Read A Writer's Guide to Active Setting Online
Authors: Mary Buckham
Now describe this room in two to four sentences maximum from the following POVs:
Again, only two to four sentences max. What do you focus on? What do they focus on? What words do you choose to describe your space? What are their word choices that show you are in a different POV? What do your word choices reveal about the character viewing the room and the character that lives in the room?
Choose a Setting description of less than a paragraph from your story. In a maximum of two to four sentences, show this Setting through the following POVs, even if you do not use all three in your manuscript:
Again, only two to four sentences maximum. What does the protagonist focus on? What does the secondary character (antagonist, villain, or a throwaway character) focus on? What are his word choices to describe the Setting? How do these word choices change the feel of the Setting and what the reader sees?
INTENTION:
The purpose of this exercise is to start to show you the power of POV as it relates to Setting. Change the POV, and though the Setting might remain the same, the impressions the reader receives of that Setting can vary wildly.
NOTE:
If those impressions don't change while doing the above assignment, or they don't change in your manuscript when you shift POV, then you are most likely showing the Setting through your own POV, as opposed to that of your characters.
Remember that place can and should be filtered through a specific character's emotions, impressions, viewpoint, and focus. How one character sees a Setting can be more important than the Setting itself.
Do not stop or slow your story's flow to show a Setting or details of a Setting, unless that Setting reveals something important about the story or characters.
Consider showing the same setting through two different characters to reveal information about the POV character or information about another character that they may not know about themselves. For example, if a young woman thinks of herself as independent and self-contained, and the reader is shown from her personal space how she has saved mementos of her childhood or of the people who have cared for her in the past, you are showing the reader something about the character that she herself does not realize.
Sensory detail is one of the most underrated tools in a writer's toolbox and can make a world of difference in creating novels that stand out in a reader's mind. Not every Setting needs all five senses described in detailâthat approach is overkill and can have a major impact on your story pacing, not to mention overwhelming the reader with information. But when introducing the reader to a character, changing the location of the story, or focusing a reader on a place that's going to play a larger role in the story, then by all means dig deeper to create a strong Setting image. And a key way to do this is via sensory details.
Use sensory details in your Setting when you first change a location, open a chapter, or to indicate a shift in the emotional state of the POV character. Think in terms of which sensory details a POV character would notice at that particular time. If you change the time and emotional state of the POV character, then there should be a difference in which sensory details the character notices. An example might be listening to specific music at the opening of the scene. What can be soft and relaxing at the beginning of the scene can be lonely and low-energy at the end. Have you ever entered a favorite store and found the music upbeat and fun, only to discover that the person with you finds the same music annoying and dated? Each person's description of the music would create a different feel for a reader about the store's Setting.
Texture is often overlooked in a story but it can act as a metaphor rich in symbolism for the POV character. One character standing in an Iowa cornfield, feeling the wind and the sun enveloping her, feels nurtured and can feel the richness of the soil and the expanse of the Setting. Another character in the same Setting can feel the dirt coating his tongue, the sun beating down on him, drying his skin and sucking the life out of him with its relentless sameness.
Think of the feel of different times of the day during different seasons. I moved from a four-season climate to a two-season climate and am still waiting for certain sensory cues as to what season it is. Daily temperatures alone don't tell me.
But think beyond simple hot, warm, cold. One character who is very athletic or runs on a warmer core body temperature (many men, especially young men, can fall into this category) may find a cool environment just to his liking, whereas another character in the same environment is shivering. (I'm always that other character!) Also think of other tactile experiencesâwhat does wind feel like? Or fog? Or dry dust in the air versus humidity?
Look how Laurell K. Hamilton uses the texture of air to open chapter thirty-seven in her novel. Keep in mind the reader is deep into the story here, but the author doesn't miss an opportunity to pull the reader in deeper in order to feel the scene and the change of location and emotion by focusing on key sensory details:
Early-morning light lay heavy and golden on the street outside. The air was cool and misty. You couldn't see the river from here, but you could feel it; that sense of water on the air that made every breath fresher, cleaner.
âLaurell K. Hamilton,
Circus of the Damned
Can you smell the air in Hamilton's description? Feel it brush against your own skin? The reader is given momentary breathing space before the POV character is thrust into deeper trouble in the story. This two-sentence chapter opening helps create the emotional roller coaster that starts here, in a lovely awareness of the Setting, to what comes next, which is just the opposite.
Now we're shifting to a different genre, a thriller novel from Frank Wilem. Like many thrillers, this story occurs in many locations throughout the world. That's one of the intriguing elements of thrillersâtheir exotic localesâalong with their gritty realism. But the story must be kept tense and fast-paced. That's a lot for a writer to juggle, so let's look closely at how Wilem achieves just that. Before we jump to his final draft, let's assume he wrote an initial draft to get a feel for exactly what he wanted to impart to the reader.
FIRST DRAFT:
Dean was located on a discarded fishing trawler, waiting for his mission to commence.
Not much at all here to make the reader feel they are hunkered down on a rusty trawler. At this point the reader knows they are in Uzbekistan and that Dean was asleep on this trawler and awakened by the sounds of a local scavenger working nearby. So there are lots of possibilities to not only compel a reader to keep reading, but to anchor them deeply into this Setting. Let's see how Wilem approached the challenge:
A bead of sweat fell from his nose as he eased away from the porthole and slid down onto the hard steel floor. He twisted the cap off his canteen and drained a quarter of it to replace the fluids the arid desert sucked from his body. The smell of rotted fish, old diesel fuel, and the Aral Sea filled his nostrils. Flecks of paint stained brown-red clung to the backs of his arms and the legs of his desert-camouflaged fatigues where they had rested on the deck.
