Read A Writer's Guide to Active Setting Online
Authors: Mary Buckham
NOTE:
The first time an important Settingâone important to your storyâis described, a reader is willing to accept the story slowing down so that she can really see and experience that Setting. After a few paragraphs or a few pages, the reader will have already crafted her own images, so if the Setting matters, use sensory details in your descriptions sooner rather than later.
Here's a very different location, this time in New Orleans. This one is in a steampunk novel and the author not only enforces where the POV character is, but the sense of a different type of world.
A faintly burning chemical stink joined the city's odors, trapped in the humid fog of Gulf water and river water that crept through the Quarter like a warm, wet bath.
âCherie Priest,
Ganymede
Again, in this second example the reader is deep into the story, where an inexperienced writer might think the Setting has already been described, so that there is no need to use more words on it. But neither author missed the opportunity to thread in one or two quick and specific sentences to pull the reader into the story.
Smell can convey a wealth of communication. Were you aware that after three months we retain only 30 percent of our visual memory, but even after a year we retain 100 percent of olfactory memory? Smell activates our primordial, or the oldest part of our brain, so if you are missing scents on the page, you're missing a very subtle but powerful element of sensory detail.
The following descriptions come from an interview with a Norwegian scent researcher. She is describing some of the locations she has visited to collect samples of scent.
Havana. It smells sensual, of Cuba Libre [a rum, cola, and lime cocktail], coffee, dogs, and freshly washed laundry fluttering on endless balconies. The streets smell like they are crumbling, decaying, rotting. But unlike cities in the United States, Havana has been doing this for centuries. It rots in style. Berlin's NeukÓ§lln neighborhood is the closest you can get to Istanbul: sunflower oil, bread, dry cleaning, laundry detergent, tobacco, cheap aftershave, and kebabs. The outlying Colonia Hacienda de Echegaray district in Mexico City smells of fake leather boots, corn, dust, concrete, cocoa, burnt and moldy earth, plastic, sweat, chili peppers, and hot straw.
One or two sentences max and the reader is in Cuba, Istanbul, or Mexico City. When we smell
fake leather boots
,
burnt
or
moldy earth
,
plastic
,
sweat
, and
hot straw
, we add to those smells an image of run-down neighborhoods, stray dogs, a city that's a workingman's world. We fill in the blanks based on what we smell.
Scents can evoke memories so strongly. I love the smell of lilies, whereas my mother detests the same smell because they remind her of her mother's funeral. Have you ever been overwhelmed in a new location because everything is so new and different and the scents cause you to be overstimulated to the point you walk away with a pounding headache? Some scents mean pleasure to most peopleâbaking cookies, the smell of a new book, the warm scent of babies' skin when you nuzzle their heads. Others evoke just the opposite responseâthe musty smell of damp basements, strong perfume in a small elevator, moldy bread.
Sometimes you simply want to build a larger story Setting for the reader. This can happen when writing stories that readers tend to read for the Setting as much as the plot and characters. Examples include historical, steampunk, fantasy, science fiction, and some mystery series. Before we revisit Cherie Priest's steampunk novel set in New Orleans, let's imagine a rough-draft version:
FIRST DRAFT:
She walked through the French market and inhaled the smells she knew so well.
Not much here to let the reader experience a city during a time period where steam engines rule, viewed through the POV of a woman who's spent her whole life in this town and would never voluntarily leave it. So let's see how Priest uses specific sensory details for world building via Setting:
The night smelled of gun oil and saddles, and the jasmine colognes of night ladies, or the violets and azaleas that hung from balconies in baskets; of berry liqueur and the verdant, herbal tang of absinthe delivered from crystal decanters, and the dried chilies hanging in the stalls of the French market, and powdered sugar and chicory.
âCherie Priest,
Ganymede
Don't think that adding sensory detail means adding pages and pages of words. Do remember to be specific.
It smelled nice
or
of summer flowers
doesn't tell the reader much and the words are not working hard enough for your story.
NOTE
: Make sure that your sensory details are specific to the Setting of your story and filtered through a specific POV character's awareness.
In this next example we're in the mind, emotions, and skin of a young girl returning home after schoolâa pretty commonplace and ordinary event. In this case though, the author is building backstory by showing where this little girl came from, setting up a series of events in the future. What if the author had skipped over her opportunity and wrote something like:
FIRST DRAFT:
Polly returned from school but hesitated before going into her mom's trailer.
No emotion. No insights into this young girl's life. No reason to really care much about her.
SECOND DRAFT:
Polly's mom lived in a beaten-down trailer in a beaten-down trailer park.
Better. Now the reader understands the girl comes from a hard-scrabble background, but we're also being told, not shown. In some novels, where the backstory of the character is not as important to the current story, the previous example might be enough. Not every character needs a fully fleshed-out history, so be wary of using Setting to show characterization for every single character in your story.
NOTE:
The more words a writer allocates to a character or a situation, the more the reader understands to pay attention, because the details matter or will matter overall in the story.
So let's examine how Nevada Barr built in backstory for her protagonist, as well as created a character in this thriller that made the reader later wonder,
was this person a victim or a victimizer?
Wind, cold for April, chased dirt and beer cans up the gravel street. Clutching her geometry book to her chest, Polly stood on the wooden step outside the door of her mother's trailer, her ear pressed against the aluminum. The icy bite of metal against her skin brought on a memory so sharp all she felt was its teeth.
âNevada Barr,
13
1
â
2
Pull apart the sensory details.
Wind, cold for April, [
Tactile detail.
] chased dirt and beer cans up the gravel street. [
Visual and possibly auditory if you heard the sound of those cans whipping up the road.
] Clutching her geometry book to her chest, [
Tactileâcan you feel the shape of that book and how she holds it?
] Polly stood on the wooden step outside the door of her mother's trailer, her ear pressed against the aluminum. The icy bite of metal against her skin brought on a memory so sharp all she felt was its teeth. [
More tactile detail that's all the more powerful for the fact that the reader was previously told that Polly was wearing a lightweight t-shirt.
]
Barr focused on multiple tactile sensory details to show a young girl, willing to experience piercing cold, yet unwilling to go inside her mother's trailer. Do you, as a reader, feel empathy for this girl? Are you in her skin feeling the wind, that book, the bite of cold metal? This is how a strong writer creates not only reader empathy for a character, but does so with active Setting.
Next, watch how mystery writer Nancy Pickard quickly orients a reader to the Setting by focusing mostly on sounds.
Students looked up at us curiously from inside their classrooms as we walked past. Teachers' voices jarred the air, like different radio stations turned up too loud. Somewhere a couple of locker doors slammed shut, and everywhere there was that smell that only schools have and that echoey sound and that odd slanting light in the halls.
âNancy Pickard,
Confession
Did you find yourself thinking about your own school environment and being tugged into the place quickly by the sensory details?
This is the power of adding sensory details to Setting description. Readers quickly find themselves pulled deeper into the Setting. They can feel themselves there on a three-dimensional level versus simply a visual level. If Pickard had chosen to remain only on a visual level, she might have written:
Students looked up at us curiously from inside their classrooms as we walked past. There were lockers on both sides of the long hall and a scuffed linoleum floor. Overhead were fluorescent lights, most of them off in the middle of the day, but a few flickering.
Okay, but not great. As readers, we are seeing the Setting the way the POV character sees it, but we're not in the Setting the way sensory details can pull us in.
Let's turn to a different genre, urban fantasy, where the world contains both the expected and the unexpected, given that both humans and preternaturals exist in this story. This passage occurs several chapters into the story where, for some writers, it's easier to assume the reader already has a feel for the character and the location of the story events, so they slack off on making Setting work hard. Not this
New York Times
best-selling author. Watch how in one paragraph the reader is quickly re-anchored into the story Setting, taking place in contemporary Seattle.
Above my head I heard whispers, and the rasp of claws against stone; and another kind of hum in the air that was partially from the throats of demons in my hair, but mostly the city: engines rumbling low and warm, and the energy running through the veins of the buildings around whose roots we walked. I heard laughter, glass breaking, a throb of music from the open door of a bar; a groan from an alley and the long liquid rush of urine hitting concrete; and a small dog, barking furiously from an apartment above our heads.
âMarjorie M. Liu,
Armor of Roses
See how many sensory details the author uses to make sure the reader knows the character is in a seedy part of big city? She doesn't stop there, though, making sure the reader really hears what kinds of enginesâ
rumbling low and warm
. The reader doesn't need to know if these are trucks or muscle cars, what they do need to know is that specific sound is in this Setting. The author keeps goingâ
thrum of hot electricity, laughter, glass breaking, a throb of music from
a specific kind of location
, a groan from an alley,
the sound of someone urinating,
and a small dog, barking.
What if the author skipped all these rich, sensory details and wrote the following instead?
ROUGH DRAFT:
I could hear the city as I walked past buildings, a bar, an alley, and an apartment above my head.
Can you see how hard the sensory details work to pull you deeper into the story? How much is lost by ignoring the power of Setting and sensory detail?
NOTE
: Active Setting forces a writer to develop deeper POV, which creates a stronger bond between the characters and the reader.
Now let's look at how T. Jefferson Parker uses sensory details to describe the scene of a crime from the POV of a police investigator:
She noted that the table had been set for two. A pair of seductive high heels stood near the couch, facing her, like a ghost was standing in them, watching. The apartment was still, the slider closed against the cool December night. Good for scent. She closed her eyes. Salt air. Baked fowl. Coffee. Goddamned rubber gloves, of course. A whiff of gunpowder? Maybe a trace of perfume, or the flowers on the tableâgardenia, rose, lavender? And of course, the obscenity of spilled bloodâintimate, meaty, shameful.
She listened to the waves. To the traffic. To the little kitchen TV turned low; an evangelist bleating for money. To the clunk of someone in the old walkway. To her heart, fast and heavy in her chest. Merci felt most alive when working for the dead. She'd always loved an underdog.
âT. Jefferson Parker,
Red Light
The above description does not stop the reader, but orients them deeply into the
where
,
who
, and
what
of the crime and the characters in one powerful paragraph. Parker doesn't just describe the apartment space clinically, but layers in strong sensory details. The effect pulls the reader more deeply into the scene. The reader is standing there with the detective: hearing what she's hearing, smelling what she's smelling, feeling the texture of the gloves on her hands. The reading experience has changed from simply looking at the Setting to being in the Setting.
Here's another great example:
The come-and-get-it smell of espresso welcomed her. Fall Out Boy was playing on the stereo, “Hum Hallelujah.” Lieutenant Amy Tang stood at the counter, fingers double tapping, waiting for her order.
âMeg Gardiner,
The Memory Collector
How many sensory details did Gardiner manage to slide into the reader's awareness in three very short sentences? What is amazing is that the author could have painted a visual picture alone:
ROUGH DRAFT:
She entered the coffee shop, which looked and smelled like a million other coffee shops, and saw the Lieutenant waiting for her.