Setting (4 page)

Never assume you know something if you haven't checked it out. I used to test writing students by giving them a number of statements to complete which in reality could have only one outcome. One such statement said the character "shoved the throttle of the plane fully forward." More than half my students, year after year, wrote for a result that "the engine died" or "the motor slowed" or some such, thoughtlessly assuming that the throttle of an airplane must work the same way as a throttle on an old car or a tractor, where pushing the knob forward decreases power. Unfortunately for all those who guessed on the basis of such an analogy, an aircraft throttle works the opposite; you push forward for more power, not less. The correct factual response had to be that the engine roared, the plane's altitude or speed changed, or something close to that.

Once more: Never assume you know a fact about setting if you haven't checked it out. All stated facts about the setting must be accurate if the story is to be believed.

The weather in a given place at a given time of year should, as already mentioned, be in line with actuality. Further, if you happen to be writing about a specific place and a specific actual date, I would advise you to go so far as to check old newspapers or almanacs to find out what the weather really was at that time, in that place. (I thoughtlessly assumed once that a quite ordinary day in June of a certain year was warm and windy in Montana. I received two letters from outraged readers pointing out that I had failed to take note that
that
June period saw the biggest early-summer snowstorm in state history. I have decided you can't be too careful about anything.)

Many readers won't know if you guess, but a surprising number will check up on you . . . and immediately lose all belief in the rest of your story after they find one verifiable error. More dangerous to you as a writer is the fact that if you guess about one seemingly minor thing, you may fall into the habit of guessing about things that many readers may notice, to your everlasting discredit and unpopularity.

Know the kinds of trees and shrubs and animals that should be shown in the area you depict. Know the feel of the place, whether the typical day is sun-washed and brilliant or gray and grungy. Know the ethnic composition of the neighborhood, and how the people talk. Know clothing styles, characteristic shelter and transportation. Know what things cost. Know the local slang and what people are most concerned about.

Did you know, for example (as I learned in my student's doomed novel about Saudi Arabia), that Saudi citizens' idea of an entertaining time is to go out into the scrubland and build a big fire and roast meat on a spit? This current setting fact goes back to the history of the setting, that of a nomadic culture. Or did you know that a Saudi man is allowed four wives—but is obliged to treat all equally, so that if one wife gets a house, all wives must have an equal house, and so on? Again, this cultural/ religious rule goes back to the region's history and long-standing traditions, which are a vital part of the general setting. And you have to get them right.

WHEN IS TOO MUCH "TOO MUCH"?

Readers today are better informed than any in history. They receive more information from more sources than readers did even a decade ago, and they tend to want more information in their fiction. In the current information revolution, some of them actually seem to feel guilty about reading fiction unless they can convince themselves that they are also learning something. Therefore, recognizing this trend in readership generally, novelists tend to pack much more hard information into their story settings. If you look for solid data in most novels today —even "frothy" ones—you may be surprised to see how much hard research went into them.

But does this mean there is no practical limit to how much hard fact you should provide? By no means. You must not simply pile page after page of fact onto your setting scaffold. Rather, you should have a rich lode of factual information on hand before you begin to write, and should know how to sprinkle in those facts a few at a time in places where they will best fit info the flow of your narrative. Note that both parts of the equation are necessary in providing readers with sufficient factual data about your setting: having plenty of accurate information, and knowing how to sprinkle it in, a bit at a time, at the right times.

A point is made of this duality of purpose because there are writers who err by ignoring one part or the other. Some research heavily and gather fascinating details, then succumb to the temptation to dump it all, in long, boring imbedded essays which stop the story, shift the focus from characters to encyclopedia-type data, irritate the reader, and finally put him to sleep. Other writers, knowing they can't shovel in loads of facts, respond by not gathering many facts to begin with —or by carelessly guessing at a few. Either course is disastrous.

You can never have too much factual information on hand about your setting. You will often be amazed by how much you manage to work in, a dribble at a time. But even if some of it never gets into your story, your knowledge of this information will enrich your storytelling because you the author will know the story world in all its details as well as, or better than, any character.

How do you know how much setting information to insert into your narrative at any given time? Unfortunately, this is largely a matter of "feel," and you can never be entirely sure. But one aspect of fiction that will help you decide when "enough is enough" is plot pressure. If your story's plot is "working," your characters should be under some pressure —both in terms of story time and emotion—virtually throughout. If you have your plot working in this way, you simply may not have time to dump in too many facts, nor will your characters have time to notice or discuss too many facts at any given moment.

What am I implying here? Simply this: If you find yourself stopping the story action again and again to drop in lengthy information about the setting, this may be a clue to you that your plot is not "tight" enough —is not putting enough immediate pressure on the characters. Often you can answer the question

of how much setting information to put in at any given point by looking at the pressure on the characters — and increasing that immediate pressure if you find that you have nothing going on which would realistically preclude someone thinking quietly about their hometown's demographics for half a chapter, or reciting other facts to some other story person.

So if you suspect that you're putting in undesirable gobs of uninterrupted factual information (or excessive sensory description, for that matter), look at your plot. Try to devise ways to make things tougher on your story people so that there simply will not be time for overindulgence in setting details.

