A Writer's Guide to Active Setting (29 page)
Read A Writer's Guide to Active Setting Online
Authors: Mary Buckham
Like so many corporate parks, this one looked tawdry. The prairie had been stripped from the rolling hills, covered with concrete, and then a tiny bit of grass Scotch-taped in as an after thought. By-Smart's landscaper also included a little pond as a reminder of the wetlands that used to lie out here. Beyond the wedge of brown grass, the parking lot seemed to stretch for miles, its gray surface fading into the bleak fall sky.
âSara Paretsky,
Fire Sale
Notice how Paretsky's character makes an observation about the changes to this area of Chicagoâ
prairies, rolling hills, wetlands
âand contrasts it with what she sees nowâ
concrete, tiny bit of grass, little pond, wedge of brown
. Many writers would skip over something as prosaic as the parking lot of a big chain retail store, but Paretsky doesn't. She uses it to illustrate the changes that have shaped the city of Chicago in a fresh and intriguing wayâone that allows the reader to be deeper into the skin of the POV character and thus deeper into the world of the story.
This next passage comes from an amazing novel where the Setting is so rich, so evocative, and used on so many levels that it could be used as its own course on writing Active Setting. In this story the extended Fairchild family comes together for a wedding, but that's the bare bones of what happens over the course of several days before, during, and after the wedding. The wedding is the reason behind all the different characters being on scene, but it is through the viewpoints of numerous characters that the Settingâthe world of the Mississippi Deltaâis revealed. That same Setting in turn reveals personalities, emotions, conflict, and becomes a world so real, it's hard to believe you can't just step into it at any time. That's the power of Setting as a character. The reader cannot remove the characters and the events from that specific Setting without the story falling apart.
Thoughts went out of her head and the landscape filled it. In the Delta, most of the world seemed sky. The clouds were largeâlarger than horses or houses, larger than boats or churches or gins, larger than anything except the fields the Fairchilds planted. Her nose in the banana skin as in the cup of a lily, she watched the Delta. The land was perfectly flat and level but it shimmered like the wing of a lighted dragonfly. It seemed strummed, as though it were an instrument and something had touched it.
âEudora Welty,
Delta Wedding
The following example comes from a novel that earned a spot on
Time
magazine's list of the "100 Best English-Language Novels from 1923 to 2005." There are a lot of powerful elements in this dark storyâcharacterization, theme, author's voiceâbut the Setting helps enhance a savage and brutal tale.
Most of the story takes places in the American Southwest and Mexico, and this next passage reveals at a glance how the Setting is used to show the lawless, violent, and bloodthirsty world of the late nineteenth century. See if you agree:
They set forth in a crimson dawn where sky and earth closed in a razorous plane. Out there dark little archipelagos of cloud and the vast world of sand and scrub shearing upward into the shoreless void where those blue islands trembled and the earth grew uncertain, gravely canted and veering out through tinctures of rose and the dark beyond the dawn to the uttermost rebate of space.
âCormac McCarthy,
Blood Meridian
Let's pull this short paragraph apart to see how powerful it is:
They set forth in a crimson dawn [
Strong visual of intense color, but the author doesn't stop here.
] where sky and earth closed in a razorous plane. [
By adding this additional phrase, the awareness of sharp, deadly edges is raised. This is not a gentle description, and the author did not want a gentle feel.
] Out there dark little archipelagos of cloud [
Here the image of isolation is raised. It's not a focus on the clouds as clouds, but how isolated and alone it's possible to feel in this harsh landscape.
] and the vast world of sand and scrub shearing [
Powerful action verb.
] upward into the shoreless void [
More imagery of the POV character being cut adrift and alone.
] where those blue islands trembled [
Powerful verb again describing clouds, whereas most writers never think to use clouds in a blue sky as a violent image.
] and the earth grew uncertain, gravely canted [
Again, specific, dark, and violent imagery.
] and veering out through tinctures of rose and the dark beyond the dawn to the uttermost rebate of space. [
And there's no doubt in a reader's mind that anything could happen in a place like this, especially dark, secret, and dangerous things.
]
What if McCarthy had held back and wrote a Setting description that focused only on the expanse of sky, clouds, and earth? He might have written something like:
FIRST DRAFT:
They set forth with a crimson dawn barely peeking over the horizon, not yet brightening the isolated clouds that would come later in that huge, blue sky.
This is where many writers might start or stop, but the reader would never experience this story Setting the way the author meant it to be experienced. So what if McCarthy stepped back and decided to look at creating a stronger metaphor for his world, this time using only internalization? (Note that this next draft is intentionally long, confusing the reader and missing the power of what McCarthy captures in his approach.)
SECOND DRAFT:
They set forth, riding into a razorous plane of dawn with dark little archipelagos of cloud and the vast world of earth shearing upward into the shoreless void where those blue islands trembled and the earth grew uncertain, gravely canted and veering out into the uttermost rebate of space.
This is a difficult exercise to attempt. The Setting creates the emotions at the same time the emotions of the POV character create what he sees and feels about the Setting. Try this on your own sometime when examining a book where the Setting is a character. See if you can remove the Setting details and make the narrative descriptions stay on track.
When writing a series of books based on Setting as a character, there's a chance of boring the reader by repeating the same information in a pattern. Readers are also very aware of discrepancies between books. In the first book the drugstore is shown on Main Street and is one-story high, but in book three it's now in a mall on the outskirts of town, and by book five it's gained a story in height. That won't work. Another issue that can frustrate readers is when the author forgets to incorporate Setting details at all, or rushes them, because she knows the story world so well. While the reader returning to the series understands the Setting, the reader new to the series can become lost or confused.
