Writing Active Setting Book 1: Characterization and Sensory Detail Read online

  WRITING ACTIVE SETTING

  BOOK 1: CHARACTERIZATION AND SENSORY DETAIL

  Content copyright © 2012 by Mary Arsenault Buckham.

  All rights reserved.

  Kindle Edition

  First Edition

  No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Published by

  Cantwell Publishing LLC

  2675 Wilson Street

  Port Townsend, WA 98368

  USA

  ISBN: 978-1-939210-00-5

  Cover Design: Hot Damn Designs

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Writing any book does not happen in a vacuum, especially a How-To craft book. I’d like to thank the hundreds and hundreds of writing students who helped define the assignments and the need to explore how to better use Setting in our novels. I’d also like to thank my early readers, all writers who gave invaluable feedback on the format and content of this book: Laurie Adams, Kat Jorgensen, Elizabeth Gibson, Theresa Rogers, Ellen Russell and Laurel Wilczek. Any of your great advice I did not take was my fault alone. A special thanks to Dianna Love, writer extraordinaire and a good friend who has always been there for one last eagle-eyed look. Laurie Schnebly Campbell, co-founder with me of www.WriterUniv.com and a whiz with back cover blurbs. Kimberly Killion and her able assistant Jennifer Jakes of HOT DAMN Designs who really know how to design a killer cover and make the process painless. And to my husband, Jim Buckham, who makes all things possible in my world. And last, but not least, thanks to my readers. Without you, I’d have no craft to teach. Thank you!

  For the writers who want to expand their understanding of the craft of writing!

  Note to Readers

  Every effort has been made to cleanly edit the text. However, typos do slip in. If you find an error in the text, please email: [email protected] so the issue can be corrected. I appreciate you as a reader and want to make sure you enjoy the reading and learning process. If you find errors, please bring them to my attention so I can continue to provide better books for all readers.

  Thank you!

  Table of Contents

  Part 1 * INTRODUCTION

  Overview

  Ready to Start?

  Anchoring the Reader

  Subtext in Setting

  Setting the Stage

  Pacing and Setting

  Assignment

  Recap

  Part 2 * USING SUBJECTIVE DETAIL TO REVEAL CHARACTER

  Right Information/Right Signals

  Revealing Character Through Setting

  Assignment

  Recap

  Part 3 *USING SENSORY DETAIL TO ENHANCE SETTING

  Layering POV and Sensory Details

  Ways to Bring Out Sensory Details

  Assignment

  Recap

  Wrap Up

  Bibliography

  What Folks Are Saying About Active Setting

  Part 1

  INTRODUCTION

  Setting is probably one of the most underused tools in a writer’s toolbox, but it doesn’t have to be.

  Settings involve so much more than stringing together a list of adjectives or dumping a chunk of visual clues to orient the reader. Setting can create the world of your story, show characterization, add conflict, slow or speed up your pacing, add or decrease tension, relate a character’s back story, thread in emotion, and more. Some authors are known for creating Settings that are so deeply integrated into the scene that when readers step away from reading they still find themselves in the place described on the page.

  Think of Setting as the stage which contains your story, and it should be as important as any character whether you choose to write sparsely or in great detail. The setting orients the readers to the geography, climate, social context, time of the story’s events, foreshadowing of unfolding events, architecture, and much more. When handled well the Setting can also impact the thoughts of your readers and actions of your characters and thus move the story forward.

  If not handled well, poor Setting description can thwart or frustrate the reader to the point where they want to throw away the story or actually do put your book down and walk away.

  Setting can add so much to your story world or it can add nothing. When creating Active Setting we’re looking to add subtext in your writing, a deeper way for your reader to experience your story. Instead of simply describing a place or thing for the sake of description, we’ll look closely at how to maximize what you are showing the reader. You’ll learn how to verbally illustrate a place and where to insert this information so the reader will understand the intention of your scenes and be pulled deeper into the story. Specifically in Book 1, we’ll be looking at using Setting to reveal your characters and to add sensory details.

  We’ll make sure you do not focus your reader on something that isn’t pertinent to your story.

  Note: The details of your Setting must matter to your story.

  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 foreshadowing or be there for a reason instead of simply describing placement of objects in space.

  In Book 1, let’s examine Setting in two vital ways: to show Characterization and to add Sensory details. But first an overview of what Setting is and what it can be.

  OVERVIEW

  In this book we’ll focus on keeping in mind three key elements in crafting Setting:

  (1) You need to create the world of your story.

  (2) Each character in your story experiences the story world differently.

  (3) Your story world involves more than one sense.

  What this means is that your role as a writer is to create the world of your story so that the reader not only sees it but experiences every detail. Regardless if you’re writing about a famous place that millions have lived in or experienced, your Character’s perceptions of that world are what matters in your story. You’re not writing about any living room, any small town, any large city; you are writing about a specific living room, a specific small town, a specific large city and why those things matter to your character.

  Pull the reader deeper into your story by allowing them to experience the Setting on a deeper level. It can be the difference between standing on a beach facing the Pacific Ocean, feeling the sand beneath your bare toes, inhaling the scent of tangy salt spray, hearing the roar and slam of the waves versus looking at a postcard.

  Learning to write Active Setting is as easy as knowing when and where you want to ramp up your Setting details and why.

  I’ve had the privilege to work with thousands of writers in all genres over the years and to see them take the blah or non-existent Setting of their stories and make it work harder. That’s my wish for every writer who takes the time to study Active Setting.

  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 we’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. The 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 your POV character and then bring that information 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 work 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 foreshadowing 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.

  Or

  Sue walked into the heart of her childhood home, remembering playing cowboys and Indians behind the worn tweed couch, building tents draped over the nicked 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.

  ANCHORING 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: Use 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 anchored the reader into the where using a strong Setting description — let the characters interact with the Setting, move through it, pick things up and brush past them.

  Note: It’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 an 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 the reader has already been shown.

  Look at 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.” [Subjective 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, [Notice 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. [Here, 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. [Now 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. [Conflict 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 choices 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.

  Pretty bland description. The reader is not deep into this character’s POV because the character does not experience the room.

  Note: Showing the room through deeper POV allows the reader to experience the room on a more immediate level. The reader is in the room with the character.

  [Second Draft] I’m conducted to a room and left alone. It’s the richest place I’ve ever been in.

  Better because now we’re given a little more insight into what the POV character is feeling based on the response to the room. But we still have no idea why the character feels this way. Nor can we see the room.

  [Final Draft] Once inside, I’m conducted to a room and left alone. It’s the richest place I’ve ever been in, with thick deep carpets and a velvet couch and chairs. I know velvet because my mother has a dress with a collar made of the stuff. When I sit on the couch, I can’t help running my fingers over the fabric repeatedly. It helps to calm me as I try to prepare for the next hour. The time allotted for the tributes to say goodbye to their loved ones.