Writing Active Setting Book 1: Characterization and Sensory Detail (2 page)

READY TO START
?

Throughout this book we’ll be looking at how you can ramp up elements of your story by how you use or
do
not use your
Setting
. In this book w
e’ll take an overview of why
Setting
matters to a story and see examples from published authors showing you in a variety of genres how they maximized
Setting
in their novels.
Setting
is more than describing a place.

Note:
Active Setting means using your
Setting details to work harder and smarter.

First
,
I want you to focus in on what seems like a basic assumption
:

Your reader has never been in your world
—
wherever your world is.

I don’t care if it’s
New York City
and most of your readers live in
Manhattan
;
your reader has never been in
your
world. T
he Setting
and world you’ll be painting on the page
are
more than a travelogue or a list of street names.

Not everything that
a
character sees
,
smells
,
tastes
,
or touches need end up in your final manuscript
,
but it’s a place to start. For example, a POV
[point of view
of
the person
whose thoughts, emotions, background
,
and world view the reader is experiencing the story through] character that is miserable in a school environment will not see or notice the same items as a POV character who finds school a sanctuary and the center of their world.

Think of you
as
the author focusing the
reader on what’s key about the
world
Setting
of yo
ur POV character and then bring
that info
rmation
to life through your word choices, the details
,
and how you thread these details together.

Remember that the details
you choose to share
must matter
.

Do not focus your reader on something that is not pertinent to your story.
Why? Because you’re wasting an opportunity to make your Setting wor
k
harder. Too much narrative, which is what Setting can be in large chunks
, slows
your pacing.

Example
:
You’re
showing the reader a room in a house. That room and the details in that room should show characterization or conflict or emotion or foreshadow
ing
or be there for a reason instead of simply
to
describe placement of objects in space.

Remember, you are not just working with objects in space
—
you’re creating a world. When we make characters interact with the space they’re in, we can make those few words work
as
more than just descriptors and turn them into ways the reader can get a grasp on the world as the character experiences it
.

Poor example
: Sue walked into her mother’s living room, past the couch and the coffee table to sit down in a chair.

What is the above sentence showing you? Revealing to you? Letting you experience?
Not much, it’s simply moving a character through space.

Rewritten example
: Sue walked into the gilt and silk living room of her mother
’s home
, gagging on the clash of floral odors
:
lilac potpourri, jasmine candles, lavender sachets. Did her mom even smell the cloying thickness anymore? Did she ever try to glance beyond the draped and beribboned
window coverings that kept the room in perpetual dusk? Or was she using the white
-
on
-
white colors and velvet textures to hide from the real world? With a sigh Sue sank into a designer chair and hoped she could crawl out of it sooner rather than later.

O
r

Sue walked into the heart of her childhood home, remembering playing cowboys and Indians behind the worn tweed couch, building tents draped over the nick
ed
coffee table, hiding behind the cotton drapes that were now replaced by newer blinds. Her grandmother used to shudder when she deigned to visit the house
,
but Sue’s mum didn’t care. Now she’d no longer be knitting in her easy chair or patting the sagging couch for a tell-me-all-about-it session.

See? The details painted allow you to experience a lot more than simply seeing a room. That’s the power of Active
Setting
.

A
NCHORING THE READER

So... how do you initially
show the Setting in the scene?
One thing to
remember is that the reader does need a quick "anchoring
,
"
probably
in the
first few paragraphs of a new scene
or
new chapter
,
or a change in location. Where are we? What time of day is it? Is it quiet or noisy? What is the quality of light?

Note: U
se of light can show time change. Instead of telling the reader it’s
twenty minutes later, show them by the cast of late afternoon shadows, the glare of the sun directly overhead, the quieting of the birds as dusk falls
.

The reader will be mentally asking these questions, and the longer you keep the information from them
,
the less they
will
focus on what
you
want them to focus on
,
and the more
removed
they
will be
from the story
and the characters
, waiting to figure out the where, when, who
,
or why.