NOTE
: Confusing the reader gives him an opportunity to set your novel down. The more this happens, the easier it becomes not to pick it up again.
The following Setting example comes from the beginning of a wonderful mystery series by Margaret Maron set in North Carolina. Even before the series protagonist is brought on scene, the reader is introduced to small-town life there. The series reveals that the old way of life is rapidly changing. The author doesn't start with change, however, she starts with showing and telling the reader into how idyllic this Setting is. Later she uses contrast between the idyllic and the changes to bring home the conflict between locals with history in the area, and others to whom this is just a spot on the map. The location is fictionalized, but the feel of the Setting is very real.
Let's see how Maron shows the Setting as charming and bucolic, then shifts the Setting in increments to show that there's a serpent in Eden.
FIRST DRAFT:
There was a rundown mill along a small stream in Cotton Grove.
What happens for a lot of newer writers is they stop at this point. They feel they've given the name of a town and intentionally focused in on an important building that's going to be used in this story, so it's time to jump into describing the people in action. But if the reader has never been to North Carolina, or is rushed past the Setting with such vague detail that it's almost invisible, they won't understand that this specific Setting matters.
The reader is left to create his own idea of what the author means by a small stream, mill, and whatever this area of North Carolina might be like. Since the author is creating her own county for the series based on her personal experiences of living in North Carolina, she must also give readers enough Setting so that they understand that the mill and creek are important. They must realize that the larger Setting location matters to the series.
Possum Creek trickles out of a swampy waste a little south of Raleigh. By the time it gets down to Cotton Grove, in the western part of Colleton County, it's a respectable stream, deep enough to float rafts and canoes for several miles at a stretch.
The town keeps the banks mowed where the creek edges on Front Street, and it makes a pretty place to stroll in the spring, the nearest thing Cotton Creek has to a park, but the creek itself has never had much economic value. Kids and old men and an occasional woman still fish its quiet pools for sun perch or catfish, but the most work it's ever done for Cotton Grove was to turn a small gristmill built back in the 1870s a few miles south of town.
When cheap electricity came to the area in the thirties, even that stopped. The mill was abandoned and its shallow dam was left for the creek to dismantle rock by rock through forty-odd spring crestings.
These days, Virginia creeper and honeysuckle fight it out in the dooryard with blackberry brambles and poison ivy. Hunters and anglers may shelter beneath its rusty tin roof from unexpected thunderstorms, teenage lovers may park in the overgrown lane on warm moonlit nights, but for years the mill has sat alone out there in the woods, tenanted only by the coons and foxes that den beneath its stone walls.
The creek does serve as boundary marker between several farms, and the opposite bank is Dancy land, though no Dancy's actually dirtied his hand there in fifty years.
Until this spring.
âMargaret Maron,
Bootlegger's Daughter
This example is not the opening to a thriller, suspense, or fast-paced story, so if you want to write fast, this is not how you accomplish that feat. But this opening serves the genreâa cozy mystery seriesâand slows the reader into the pace and sensibility of a Setting that's key to the entire series.
Notice how the author orients the reader to time and locationâsouth of Raleigh means the story is set in North Carolina. Forty years after the thirties indicates mid-1970s to early 1980s.
Until this spring
sets time of year. Adjectives used help pace the reader to the world of the Southâ
trickles, floats, pretty place to stroll, quiet pools, shelter, warm moonlit nights
. The description of the mill is evocative and lyrical, letting the reader know the building matters to the story, and hinting through subtext that there may be more to this building than a picturesque ruin. There's a strong sense of flow of life in this rural location, which is just what the author wants to establish in a series where the old South runs head on into the new South.
Also, note how, after the gentle, detailed description of a quiet backwater location, the author raised a great story question, foreshadowing future events by setting off a three-word sentence in its own paragraphâ
Until this spring
. The reader clearly knows change of some sort is about to happen.
In the next example, now thirteen books into her series, Maron spends less page space describing what series readers already know about her Setting, instead turning a spotlight on a particular aspect of Colleton County. When she mentions “familiar” locations, she does so through internalization, or a few lines threaded through other action to make sure that new readers know where they are, but still keeps the series readers from feeling like they've been-there, seen-that.
El Toro Negro sits next to an abandoned tobacco warehouse a few feet inside the Dobbs city limits. Back when the club catered to the country-western crowd, a mechanical bull used to be one of the attractions; but after a disgruntled customer took a sledgehammer to its motor, the bull was left behind when the club changed hands. Now it stands atop the flat roof and someone with more verve than talent has painted a picture of it on the windowless front wall. As visibly masculine as his three-dimensional counterpart overhead, the painted bull is additionally endowed with long sharp horns. He seems to snort and paw at hot desert sands although it is a frigid night and more than a thousand miles north of the border. Two weeks into January, yet a white plastic banner that reads Feliz Navidid Y Próspero Año Nuevo still hangs over the entrance. A chill wind sweeps across the gravel parking lot and sends beer cups and empty cigarette packs scudding like tumbleweeds until they catch in the bushes that line the sidewalk.
âMargaret Maron,
Hard Row
Notice again that Maron is using an omniscient, slower-paced opening for her series. This is consistent with earlier books in the series and slows the reader down to the pacing sensibility of her mysteries. No action-packed, big-bang opening here, but the reader quickly gains a sense that this specific place matters to the story, even if it's not a place they know from the earlier twelve books in the series.
NOTE:
In a series, use Setting description lightly if it's been shown in great detail in previous books. However, show enough detail that a new reader can be anchored into your larger story world.
Let's look at another series author and how she quickly orients the reader to the world of her stories in a way that engages new readers, but doesn't bore her series readers. This example is twelve books into Dana Stabenow's mystery series. See how soon you know where the main character is and if you can get a sense of her world environment.