A Writer's Guide to Active Setting (20 page)

Lots of information has been imparted to the reader in one short passage via Setting.

Next time you are using Setting in a story, consider if the POV character is familiar with this location, if the location reminds him of something familiar, if the location lets the character know how far they've come in the world, or how out of their element they might feel. All of these elements contribute to revealing backstory.

Remember to keep your focus on the Setting to reveal the character.

The first version shows the Setting. You are in the room with the character while learning more about her backstory at the same time. In the second version, the focus is only on the characters and a memory. You can use this in your work, but why use a passage that reveals only one thing—characterization in this case—when you can do double duty and show Setting as well as characterization, conflict, or emotion?

Think of your childhood home and your current home. Write a one-paragraph description that contrasts the two, while revealing some information about your past, what you valued. How does growing up in that place define you, or how does living in your current location define you in a way your childhood home never could?

Now take the childhood home of your protagonist and write a one-paragraph description that shows how that place created the person he or she is today.

Find a Setting in your own WIP that's currently devoid of backstory, or could be enhanced with it.

Can you focus in and see any ways to bring up the POV character's backstory?

Consider adding a contrast between now and the past. Or use a memory of a specific Setting from the past with a Setting that you currently have on the page, without adding too many additional words to the passage.

• Backstory Setting can be contrasted with current story Setting for more power on the page.
  
• Use Setting to reveal information that has happened in the past to the character in small, digestible, but powerful nuggets.
  
• Combine backstory Setting information with other techniques of Setting—showing emotion, foreshadowing, reinforcing story theme, and adding conflict as opposed to adding only one technique at a time.
  
• Challenge yourself to use all of the techniques revealed in this book as you revise your manuscript. The more you stretch as a writer, the stronger your story becomes.
  

In strong writing, there is always an overlap of craft techniques, resulting in a more integrated story. Nothing lives in isolation. So, for those who have read the first two sections in this book, you will notice that anchoring enhances what you learned about characterization in Part One, and Setting in an action sequence relates to elements of conflict in Part Two. This is necessary both for combining the elements into a seamless unit and for helping you assimilate by repetition.

We will look at different concepts and examples in this next section, so you don't need to read the earlier sections to understand and embrace the concepts here, but these concepts build on one another as blocks laid in an interlaced pattern create a strong structure. The more you learn about writing Active Setting, the more you will be able to add depth and texture to your writing as you explore opportunities to use the material.

Using Setting to anchor, or orient, the reader as to the
when
and
where
of the plot is very important to your story's succes. Anchoring is created when the reader is better able to picture the
when
and
where
of the story, which creates a stronger emotional tie to the characters in the story, and thus to the work as a whole.

Since most of us have read only published novels, it's hard to show how this small detail can separate the published from the unpublished, but if you've had the chance to read unpublished work for contests, or worked with newer writers, you've likely seen this lack of anchoring time and time again. There's a reason for this lack—two, actually.

The first reason, and the most common one, occurs because writers can be so deep into the world of their characters that they assume more information is on the page than there really is. So when they say
mountain
, they assume the reader can see a ten-thousand-foot former volcano. But the reader may imagine a thousand-foot bump rising out of a flat landscape, or a jagged granite edifice that fronts more mountains, such as how the Rocky Mountains look traveling west from the plains. The reader's vision is based on her knowledge and experience, if what's shown on the page isn't clear.

If a character is flying a plane that has lost power in midair and is heading right for the mountain, these interpretations will make a huge difference.

The second most common mistake is forgetting that the reader may have set the book down at the end of the last chapter, or scene, or you have ended a scene in one location and opened the next chapter, or scene, in a new location. Either way the reader needs to get re-oriented quickly so they can slip back into the story world and move forward with the action.

Think about how you can anchor the reader in the Setting early in the scene. One way to do this is by actually describing the Setting in an omniscient way, with a big overview perspective. This means the scene is not seen or experienced through the POV of any of the characters, but instead is viewed as if the reader is looking through a camera lens that's been pulled back to give a panoramic sense of place. Look at the following example from Robert Ludlum's
The Icarus Agenda
:

Notice the description comes from far away—a background briefing, so to speak—and not from a character. Sometimes the use of this omniscient POV is actually one character's POV, coming after the fact, or as a summation. This approach to Setting is most often incorporated in the opening of a book, but is used less often in today's publishing climate. Why isn't it highly recommended now? Because of pacing issues and the loss of immediacy.

