A Writer's Guide to Active Setting (15 page)

Setting is a wonderful way to show a character's emotional or internal conflict. By showing how your POV character interacts with a Setting, and using descriptive words to bring that to the fore, you can reveal how that character is feeling at that moment about himself, the people he is interacting with, and even his world. Emotion drives action in your story, so by using Setting to show internal or emotional conflict, you create the motivation for that character's next actions.

If you are a fan of TV dramas, have you ever noticed how the filming of a scene, using gritty details such as darkness, graffiti, strewn garbage, and crumbling buildings helps increase the sense of danger and tension? The Setting is intentionally used to enhance the conflict that's about to unfold. In a visual context, such as a TV drama, the emotion is often revealed by the music, dialogues, situations, and, of course, the Setting. The writer has to use those same cues for the reader to help her intentionally experience the elements the author wants her to. Conflict is one of those elements.

Here we'll go back again to see how Jamie Ford shows internal or emotional conflict through his
New York Times'
bestseller
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
. It is forty years after the POV character, Henry Lee, was separated from his childhood friend and first love when her family was interred in the Japanese resettlement camps of WWII. Now Henry discovers that her family's belongings, which had been stored for decades, have been uncovered. We'll see his first visit to the basement storage facility. Take note how the author skillfully shows more than a simple walk into the basement, a movement through space. By his specific use of details in the Setting, the author illuminates the internal or emotional conflict Henry feels about what he is about to discover and how that discovery means digging up other buried memories.

But before we get to Ford's words, let's create a rough draft.

Not much internal conflict here. We simply have a character moving from point A to point B in the story.

In this second version, the reader can see more of what Henry sees and gets a small hint of emotional feeling for the Setting. But there's no sense of how deeply Henry feels about this space and its meaning. Nor about how his interaction with this Setting creates so much emotional or internal discord within him—the same emotions that send him off on both an internal and external story journey.

So let's look at how Jamie Ford imbues the passage below with emotional conflict.

In this passage the reader is shown the conflict Henry Lee feels in this visit to not just any place, but a place that echoes with the past—where mistakes were made, promises given, and regrets linger. The writer understands how to use Setting to reveal that this place matters to a character because of his past. Ford does not tell the reader this; he shows the reader with a metaphoric and literal journey down into darkness, with the ending note of Christmas-tree lights, usually a happy image used to contrast with the previous images—
paint-chipped, creaking hinges, old, subbasement
. The lights let us grab on to a small element of hope, but not much.

In the next example, from a paranormal romance novel with the pacing sensibilities of a romantic suspense, the heroine sees for the first time where her client and love interest lives. He's been arrested for illegal cage fighting, and she's his court-appointed attorney, so there's already conflict built into the relationship. But the author doesn't stop there. She adds in the internal conflict, the emotional reasons that can make finding and acknowledging love so hard. In this case, it's class differences. He comes from a hardscrabble background and goes into an elite, and very shadowy Special Forces group where dying is the only way out. She comes from a privileged and well-connected, upper-crust Boston family. She does not see the class distinctions as an obstacle as much as he does, and these short and focused sentences bring home that point very well. Even though we're in her point of view, it's easier to understand where he's coming from, and both the reader, and the POV character, learn why he feels conflict.

What if the author had trusted that the reader would accept the class distinction conflict as revealed by his internalizations alone? Like this:

The reader is being asked to wait in this version. They're being told, not shown, and the passage does nothing to deepen or reveal the conflict. Many writers stop at this point, but not the strongest writers.

Here's a subtle example of emotional/internal conflict shown, step by step, by how the POV character sees the Setting around him. He's uncharacteristically gone out of his way for the sake of a woman he barely knows and has agreed to meet her at a bus stop to drive her home. See if you can grasp how he feels about his action.

The character is not very happy about the situation he's in, based on his own actions, is he? This example of Setting reinforces where the character is internally at the beginning of the story and is used as a contrast for later when he begins to grow and change.

To further explore this concept, here is another example of conflict revealed through Setting, this one from a thriller author, Elmore Leonard. Look closely at how the POV character, Bobby, gives the reader a sense of a different secondary character as he views the woman's home. Through Bobby's internalization—his emotional response to the Setting he sees—he gets a strong sense that he and this unknown woman will be butting heads. Elmore brings the reader so deep into the POV character's street-hardened thought process that the upcoming conflict between what Bobby wants and what other characters want is highlighted even more.

The woman is young, attractive, and sensual, and, if the first description of her focuses solely on how she looks, there's no conflict. But here, by seeing an impression of her as a person who has problems, conflict is foreshadowed. The reader is introduced to the woman here through her surroundings. But by having the reader first encounter an image of where she lives, which contrasts with how she looks, it foreshadows subtle emotional conflict for Bobby before he meets her. The author uses telling, then showing, to make it clear to the reader in one paragraph that this woman is going to cause story complications.

For writers of fantasy, urban fantasy, steampunk, science fiction, and dystopian novels, the world of the story is, many times, completely fabricated. This means the Setting can be unique and never seen, anywhere, by anyone. While that can sound like an easy way to write whatever you want, it can cause pitfalls because the reader can be cast adrift from your story, with no reference points to see where the characters are interacting. So while unique Setting is vital in these kinds of stories, your reader needs to be anchored by that Setting quickly and easily. Then he can focus on other elements of your story, such as the conflict, which is just as critical.

We'll examine how one science fiction/fantasy writer accomplishes this feat in a short passage, but before we do that, let's assume the author skipped Setting details altogether. After all, this scene happens late in the story, and shouldn't the reader have an idea of what the world is like on this planet by now? Yes and no.

Anytime you change a scene, open a new chapter, or want to ramp up what you've already started on the page, that is the time to use Setting to work harder. In this next example the author was showing how two characters were drawing closer to one another, creating a relationship that would not be easy for either. Two characters on a planet called Madrid, one of whom is leaving soon and the other who has professed a vow of chastity in her role as a nun, find themselves attracted to each other and conflicted about it. The author could have written:

This is where newer writers might think—
good enough
—and jump into dialogue, showing the reader the turmoil and challenges keeping these two from committing to one another. But the author will use dialogue, right after she enhances what's happening internally—the conflict—by the view of where they are externally. The woman, who is from this planet, has taken the man, who is an outsider, to her favorite spot. We're in his POV as they walk to a specific point.

Let's take apart this passage to see exactly how it leads a reader into believing there is attraction, and conflict, between the two characters.

Setting is important for orienting the reader to time and place as you move your characters through your story. But digging deeper as a writer and using Setting to ratchet up conflict can be a strong tool as you get the reader to focus on a character's clear responses to a place. It allows you to orient the reader as to where she is, and to reveal a lot about the character, as well as what might be happening, or about to happen, in the story.

In this first example, the POV character, an Army Military Police Investigator has arrived at the scene of the suspicious death of a high-ranking General. By taking the time to orient the reader to the crime scene, the reader is able to understand a little more about what this character is going up against in investigating the death. The investigator has already determined that the motel (where the death occurred) rented rooms by the hour and the room was paid in cash, so there's little help there. Now he's stepped outside to see what's around him.