Read A Writer's Guide to Active Setting Online
Authors: Mary Buckham
Look at Liu's word choicesâ
crumbling, pale concrete, shattered, broken
. What if she used very different words, like this?
I was still in the warehouse district, a high-end neighborhood of artsy concrete slabs, brick sidewalks, and view-hogging windows.
OR:
I was still in the warehouse district, a vibrant neighborhood of thriving industrial concrete buildings, crowded sidewalks, and sparkling windows.
Do you get a very different sense of the emotion of the POV character by what she focuses on? Is there a difference in the feeling, or emotion, of the Setting between the three different examples? In Liu's original description, do you expect good things to happen for the character around the next corner? If the character is looking for a rental unit, what would it say about her if she chooses the first neighborhood, rather than the second?
NOTE:
Telling and showing, or telling after something has been shown, can work in a novel.
Let's look at another example of Setting, with and without emotion.
⦠I stood staring out the sliding glass doors. The backyard looked melancholy in the late autumn, the foliage thinned out and the high fence depressingly obvious. The gray pool cover was spotted with puddles of rainwater. The warm colors of the big room were more pleasant, and I roamed around it picking up odds and ends as I stretched chilled muscles.
âCharlaine Harris,
Shakespeare's Champion
In the above example, the initial mood shown by examining the Setting outside the sliding-glass doors reflects the emotional tenor of the POV character in this scene. Pensive. Melancholy. A little down. Later in this passage the author changes the tone by having the character become more active. Warm. Pleasant. Because of these few sentences, the reader is prepped for some change in the story, since the tone moves from low-key and somber to the feeling of safety within the room. This mirrors what is being set up in the story, because within a page, danger will approach the house from outsideâan outside Setting the reader is already aware of and already knows is dark.
What would have happened if Harris had written it this way?
ROUGH DRAFT:
I stood looking out the sliding-glass doors at the backyard. The autumn trees looked bare, showing the fence in back. The pool cover was covered with water. The warm colors of the big room were more pleasant, and I roamed around it picking up odds and ends as I stretched chilled muscles.
See? The reader gets a visual of the backyard but no sense of emotion. There's no contrast between what's happening outside and where the character is inside.
Setting can do so much to emotionally set the mood or theme of a story, which in turn makes it easier for the reader to accept what is unfolding or about to unfold. Have you ever read a story, or a scene in a story, that's meant to be suspenseful, frightening, or relaxing, but the only information you received was a bald comment on the POV character's emotions? Or worse: no cues at all to the emotional tenor of the story? Most published stories avoid this, but many inexperienced writers assume that telling the reader the character is scared or relaxed is enough. It's not.
The next sentence paints a very specific sense of the mood or emotion of a Setting based on word choices. Given that the story takes place in Cambodia, note how the author intentionally reveals, in a fresh way, one small detail about the type of day it is.
Today the water hung in the air like torn strips of gray paper.
âColin Cotterill,
Love Song from A Shallow Grave
What are the emotions that come to mind with this simple but poignant description? Melancholy? Subdued? Despondent? What if the author chose to use a less evocative way to describe the weather?
FIRST DRAFT:
Today was gray.
Are you in the Setting? Do you get a strong sense of the emotional tone the POV character feels? Probably not.
SECOND DRAFT:
The day was rainy and gray.
This is where some writers might stop, leaving the reader to transfer their own emotions to the Setting. And sometimes that's exactly what you need to do. But not every time. If the POV character acts based on her perception of the emotion of the Setting, then it's invaluable to spend a little more time, even just a few more words, to make that clear to the reader. One of the ways to do this is based on the character's perception of his Setting.
NOTE:
Emotions drive actions in a story. Don't forget to use your Setting details to show those emotions.
Let's see how mystery author M.C. Beaton uses just a few sentences to bring the reader into the Setting and to show the emotional mood of the POV character. But before we see how Beaton shows this, let's look at a possible first draft.
FIRST DRAFT:
The day was depressing. The city of Strathbane was also depressing and looked ugly, too.
Not much here. No visuals and the reader has been told, but not shown, the city and the POV character's response to the city. So let's revisit:
SECOND DRAFT:
He became more depressed the closer he drove to Strathbane, a mid-sized city with high unemployment and overrun with drug users.
Better, but the reader is not fully drawn into what the POV character is seeing. So now let's look closely at how M.C. Beaton draws the readers emotionally into the mood she wants them to feel, as she shows what her protagonist is feeling via his view of the Setting.
The day suited his mood. The brief spell of good weather had changed to a damp drizzle. Wraiths of mist crawled down the flanks of the mountain.
Strathbane had once been a busy fishing port, but new European fishing quotas had destroyed businesses. Then under a scheme to regenerate the Highlands, new businesses were set up, but drugs had arrived before them and the town became a depressed area of rotting factories, vandalized high-rises, and dangerous, violent youth.
âM.C. Beaton,
Death of a Maid
Anyone who follows this mystery series featuring Scottish Highlands constable Hamish Macbeth knows that he will do anything to avoid being promoted and sent to work in the nearby large city of Strathbane. But even someone new to the series gets a strong emotional sense of what the city looks like, and how he feels about it, by how he sees the town. Let's analyze this passage further.
The day suited his mood. [
This sets up the reader to clearly understand that an emotional explanation is coming, but instead of simply telling and ending the Setting description here, the author uses showing.
] The brief spell of good weather had changed to a damp drizzle. [
The use of contrast not only indicates a change in the story, but the passage of time.