PROBLEM SITUATIONS

But what about the times when you may have detailed factual data or story information that you want your viewpoint character to learn in the course of the story? In such cases, clearly, you need to have the information given to the character in his viewpoint. So what do you do? Have someone walk up to the character in the story and start pointing things out to him, and telling him facts?

I hope not. When you want your viewpoint character to observe certain things or learn certain facts, you must not have some other character simply dump the information on his head. What you need to do, rather, is to create inside your viewpoint character a need and desire to notice something or learn certain things. Then you can have him set out to reconnoiter a mountainside, for example, or interrogate some other character.

Having set up a felt need for certain setting information inside your viewpoint character, you can realistically have him go off in search of it. In this way, you set up a little sub-quest in the plot—the character seeking information about the setting and situation.

Following are two examples of such a situation where the author has decided that a character needs certain information. The first is a clumsy and horrid example of how
not
to do it.

Ralph walked into the bar. He did not know it, but it was the same bar where his brother Jake had been seen two weeks earlier.

The bartender came over and squinted at Ralph. "You look familiar," he said.

"I do?" Ralph said.

"You look a lot like a man who was in here two weeks ago. He said his name was Jake. He looked tired that evening . . . said he was going to register at the Zuider Zee Motel down the street. That's the one the police raided the other night, you know. The police chief—his name is Sam Spade —believed there was gambling going on there. But back to this man Jake. I asked him where he came from, and. . . ."

This is pretty bad. The "He did not know it" line at the top is a clear violation of viewpoint, the author clumsily stepping in to say something the character does
not
know, then using another character to dump information on Ralph (and the reader) in a totally unbelievable way.

How much better it works if we have set up Ralph's need to learn information in the bar, perhaps as follows.

Ralph found the bar where his brother had been seen two weeks earlier. Somehow, he thought, he had to learn why Jake had come here, from where, and —most important—where he had planned to go next.

The bartender seemed surly. Ralph ordered a beer, and then tried to collect information.

"Are you the regular man on duty at this time?" he asked.

"That's me," the bartender said. "Why?"

"Would you have been working two weeks ago tonight?"

"Say, fella, what is this? Twenty questions?"

"I'm trying to locate my brother. His name is Jake Wheelan. He was in this bar two weeks ago tonight. I thought you might have seen him. He and I look a lot alike."

The bartender frowned and leaned closer. "I might

have seen him, at that. What is it exactly you want to know?"

"Well, first. . . ."

As this example makes clear, sometimes you can get important information into your story without having to retreat to an "on-high" vantage point. Your viewpoint character can ask questions, and you can get the information into the story that way — both for the reader's use and as motivation of your character.

On the other hand, there will be cases when you must have the wisdom to take a broader view. Suppose you are writing a historical novel which looks at a small section of the country and how it is about to be engulfed in a freshet of immigration. From an omniscient, "on-high" point of view, you can tell the reader about national business setbacks, the influx of immigrants from Europe to the East Coast, even the lingering aftereffects of a recent war. You can paint a much broader canvas than any character inside the story could possibly portray for you.

At this point we need only remember that there are such viewpoint choices —and they are yours to make wisely, with thought. There are a number of other things to consider in choosing and showing viewpoint, but it's necessary to look at some other matters before we go deeper into that. We'll return to the subject in chapter ten, with other aspects considered in the chapter following that.

START THINKING "RESEARCH"

In the meantime, work on your own habits as they relate to accuracy in the presentation of facts in your setting. This will mean research. (One can't always write about the hometown neighborhood she already knows intimately.) Appendix 1, starting on page 155, looks at research methods and procedures, and you should begin dipping into it as soon and as often as necessary.

Start getting more familiar with your local library and bookstores. By all means, browse them! Allot an hour or two, or more, on a regular basis. Stroll past the shelves. Acquaint yourself with the kinds of factual information available. Notice, for example, that travel books deal mostly with physical matters, and can be invaluable to you in learning how to describe a setting, but you may unearth equally crucial information about history or custom or regional attitudes in books to be found in the history section, or in an area devoted to social sciences. The more you browse, the more resources you'll uncover.

Before you go on, however, perhaps this chapter has suggested something you need to look at again in some of your own copy? Is there a fact to recheck . . . or a better way to present your factual material?

Take your time.

CHAPTER 4

FUDGING FACTS: WHEN IT'S OKAY TO STRAY FROM TRUTH

Having worked hard to convince
you of the need for absolute accuracy in setting, I am now forced to confront you with a paradoxical statement:

There are occasions in fiction when
inaccuracy
may be beneficial—when a writer can score considerable gains for herself by deviating from actuality either by bending the facts or making some up.

A number of reasons exist for this.

As we shall explore in chapter five, readers of certain fiction genres expect and virtually demand qualities of setting which may be more mythological than real. Woe be to the unwary writer who deviates from such genre-reader expectations, regardless of actuality!

We'll discuss the matter further in that later chapter, but one example might be mentioned here for clarification. Readers of traditional western adventure stories generally expect the tale to take place in "the warm West," which means that most westerns take place in the heat of summer, and usually in semiarid areas such as west Kansas or Texas. Horsemanship is almost always some part of the setting, and so are firearms and gunplay. The setting almost always includes philosophical ideals of manly courage, independence and quick justice, and the cowboy and land baron, rough as they might be, were building an empire, please remember, not raping an environment!