âFrank Wilem,
The Aral
Let's pull these three Setting sentences apart to see why they are working so hard:
A bead of sweat fell from his nose [
Tactile detail the reader can feel with the character.
] as he eased away from the porthole [
Reminder that he's still on the abandoned boat.
] and slid down onto the hard steel floor. [
Another tactile detailâit's not just metal but steel, and hard at that.
] He twisted the cap off his canteen and drained a quarter of it to replace the fluids the arid desert sucked from his body. [
Here, instead of simply showing the character drinking, the author brings the Setting back in so the reader can feel what being in this type of environment means.
] The smell of rotted fish, [
He did not need to describe what type of fish hereâby focusing only on the scent, anyone who has ever smelled decaying fish knows what he's smelling.
] old diesel fuel, [
Another specific detail that enhances the image of the abandoned fishing trawler.
] and the Aral Sea filled his nostrils. [
Here he did not have to say salty brine, putrid stench, or anything else. By not adding in a clarifying description with the words Aral Sea, the author implies it too stinks or smells very, very bad, which, as the reader keeps reading, is the whole point of this story.
] Flecks of paint stained brown-red [
And here the author did not stop with just the feel and visual of paint flecks, but makes a very graphic image clear by describing them as brown-red, which also happens to be the color of dried blood.
] clung to the backs of his arms and the legs of his desert-camouflaged fatigues [
And this detail, though not specifically about the Setting, hints that this man might be military, or ex-military, which raises questions about who he is and why is he here.
] where they had rested on the deck.
Are you, as a reader, in the POV of the character in this passage? Can you feel the heat, inhale the specific scents, see the paint flecks? This is the type of gritty realism readers of this genre love. They want to be in the skin of the character, out on the edge of nowhere, facing danger and discomfort for the sake of a larger good.
The next example clearly anchors the reader in the world of Victorian England through the author's strategic use of sensory details. This is from the opening of a scene moving the protagonist from the city of London to a smaller community on the outskirts that, in the 1800s, was still rural. The character's intention is to interview a possible witness who can shed light on a gruesome murder that occurred at one of the city's most well-known hospitals. The author's first draft might have been something like this:
FIRST DRAFT:
William Monk decided to walk the distance between the hospital and the residence of a woman who could shed some light on the murder victim's past.
The above keeps the focus on the murder, but does not pull the reader into the Victorian time period. And there are no sensory details.
SECOND DRAFT:
The day was hot and the route crowded as William Monk left the hospital to discover more clues.
Technically there's a sense of the weather, but it's so generic as to be all but invisible. The reader isn't in the skin of the POV character, William Monk, experiencing what it was like to walk from one London environment to another. So let's see how the author, Anne Perry, approaches this change of scene.
It was a beautiful day when he set out: a hot, high summer sun beating on the pavements, making the leafier squares pleasant refuges from the shimmering light hazy with the rising smoke of distant factory chimneys. Carriages clattered along the street past him, harnesses jingling, as people rode out to take the air or to pay early afternoon calls, drivers and footmen in livery, brasses gleaming. The smell of fresh horse droppings was pungent in the warmth and a twelve-year-old crossing sweeper mopped his brow under a floppy hat.
âAnne Perry,
A Sudden Fearful Death
Now let's pull apart the details to determine how, in one paragraph, the author places the reader into the Setting world of this historical novel.
It was a beautiful day [
This is what many writers might start with, but it's generic and means little to the readerâwhat one person views as beautiful may not be the same for another when they hear the words “beautiful day.”
] when he set out: a hot, high summer sun [
Now she states it's hot, but again the author does not stop here.
] beating [
Strong verb that shows how hot this day is.
] on the pavements, making the leafier squares pleasant refuges [
The phrasing is not expected from a contemporary man, but something one would expect a well-educated male from the late 1800s to say.
] from the shimmering light hazy with the rising smoke of distant factory chimneys. [
A very specific detail that goes a step beyond the heat of the day by expanding and letting the reader see, and possibly smell, factory smoke, which paints a stronger image of industrial England.
] Carriages clattered [
Strong auditory action verb.
] along the street past him, harnesses jingling, [
The author did not stop with clattering carriages, but added in the sounds of the horse harnesses to make it very clear this is a world where people walking still rub shoulders with carriages.
] as people rode out to take the air or to pay early afternoon calls, [
Gives a reason for the carriage traffic that is a very specific reference to a very specific time frame.
] drivers and footmen in livery, brasses gleaming. [
And here she shows two more specific visuals, not only an image of liveried servants but also their brasses, a mark of a wealthier standard of living where the image of even one's horses matters.
] The smell of fresh horse droppings was pungent [
Not the usual scent a contemporary stroller in today's London would expect to inhale, but once pointed out, it's easy for the reader to imagine the scent in the air.
] in the warmth and a twelve-year-old crossing sweeper [
Child labor, another historical detail from this time period of Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray.
] mopped his brow under a floppy hat. [
The last final detail that brings home what was set up at the beginning of the paragraph, that the day was hot.
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