Read A Writer's Guide to Active Setting Online
Authors: Mary Buckham
One of the ways that Setting can work harder in your stories is by using it to reveal something about the character viewing the Setting. Instead of stopping the story flow to tell the reader that Joe is a former Special Forces operative, or that Fran loves children, you can show this through their experiences, personalities, and backgrounds.
Here's a generic Setting example:
The street was a block long with three-story buildings on either side. Most of them brick. One was built out of concrete. All had steps leading down to the sidewalk. Five trees had been planted along the outer curb and several cars were parked along the street.
Pretty bland and nondescript. The reader sees buildings, but not much else. Look what happens when we take Joe and Fran from above and revisit this Setting:
Joe stood on the corner, with the widest viewpoint of the 400-meter long street running east to west. Buildings squatted, all of uniform height and width, three-stories on either side. Most of them brick, but one of Afghanistan-mud brown concrete. Hide sights for a sniper? Possibly, but nothing stood out. Several areas of vulnerability and strengthâthe largest areas of view, but no faces at the windows or along the rooftops. Good. Escape route would be dead ahead or behind, unless he could access the buildings and use the roof. No alleys to create choke points, garbage cans that could contain a bomb, or loose items, backpacks, boxes that could hide an IED. The types and number of vehicles were what he expected on a quiet street, except for the big van that could be surveillance, especially with its out-of-state plates and dark-tinted windows. The one with leaves from one of the scrawny trees fronting the sidewalk littered on its roof, which meant it'd been there for a while.
Do you get a clearer image of not only the street, but of Joe and his background? The reader experiences the street on a deeper level and is right there with Joe, seeing what he's seeing, and learning a lot about him from how he views the Setting.
Let's see how child-loving Fran might see the same street.
The street stretched a block long with the sounds of kids of all ages shouting and laughing, noise that zipped from the three-story buildings on either side. Most of the apartments were brickâthe old fashioned-kind of brick that screamed genteel families and industrious lives. One building stood outâbeing concreteâas if the people who lived there didn't care so much about their surroundings. Steps led down from each home to the cracked sidewalk, filled with chalk drawings and hopscotch squares. Five boxwood trees marched along the outer curb, one with a droopy Happy Birthday balloon snagged in its branches. Several mini-vans and SUVs parked along the street, waiting for the next trip to school or soccer.
So what did you learn about Fran? About what matters in her life? What she wants more of in her world just based on how she subjectively focused on this city block?
NOTE
: How the Setting is revealed says a lot about the character.
Joe can't get away from threat assessment whereas Fran is focused on the happy families she sees living there, or the possibility of happy families. The writer needs to be aware that the relationship between the POV character and the Setting is what allows the reader to see and experience the story on a deeper level.
It's important to remember that place can and should be filtered through a specific character's emotions, impressions, viewpoint, and focusâthis is how it reveals character and why what one character sees in a Setting can be more important than the Setting itself. Ignoring the powerful use of characterization and Setting decreases the subtext of your story and also decreases the immediacy a character feels in your story world. If your POV character simply walks through a Setting with nothing revealed except that the character is now at a store, on a street, or returning home, you are showing your readers that this Setting doesn't matter that much to the story. So if it does matter, show it!
NOTE:
Don't use Setting simply as window dressing.
Let's look at a Setting example that is very active but quickly orients the reader to the fact that the POV character knows this place well, which is an insight into the character's back story. Let's assume though, that the author had scribbled out an early draft.
FIRST DRAFT:
I'd known Brooklyn my whole life, especially this part of Brooklyn.
No Setting details here. No sense of place at all, just a plain, telling statement.
SECOND DRAFT:
There were different sections of Brooklyn, some old, some newer, all with their own personalities and unwritten rules.
Here there's a stronger sense that the character knows and understands the Setting. But a reader who is unfamiliar with Brooklyn, or which area of Brooklyn is being used, is forced to either create his own images, or become restless while waiting to find out why it's important to understand where the events are unfolding.
If the Setting does not add to the scene, if it's not important to the story, then either the first or second drafts above could work. But let's see how the author, Jonathan Lethem, brought the Setting, and thus the story, alive with his brief but powerful passage.
Minna's Court Street was the old Brooklyn, a placid ageless surface alive underneath with talk, with deals and casual insults, a neighborhood political machine with pizzeria and butcher-shop bosses and unwritten rules everywhere. All was talk except for what mattered most, which were unspoken understandings.
âJonathan Lethem,
Motherless Brooklyn
The author uses a combination of tellingâ
was old Brooklyn, a placid ageless surface alive underneath with talk, with deals and casual insults
âand showingâ
Minna's Court Street, a neighborhood, pizzeria and butcher-shop
âthat creates a stronger sense that the events about to unfold in the story could happen only here. The reader has enough details to paint an image of this street, in this particular city, without the story skidding to a halt with details that are unimportant.
NOTE:
In a novel, and in real life, what an individual focuses on reveals a lot about that character's state of mind, history, personality, and more.
Don't confuse the reader. They are coming to your Setting with very little context, so they are trying to visualize the
who
,
where
, and
when
of the location and
how
it feeds into your story. So you might go back and edit to make sure you're:
NOTE:
Adding Setting description is not necessarily an intrusion on the page if it is an extension of the character's communication. This is important to realize if your first drafts are heavy on showing characters via their dialogue or movement.