] Wraiths [
Strong image here that holds a negative connotation.
] of mist crawled [
Powerful verb.
] down the flanks of the mountain.
Strathbane had once been a busy fishing port, but new European fishing quotas had destroyed businesses. [
Backstory specific to this recurring Setting.
] Then under a scheme to regenerate the Highlands, new businesses were set up, but drugs had arrived before them and the town became a depressed [
Specific adjective.
] area of rotting [
Specific adjective.
] factories, vandalized [
Specific adjective.
] high-rises, and dangerous, violent [
Specific adjectives.
] youth.
Look what happens if we remove the adjectives used in just the last sentence:
the town became an area of factories, high-rises, and youth
.
There's nothing dark or depressing in this description, which means readers might get a vague visual image of a city, but without more details they are left to create their own visuals. Kansas City, New Orleans, London, and Hong Kong are all cities that have factories, high-rises, and youth, but they are radically different cities. You'll want to go even deeper here for the strongest description on the page. There's a world of difference between empty, barren factories or sleek, state-of-the-art factories churning out electronic goods. By taking only one concrete image, a factory, and changing the specific words used to describe it, the reader is more deeply invested in the world inhabited by the character. A large chunk of that investment is based on the emotional feel of what she is seeing.
NOTE
: Avoid the mistake of describing only the things the character sees. Take the next small step and add the POV character's emotional meaning to those things.
Let's see how Walter Mosley uses a POV character's memory of an event involving Setting to give the reader a strong sense of the current Setting, as well as the emotion of the current events. He also layers in a hint of backstory, which we'll discuss in more depth later.
Psychedelic posters for concerts were plastered to walls. Here and there brave knots of tourists walked through, marveling at the counterculture they'd discovered.
I was reminded of a day when a mortar shell in the ammunition hut of our base camp in northern Italy exploded for no apparent reason. No one was killed but a shock ran through the whole company. All of a sudden whatever we had been doing or thinking, wherever we had been going was forgotten. One man started laughing uncontrollably, another went to the mess tent and wrote a letter to his mother. I kept noticing things I'd never seen before. For instance, the hand-painted sign above the infirmary read HOSPItAL, all in capital letters except for the t. That one character was in lower case. I had seen that sign a thousand times but only after the explosion did I really look at it.
The Haight was another kind of explosion, a stunning surge of intuition that broke down all the ways you thought life had to be.
âWalter Mosley,
Cinnamon Kiss
Mosley is using Setting here in so many powerful ways. Instead of writing a traditional description of what the POV character is currently seeing, Mosley starts with a very specific detailâposters. And not any kind of posters, but psychedelic ones. He then segues into a description of a Setting in the past, one that appears to have nothing to do with the present. He does this to evoke a response in the reader. Most readers can remember an emotionally powerful experience where, after the experience, they zeroed in on a detail. Then, that detail became the metaphor for how they thought about life before and how their perceptions changed. The reader has no doubt after this flashback that the character feels strongly about the Haight-Ashbury district and that the “brave tourists,” the ones who don't belong there, just as he feels he doesn't, also have a strong emotional reaction.
NOTE
: Consider using emotional Setting in your backstory passages to enhance or contrast them with your current story Setting, or to create an emotional echo as Mosley has done.
Here's another author, thriller writer Harlan Coben, who focuses readers on a specific Setting detail and then expands the emotional note of that detail.
In fact, the door was beyond ordinary, wood and four-paneled, the kind of door you see standing guard in front of three out of every four suburban homes, with faded paint and a knocker at chest level no one ever used and a faux brass knob. But as I walked toward it, a distant streetlight barely illuminated my way, that dark opening yawning like a mouth ready to gobble me whole, the feeling of doom was unshakeable. Each step forward took great effort, as if I were walking not along a somewhat crackled walk but through wet-cement.
âHarlan Coben,
Caught
Coben writes about everyman characters caught in complex traps where each step forward is fraught with greater and greater risk and loss, but there's no way back either. Let's look at what he does so well.
In fact, the door was beyond ordinary, [
He starts with telling the reader. This situation could happen to anyone.
] wood and four-paneled, [
Here he shows what he's talking about, luring the reader into a stronger image and feel that they have seen this kind of door, too.
] the kind of door you see standing guard in front of three out of every four suburban homes, [
Here the POV character's internalization reinforces that he should be feeling one thing based on what he's seeing.
] with faded paint and a knocker at chest level no one ever used and a faux brass knob. [
And here Coben hammers home the small, ordinary details that should not be frightening. But notice how he changes the emotional note in the next sentence.
] But as I walked toward it, a distant [
Specific word choice indicating how isolated he feels.
] streetlight barely illuminated [
Expanding the emotion of loneliness.
] my way, that dark [
Specific word choice contrasting with what has already been seen.
] opening yawning like a mouth ready to gobble me whole, [
And right here the internalization spins the emotional feel from ordinary to something very different.
] the feeling of doom was unshakeable. [
Drives home the emotion here.
] Each step forward took great effort, [
Telling that builds on the emotion.
] as if I were walking not along a somewhat crackled walk but through wet-cement. [
Ending on an emotional note diametrically opposed to the ordinary Setting details established at the beginning of this paragraph.
]
Here's another emotionally charged passage where Setting reveals the emotion churning through the POV character. But before we get to how Jonathan Tropper describes his late father's sporting-goods store, let's write a generic description of the store.