reader had never been to New Jersey.
Without clues, the reader will default to what they know already and may get an erroneous Setting image. One paragraph was all that was needed to anchor the reader to the world of the characters and make the Setting come alive. Evanovich does not use a lot of Setting in her stories, but makes sure that the reader experiences the world of New Jersey bounty-hunter Stephanie Plum at least once or twice in every story.
If the character is returning to a place that hasn't been described in depth previously, the reader will not be as open to a slower pacing on the revisit so you can describe Setting. The reader has most likely created her own visuals, because a reader needs to see the characters in some context. This is a small but important point, and an error many new writers make.
Beginning writers often:
If I write,
Joe left his home and went to the city
, the Setting is so vague that it leaves you clueless and frustrated. But if I write,
Joe left his beachside cottage and drove into Lake Forest City, a northern suburb of Seattle
, the addition of a few specifics gives you enough to inhabit the character's world while keeping the main focus on what's happening in the story.
NOTE:
You need to sprinkle in clues for the reader to develop a correct Setting image. If you go back and clarify the Setting later, this can pull a reader out of your story because his Setting images did not match yours.
When you move your character from one location in your story to another, it's easy to forget that the reader has never been to this new location and needs to be quickly anchored.