A large chunk of description slows the pacing dramatically and, if the description is not chock-full of conflict and emotion as Ludlum managed with specific word choices, what happens too often is distancing, a sense of the reader being pulled back from the story. This distancing creates less of a connection between a reader and what's happening on the page. The more this occurs, and the longer it occurs in a novel, the easier it is for the reader to set the book down and wander off to find something that engages her more.

Another point to remember if you decide to use the omniscient viewpoint to orient the reader, is that if you describe a place, make that place matter to the story. Look again at the Ludlum description. This is not just any Setting. This is a part of the world that's rife with conflict and darkness, something Ludlum conveys based on what he chooses to show his readers and how he's showing it.

Notice how he mixes "emotion" words—
sky was darkening, black thunderheads that swirled ominously, like roving behemoths
.
Blankets of heat lightning fired the eastern horizon
—and "specific physical anchoring" words—
over the Marran Mountains of Turbat, two hundred miles across the sea in Pakistan. To the north, beyond the borders of Afghanistan … To the west … in Iran, to the south was Lebanon. …

Can you see as well as feel the locale? All that's needed is for a character to walk into this dark, threatening Setting and the reader is already rooting for his survival.

Let's look at another example, one not so dark:

Here the omniscient viewpoint gives a quick snapshot of the place while also indicating the emotional tone of the location. Words such as
wind beaten, downtrodden, bleached,
and
weathered
all paint a specific image of a certain type of depressed coastal town. The reader is quickly oriented into the
where
of the story, and is ready and waiting for the
who
of the story and what is about to happen.

If you choose to use omniscient POV, research whether this approach is used in the genre in which you're writing (for example, you see the technique more in the openings of historical novels, women's fiction, and literary fiction rather than romance and thrillers). Be sure to use omniscient POV with a light hand. Don't go on for pages and pages, because the longer you do, the slower your story will become and the greater the distance between story and reader. One last warning on using omniscient POV in your story before we move on. Omniscient POV is best used at the opening of a novel, or a scene, as opposed to pulling out of a character's POV to show an overview, then sliding back into the character's POV.

Otherwise you create a pattern of shifting POV that is disorienting for the reader and can actually create a physical sense of being yanked out of a story and then forced back in. Every time you shift POV, you risk losing the reader. Doing so, simply to show a Setting, is not worth the risk.

Let's now examine a quick one-line opening to a YA story that not only anchors the reader into the season of the story, but also into the mindset of the POV character. The author, Scott Westerfeld, doesn't have to shout that this is not a stuffy adult novel, he makes it very clear with this one killer opening line.

What if the author had approached this fresh and fun opening line from a different direction? Like this:

Okay, but nothing memorable and no visuals at all, simply an internal dialogue that sounds like it could be about any angst-ridden teen written by an adult. What if the author ignores the Setting and focuses more on what's seen from the POV of a fifteen-year-old girl, very unhappy at being the last of her peers to turn sixteen and waiting to have her whole world change.

Like this:

A little more visual, though not fresh, but at least the Setting builds to the emotional sub-text that nothing was changing and the POV character was simply waiting for something. This could work for some novels and for enough readers that it might be published. But it doesn't create that eye-opening shazaam of Westerfeld's opening line that promised the reader—young adult or not—a story clearly told from the POV of a teen who is either looking at a very different world or sees her world very differently.

Deeper POV means we are seeing something—in this case, Setting—through a character's eyes. Below is an example, from Barbara Kingsolver, of a Setting shown from deeper POV. The reader sees the Setting from the experience and emotions of one of the story's protagonists, which creates not only a stronger sense of place, but a stronger connection to the character, and thus to the story.

But before we dive into Kingsolver's amazing prose, let's imagine what could have happened if she had chosen to write without an eye to using Setting to its full advantage: