Details bring your setting to life. They reveal the theme and hint at things to come. The trick for creating them is easier than making Rice Crispy Squares, and when done right, equally delicious (or even better, if you happen to hate Rice Crispy Squares).
Read through your scene, open up a blank page, and close your eyes. Now visualize the scene. What do you see? Hear? Taste? Feel? Smell? Move around the setting and make note of everything. How does each detail make you, as your scene character, feel? What are you is your character thinking when she sees, hears, tastes, feels, smells these things? Keep brainstorming.
Pick the strongest descriptions and the emotions associated with them. Tweak them if necessary, to add mood and theme words, and place them in your scene. Don’t dump them in one place. Weave them in several locations.
The advantage of doing it this way is that your creative flow isn’t impeded by trying to work around the action and dialogue already in the scene. When you’re brainstorming the setting, you aren’t worried about those things. Try it. You’ll be amazed at how easy it is, especially if you struggle with setting. Do you have a trick for creating setting? Do find setting easy or challenging to write?
To celebrate the release of her Novella Dies Irae, I asked author Christine Fonseca if she would talk about one of her strengths: using setting to set the mood. Not only does she do a great job with this in her story (which I'm currently reading), she wrote an AWESOME post on the topic.
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Thanks, Stina, for hosting a leg of the blog tour for DIES IRAE. I am excited to be here today talking about setting. As most of you may know, I love writing dark and creepy stories. Whether they are gothic, romance, or psychological, one thing unites my stories—they’re dark.
One of the ways I achieve the “dark” tone to my stories is through the use of setting.
I view setting as a “character” of sorts—something that can enhance and enrich the story; the vehicle by which character emotions and plot themes can be revealed or embellished.
Specifically speaking, setting is comprised of the following elements of a story:
* Location – WHEN is the story set? * Time – WHEN is the story set, both in terms of era and time of day * Climate – WHAT is the season and/or the weather like during your story
Correctly identifying these things, as well as describing them in ways that work towards the overall tone and mood of the book can help an author create a memorable experience for the reader.
So, how do I do that? How do I use setting in that way? For me, it is always about placing myself in the scene and looking around. Using my five senses, what do I see, hear, smell? And how do these details help to create or push the emotional content of the story? Then I filter that experience into words.
Now, this is not always an easy thing to do. Most of the time, I put too much or too little into the story. My early drafts are often filled with purple prose, some passive language, and too many sensory references that I then need to rework. But eventually, after I’ve reworked and rewritten a scene, after I’ve taken the time to judiciously put in setting references without dragging down the plot, I come up with a scene that is powerful and rich.
Take this tiny excerpt from DIES IRAE:
“The mouth of the cave is complete in its darkness. A cold wind wafts up from the earth’s depths, carrying the scent of death. “Yep, this has got to be it,” I whisper.
Mikayel draws his sword and walks in. The descent is steep and narrow, giving way to an even floor littered with rocks and bones. Too many bones.
Everything is quiet. Stalactites line the cave’s ceiling like teeth meant to consume us. Small crevices recede into the walls.
And still, everything is quiet.”
My goal in this tiny snippet was to establish the setting in such a way as to build the tension the character is feeling. You will have to be the judge as to whether or not that was accomplished, but I would like to think it was.
Setting is a powerful tool in a writer’s arsenal. Sadly, it is one that is not always utilized. Is it one you are comfortable using?
For me, becoming more adept at using setting to establish tone and mood, as well as mirror the emotions, has been one of the best, most useful skills I’ve learned—a skill I am constantly working to develop through writing exercises that include practicing writing different descriptions of places, all to evoke specific feelings or moods.
Try this:
Pick a familiar setting—a beach or mountain landscape for example. Write a detailed description of that place. Now, make it scary and write that description. Make it romantic. Make it foreboding. Keep rewriting the basic description within different emotional contexts. The more you practice this, the more natural incorporating setting will become.
It doesn’t matter if you’re an avid photographer or a writer, your camera should be your best friend. Okay, obviously you aren’t going to be having deep, meaningful conversations with it. And if you do, you might want to seek therapy (if your camera replies).
Why do I want you to make it your best friend? Because I want you to bring it wherever you go. If you have a camera in your phone, that works too (for writers). You never know when something you see will spark a story idea or an emotion.
I shot these photos while walking in my neighborhood (with the exception of the last one). They show the setting for some of the scenes in my new YA (horror) project, and one gave me an idea for a scene. In the last picture, which was taken during our vacation, the moment I saw the house I knew it was perfect for the book. My husband thought I was a little nuts (what’s new?), and fortunately the owner (who was outside at the time) didn’t notice what I was up to. I tweaked the picture with Photoshop Elements to create the right mood.
Have you even taken a photo that ended up inspiring a story (either via pictures or words)? Do you hunt for pictures on Google Images? Or do you not bother at all, because you already have an image in your head for the setting?
When describing the setting in your scene, you want to avoid mentioning everything found there. Only describe the floral wallpaper if it’s important to the mood, characterization, emotion, or plot. Everything else can be ignored. By doing this, those details that are “shown” will have greater impact. If you’re like me, your setting will take shape over several drafts as you pile on the details. Then you trim away those parts that aren’t essential, leaving you with a stronger setting. Sometimes you don’t know what those details will be until several drafts later. The same trick can be used in photography. Turning the background black & white, while the object you want to emphasis is left in its original color, will add emotion to the photo. As you can see in the second picture, the red flowers would have been lost with the red dress as the background. (Sorry, the original photo used to create the first picture has gone awol, but this is the same dress.)
What are some of your favorite tricks for dealing with settings (writing or photography)?
Juxtaposition involves placing objects close together for a contrasting effect. For example: weathered/new, rough/smooth, dark/light. It’s used a lot in photography, and is a great technique for heightening the emotion within a scene of your story.
For example, in my WIP, one scene takes place in the high school hallway on Valentine’s Day. The place is decorated with red and white balloons to symbolize the joyous occasion (for some teens, I guess). As my protagonist and her potential love interest approach his locker (the meaning of the day not lost on them), she notices the principal and a cop standing next to it.
All hell breaks loose and the guy is arrested, further causing my protagonist to question a few things regarding their relationship. I’ve juxtaposed a joyous event with a negative one.
Now, I could have written the same scene, but instead of placing it in the hallway on Valentine’s Day, it could have taken place outside (on a regular school day). In the rain. The protagonist is already grumpy due to the weather. This is your standard cliché setting: bad weather foreshadowing negative event.
Which one do you think will stick out in your reader’s mind? Which one will have the greatest emotional impact?
In both writing and photography, how you use your setting can affect the image you’re trying to portray.
As you can see from these pictures of Alcatraz, I took the photos from different angles and at different times of the day. The different perspectives affect the mood of the scene.
With your novel, if there’s one setting where your story consistently takes place, see if there’s a detail or description you can incorporate that reflects the change in your main character or shows a change in time. For example, if a number of scenes occur in the hallway of the high school your character attends—and you aren’t willing to change the location—maybe show in one scene how the hallway is decorated for Valentine’s Day. Perfect if you have romance (or anti-romance) in your story.
(All these photos were taken with my point & shoot camera.)
When taking photos, get close to your subject and see it in a whole different way. Plus, you can get some pretty cool abstract shots when you do this.
In writing fiction, instead of describing everything in the setting (yawn!), pick a few details that paint a vivid image in the reader’s mind. And don’t forget to describe them from the point of view character’s view, which will be influenced by who she is, what she knows, and her mood.
Three weeks ago, I attended the first SCBWI conference in my city. One of my favorite talks dealt with something I struggle with: setting.
Crystal Stranaghan, publisher for Gumboot Books, did a great job of showing us how setting can be used in dishing out conflict. And it goes beyond the typical man against environment scenario we’re familiar with. You know, throw in a hurricane or blizzard when everything is going otherwise hunky- dory.
In her explanation, she used New Moon and Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer as an example. In the books, we have the protagonist, Bella. But unlike most of us, she has two guys mooning over her (excuse the pun!): Edward, the vampire, and Jacob, the werewolf. And let’s just say there’s major conflict between those two without adding anything else to the mix.
Because of a treaty, the Cullens (Edward’s vampire family) aren’t allowed to enter La Push, the native reserve where Jacob lives. Naturally, Edward’s fangs get bent out of shape because he can’t keep an eye on Bella whenever she visits her friend, Jacob, on his turf. Conflict.
The story takes place in Forks, the rainiest place in the States. On those rare sunny days that hit the town, Edward can’t be seen in public because he goes all glittery. Not exactly a human trait. That, too, makes it difficult to keep an eye on Bella. Conflict.
You get where I’m going with this? Stephenie did an awesome job in using the setting to heighten the conflict within the story.
So next time you’re looking for conflict, see if you can do the same within your story dynamics. Maybe all you need to do is change the location of the scene. Pretty cool, huh?