She glanced toward the windows of her office, which were barred and always shaded. The glare of a bright winter's day peeked around the edges of old-fashioned blinds.
âLaura Lippman,
In A Strange City
Look at the details Lippman uses to reveal about her mystery series protagonist, Tess Monaghan, who has a complicated relationship with her life and her world. Examine the specific word choices made, not through telling but through showing.
She glanced toward the windows of her office, [
Up to this point the character is simply doing what any person can do in any office on any given day. There's no sense of place or character.
] which were barred and always shaded. [
These are specific, telling details. This is not the Setting of someone connected to her world outside, wanting to see its pulse, watching it unfold daily. No, this is a person barricaded, by choice, on a consistent basis. This office is her fortress, which reveals so much.
] The glare of a bright winter's day [
Again, a very revealing word choice here. In the northern areas of the United States, or any country that deals with lower light levels in the winter, if you change the relationship the character has with the quality or quantity of light you will show very different personalities: the straining warmth of a winter's day; the soft, blue white of a winter's day; the clear spotlight of a winter's day. These are all very different descriptions that can be used to show different personalities.
] peeked around the edges of old-fashioned blinds. [
Again, not any kind of blinds but old-fashioned ones. This leaves the detail up to the reader to translate what she seesâdusty, wide shades or skinny, mass-produced plastic slats from the 1980s. It's not important to know exactly what kind of shades they are, but it is important to know this character hides behind the shades, keeping them intentionally closed as protection and, perhaps, avoidance. A lot is revealed as a result of two very specific, very intentional sentences about Setting.
]
This next example comes from the opening pages of a mystery novel in the POV of the protagonist, First Commissaire Adamsberg. We're inside his skin, experiencing his memories as he gives readers a sense of who he is, based on where he came from. Let's see how the author, Fred Vargas, does that.
As a child, Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg had run around barefoot in the stony foothills of the Pyrenees. He had lived and slept there, and later, after becoming a policeman, he had been obliged to work on murders committed there, murders in the stone-built villages, murders on the rocky paths. He knew by heart the sounds of pebbles underfoot and the mountain's way of gripping and clutching you to its heart like a muscular old man.
âFred Vargas,
The Chalk Circle Man
If we dissect this example, we can see why it works so well.
As a child, Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg had run around barefoot in the stony foothills of the Pyrenees. [
Straight telling at this point. The reader is given a basic statement of fact and, unless the reader is familiar with the Pyrenees, this sentence doesn't pull them deeper into the story. It's the same as someone introducing a stranger to you and simply stating that they come from a town or area you know little about.
] He had lived and slept there, [
Small, fresh way of starting to show the reader that this place may have shaped this man. If the author had said onlyâhe lived thereâand moved on, there would not be that small emphatic beat that says pay attention, this matters.
] and later, after becoming a policeman, [
Another statement of fact.
] he had been obliged to work on murders committed there, murders in the stone-built villages, murders on the rocky paths. [
Here is the double-beat that if eliminated would decrease the imagery of where this man was shaped. The adjectives
stone-built
and
rocky
, are deliberately used to build to the next sentence and make the reader wonder about this character who was so shaped by his early environment.
] He knew by heart the sounds of pebbles underfoot [
Audio detail here that allows the reader to be this character as a child, feel what he felt, which creates a stronger image of the individual via specific Setting details.
] and the mountain's way of gripping and clutching you to its heart like a muscular old man. [
This last line is almost poetical and reveals that this man has some depth, thinking of his childhood in this way. So the reader now has a hint of backstory and a stronger sense that this character is still very much a product shaped by this specific Setting.
]
If the author had stopped with
obliged to work on murders committed there
, the reader would be held at arm's length, waiting to be intrigued about this man. He'd be told but not shown. But the author is building to the showing elements, step-by-step; the personality of the man is being revealed. The phrases
murders in the stone-built villages
and
murders on the rocky paths
bring to mind the imagery of rocks and stones which helps define to the reader the type of man this Inspector isâa man raised in a harsh environment and a world away from the streets of Paris where he is now assigned. This insight in turn raises questions about him. Is he flinty? Isolated? A hard loner? When questions such as these are raised, a reader becomes intrigued enough to keep reading, even just a little more, to discover the answers. Then the author can drop the most revealing lineâ
He knew by heart the sounds of pebbles underfoot and the mountain's way of gripping and clutching you to its heart like a muscular old man.
There's no explanation as to whether this was a good thing or not, but it reveals a lot about the man, the one who thinks in these terms about where he grew up, and where he no longer lives.
Here's the beginning of a Setting passage from a Nancy Pickard mystery. This novel is part of a series, so the author chooses to reveal character via Setting rather than simply repeat what readers of the series may have already learned. You discover so much about this couple by what the POV character sees just by looking around her own living room.
Our furniture didn't match, at least not in theory, but it fit together perfectly in practice. We'd used my favorite clear, bright colorsâyellows, oranges, redsâand mixed them with his favorite deep brown wood tones, so the house had an autumnal atmosphere all year long, kind of crisp and cheerful and cozy all at once. There were always books and magazines littering the rooms like scattered leaves, and often a week's worth of newspapers trailing from the kitchen to our bedroom upstairs and the bathrooms down to the living room and finally into recycling. And books, so many books it looked as if a convention of librarians had dropped by with armloads and joyously tossed it all up in the air and dumped everything, leaving us to sort through the detritus on our deliciously erratic quest for wisdom.
â
Nancy Pickard,
Confession