Setting (7 page)

3. The emotional background of the story — the tone of the piece —should be as chill as the romance is warm.

Physical detail should be shown briefly for two reasons: The reader of this genre is more interested in plot, and the plot usually will be so pressure-packed and suspenseful that neither character nor author can be involved for long periods of time (or long paragraphs on the page) in setting descriptions. This generalization is violated in novels such as "techno-thrillers," where heavily researched, in-depth factual or physical detail are a considerable part of the writer's appeal. But unless you are writing such a tome crammed with often-esoteric "inside information," the rule of brevity applies.

The style should be crisp and understated because, again, a flowing and discursive style is not what the reader of this genre likes, and is not really fitting in a story of high tension and rapid movement.

The emotional background in suspense stories should be

chill because such a feeling-state in the major characters is the only believable one for story people in such grim situations.

The result of these reader expectations in suspense fiction generally is a tighter, colder writing style.

Here, for example, is the total description of a new bit of setting used in a novel of mine called
The Regensburg Legacy:

The next morning, Friday, Dugger drove out of Stuttgart to the suburbs to the south. The sky was blue porcelain, relief after all the foul weather. A brisk breeze blew. Following small road signs with an American flag and the words KELLY BARRACKS on them, he turned off a routine German street and found himself approaching a gate to the military installation like any of a thousand others in the world. There was a high chain-link fence, a black-on-white sign, broad paving, and a guardhouse manned by smartly uniformed MPs.

There is no more description of the new setting. The plot continues immediately with Dugger's attempt to gain admittance to the installation.

While this limited amount of attention to setting, and this sort of unornamented prose, are perfectly fitting in suspense, let me ask you to pause for a moment here and give some thought to how much differently this setting segment might have been written for a romance novel. How much longer might it have been? How much looser and more flowery might the language have been? How much more emotional content —the feelings of the viewpoint character —might there have been?

I think it would have been three to five times as long, and perhaps longer. There would have been much heavier specific description of all kinds — details about the buildings and pavements, the colors of the flower boxes, the sounds of traffic, the sight of birds overhead, the smell of diesel fumes. The writing would have been looser and more ornate, and
everything
in the setting would have been related somehow to the viewpoint character's interior life, her emotional reactions to the environment.

Such differences in handling of setting are often overlooked by the unwary writer, so that even promising stories fail because their emphases and modes of delivery don't fit the genre.

HISTORICALS

Readers of historicals bring still different expectations to that genre, making different demands on the writer. In this kind of story—almost always a long, thick novel—breadth of focus, width of historical sweep, and richness of factual information are expected, even required. If you wish to write such a book, be sure to provide for:

1. Vast background content.

2. Heavy doses of minute period detail.

3. A variety of vantage points.

4. A plot deeply intertwined in the setting.

In terms of content, the setting should contain both vast historic and regional background. At the same time it is offering broad scope and panorama, it should give the reader heavy doses of setting minutiae, little tidbits about the cost of snuff in the colonies, for example, or how milady powdered her hair in those days.

Since both of these focal lengths —very long-distance and extremely close-up —are required in the historical, the writer will be forced to use both the wide-screen omniscient view "from on high" and the tightly restricted, intimate experience of the viewpoint character dealing with fine details. This will probably make the writing style itself fall somewhere between the lush-ness of the romance and the chill brevity of suspense.

Whatever is presented in the plot, the setting will remain very much in evidence, with the plot intertwined with it, and it will have considerable wordage devoted to it, because it is in the setting that the historic facts and ambience will be transmitted to the reader—who chooses this sort of novel largely to get such input.

The plot may be considerably tighter than in the romance,

for example, but probably will not be as rigid as in the suspense story; a strong plot will be needed to keep the long, broad-canvas story moving, but it will not be such a tightly pressing plot that characters don't have adequate time to experience (and notice) the setting details which form such an important part of the appeal for the average reader of historicals.

SCIENCE FICTION

Readers of science fiction are a bit different from those of any of the genres mentioned so far, and their expectations may give the writer more latitude than in any other genre in terms of what kind of setting and how much setting should be emphasized in the telling of the story. This is so because science fiction may have a primarily suspenseful slant or can, on occasion, be quite romantic. These varying tendencies within the broad genre can result in stories which handle setting in vastly different ways.

Virtually all science fiction, however, has the following characteristics:

1. A background of solid scientific data.

2. Extrapolation from known current facts.

3. A plot which grows out of the setting in some way.

One almost universal truth that can be seen concerning science fiction is that all the genre, from "space opera" to the weightiest technological tome, emphasizes data. In other words, in almost all science fiction the emphasis is on the factual background in the setting and the ideas tested in the plot, rather than on, say, romantic character interaction or straight physical suspense.

What does this mean to you as a potential writer of science fiction? First of all, it means you're going to have to know some cutting-edge science; you may start your research by reading a short, speculative piece in a magazine like
Omni,
but chances are that you'll soon find yourself delving into heavier publications such as
Scientific American,
which can be very heavy going indeed.