Once you’ve established or anchore
d the reader into the where using
a strong
Setting
description
—
let th
e characters interact with the
Setting
, move through it, pick th
ings up and brush past them
.

Note: I
t’s important to let a reader know the passage of time since the last scene or chapter ended
because readers will want the
sense of how much time has passed since then.

Whenever there's a
n introduction of a
Setting
that’s different for the POV character, or for the reader
, you’ll
want to
use
a few words of description to orient
or anchor
the reader
into the new environment. For example, we always notice what's changed
—
you
might not notice an object on your mantel every day, but you do notice when it's missing.
If this object was foreshadowed earlier in the story, say a beloved photograph, by now showing that it’s missing, the reader mentally sees the rest of the room that you’ve already established
,
but also knows where the POV character is. We’re in that character’s skin seeing what was once there and now is not. So instead of starting this scene with the character re-entering the living room, you show the reader that the first thing the character
notices
when she
enters
the living room
is
the gap on the
mantel
. The space where her mother’s photo was. Bam! We’re in that living room without spending a lot of time
redescribing what th
e reader has already been show
n
.

Look a
t how Laura Anne Gilman
orients the reader as to where the character is physically in space
and
gives a hint of the protagonist’s back story, characterization of two different characters, and a hint of potential conflict between characters through her description of a room.
All in only one paragraph!

The only way to describe J’s place was “warm
.
” Rosewood furniture against cream-colored walls, and touches of dark blue and flannel gray everywhere, broken by the occasional bit of foam green from his Chinese pottery collection. You’d have thought I’d have grown up to be Uber Society Girl, not pixie-Goth, in these surroundings. Even my bedroom
—
now turned back into its original use as a library
—
had the same feel of calm wealth to it, no matter how many pop-culture posters I put up or how dark I painted the walls
.

–Hard Magic – Laura Anne Gilman.

Now let
’
s
dissect that
paragraph to see the power of the individual
parts
.

The only way to describe J’s place was “warm
.
”
[S
ubjective emotion from the POV character that gives a hint of her relationship with the room’s owner. Plus we
are able to get a quick sense of the feel of a place; we
know when we’ve been in a warm or cool room even if we don’t have too many details yet
.
]

Rosewood furniture against cream-colored walls, and touches of dark blue and flannel gray everywhere
, [N
otice the pieces of furniture are not described because it’s not important to know there’s a couch or two chairs in the room. It’s more important to get a sense of the owner of the room by his choice of subtle and understated colors and the wood of his furniture
—
rosewood is a world away from oak or
distressed
pine
.
We’re getting a glimpse into the world of the secondary character here.
]

…
broken by the occasional bit of foam green from his Chinese
pottery collection
.
[H
ere, because collecting Chinese pottery is not the same as collecting baseball cards or stamps, the reader has another image of
the
wealth and refinement of the room’s owner
.
]

You’d have thought I’d have grown up to be Uber Society Girl, not pixie-Goth, in these surroundings
.
[N
ow the reader is focused on the differences between the POV character’s sense of self and the room’s owner by use of contrast. This is/was her home yet it’s clear she does not see herself as belonging
.
]

Even my bedroom
—
now turned back into its original use as a library
—
had the same feel of calm wealth to it, no matter how many pop-culture posters I put up or how dark I painted the walls
. [
C
onflict and foreshadowing hinted at as well
.
]

Through her specific word choices and which objects she’s chosen to comment on, Gilman has deepened her world building between these two characters in the series. We are now seeing where the POV character came from and where her mentor still lives through the use of Setting description. The author’s
word
choice
s
point out the contrast between “calm wealth
,
”
“
pop-culture posters
,”
and dark-painted walls reveals to the reader the POV sense of not belonging in the world in which she was raised, which is a key theme in this story.

Let’s look at another example approaching the
Setting
from a rough draft version to the final version.

[First draft] The wardens led me to a room and left me there.