In addition, you will use your research findings to invest your setting with some technological trappings, and more often than not you will extrapolate this setting into the future from present-day science, while making sure that your plot problem grows out of the technological setting, rather than just being in the same story with it.

The point made in the last part of the preceding sentence was a whopper, so let's consider it further. What do I mean when I say the plot problem should grow out of the setting, rather than merely be in the same story with it? Simply this: It's a mistake to think that the science or technology setting for such a story is merely a backdrop; the setting should make the story go — should include the basis for the problem or quest itself.

This obviously requires that you do more than make up a glittering scientific setting and then arbitrarily stick any old story into it. The setting has to
cause
the story, almost; it has to contain the germ of the basic plot problem.

Earlier I mentioned
Ariel,
one of my novels that I liked the best when I wrote it. Although the novel sold as a "mainstream" book, it's basically science fiction put into a setting of research on artificial intelligence in computers. The story provides an example of how setting becomes the core of the plot problem, and how the two are completely tied together. The setting is a research lab in which there is a mainframe computer being modified and programmed for artificial intelligence; once this setting changes dynamically, however —and the computer asks
"Who am I?"—
the plot can never be the same again. A change in the setting has changed everything, forever.

Good science fiction almost always works like this.

Another aspect of science fiction setting, briefly alluded to previously, is the fact that the "science," wild as it might be, is rooted in real, contemporary science. That is to say, the story might turn out to be about strange clone-characters trying to take over the world; but this yarn would include in it as setting and background some information about actual chromosomal engineering and gene-changing being done in the world's labs today. The use of real, present-day research as a springboard into the extrapolated story setting is very common, and that's because the existence of some actual research now makes it easier for the reader to accept the story premise, even though it might be a wild departure from today.

STUDYING MARKETS

Often writers are encouraged to "study the markets" and "see what's selling." One of the bases for such advice lies in the genre expectations of readers such as those discussed in this chapter. It's fatal to try to handle a setting for a suspense story in the same way you would handle one for a romance, or even a science fiction story. Therefore you must know what the generalities of each genre are if you are to handle your settings in an acceptable manner.

Remember, however, that such genre expectations are somewhat general. A common mistake is to look too specifically at "what's selling," and then to slavishly copy the detail rather than the generality. For example, one might notice a colorful Caribbean setting, then write his own story against an identical colorful Caribbean setting, when what he should have done was notice the broader principle of exotic locale behind the specific Caribbean setting, then search for a
different
exotic setting that would also fit the pattern.

Most studies of genre expectations and requirements fall into this mistake of being too specific and failing to see the general principle at work. In handling setting for genre, nothing can be worse; by the time you've finished your book, the specific acceptable locale may have changed again and only the general requirement for the exotic, lushly described setting will remain.

Study the genre you want to "hit." Then search for the general rules about its setting. One flies in the face of such generalities at grave risk. But by all means also recognize the freedom of choice this study still leaves to you!

CHAPTER 6

HOW SETTING ACTS AS YOUR STORY BACKBONE

A
common problem in writing
a long story, especially something as lengthy as a novel, has to do with story
unity
or cohesion. "I have six subplots going, and how do I keep a sense of unity in my story with so many?" a writer may ask. Or: "I simply must change viewpoint several times, but what can I do to maintain a sense of coherent, cohesive story line?" Or (scariest of all!): "My story seems to be flying all to pieces, and I don't know how to hold all the diverse elements together."

Expert use of setting can often provide an answer to such questions.

Setting —especially the concrete, physical setting experienced through the senses of the characters or described in occasional panorama by the author —can provide a constant, stable, reassuringly familiar backdrop against which all manner of diverse plot developments can be played out.

In this sense, story setting functions very much like the setting of a stage play. The backdrop may be the brick walls of office buildings, with perhaps a streetlight and a mailbox as the only other features; two characters may move out in front of this setting and talk about plans to rob a bank, then exit stage left; next may come a young couple talking about his new job, and how excited they are about it. Superficially there may be no clear connection between the two bits of action that have taken place, but because they both have played against the same backdrop, the audience will be quite sure that
there is a unity here —
that the two bits of action definitely are linked in some way —

even though no overt connection has been demonstrated. The setting has done the job.

Multiplot, multiple-viewpoint novels often achieve a similar feeling of unity almost entirely by reliance on common setting as the binding factor. The suspense novels of writers like Tom Clancy and Clive Cussler rely heavily on same-setting unification. A few years before these writers attained their present popularity, Arthur Hailey made unifying setting the bedrock foundation of his novels lik
e Hotel
and
Airport.
In the novels of Phyllis A. Whitney, setting is always an important unifying factor as a bewildering variety of characters assail and confuse the first-person narrator; further, in the Whitney novels, the setting very often includes hidden history—past events concealed by some of the characters—whose eventual revelation is central to working out of the plot and the main character's personal problems.