Read A Writer's Guide to Active Setting Online
Authors: Mary Buckham
Look at the POV character's experience, and see how you can sneak in more details that will help the reader figure out
where
and
when
.
Be wary of writing more about the Setting than a story can handle. A short scene requires only a few words of description. If you are in the middle of an action scene, you don't necessarily want to slow the pacing to describe too much detail. There are no set rules for this, but if you work details in around the characters' actions, you should be fine.
When reading other authors' works, keep an eye out for when and where they slow the pacing to give longer descriptions, and where they increase pacing by using shorter snippets that still orient the reader. Use different colored post-it notes to mark examples and return to them after you've finished a novel to study the book in more depth.
Here's a quick example from a Lee Child thriller. At this point in the story, the POV character has arrived at a pathologist's office to ask some questions about a murder victim. It's the day after the New Year's holiday and the character already observed, “There were holiday decorations hanging from the ceiling. They looked a little tired.” So the reader has seen the out-of-place decorations when this next passage occurs. The specific Setting details are contained in one sentence, with two sensory details to ramp it up and pull the reader deeper into what the POV character is experiencing.
Then she looked at each of us in turn in case we had more questions. We didn't, so she smiled once more and swept away through a door. It sucked shut behind her and the ceiling decorations rustled and stilled. Then the reception area went quiet.
âLee Child,
The Enemy
What if Child had written just this?
ROUGH DRAFT:
Then she looked at each of us in turn in case we had more questions. We didn't, so she smiled once more and swept away through a door.
See how stopping at this point doesn't pull the reader into the scene? There's no sense of finality created by using Setting details. There are no sounds, no bringing home the point that the POV character, an investigator, has hit a dead-end here. Because of only one sentence, and the details shared within it, does the reader experience this morgue, talking to a pathologist, and feeling what the character feels when the pathologist departs. So don't think an action sequence must always be long and involved. Look for the small moments to use Setting details, too.
Let's examine using short cues in an action sequence to orient and anchor the reader:
BLASTING NORTH on the 101. Pike gave no warning before horsing across four lanes of traffic to the exit ramp. They fell off the freeway like a brick dropped in water.
âRobert Crais,
The Watchman
If the reader is familiar with Route 101 along the California coast, she probably has a stronger visual of where in the story the characters are,
but
, even if she doesn't know the area, a lot of orientation Setting details are not necessary in this particular scene. We don't need to see this particular highway in any depth to understand the story. The author is focusing the reader on the fact that the characters are evading a tail. The author could have told the reader:
FIRST DRAFT:
They took evasive actions and lost the tail by exiting the freeway unexpectedly.
Sometimes that's all you need on the page. But this story is an action-packed thriller, tense with a sense of impending danger, so Crais chose to use very specific action verbs and details to paint a stronger image.
Let's look more closely at how Crais did this:
Blasting [
Action verb.
] north on the 101. [
Orients the reader to the fact they are on a major highway versus a busy multilane city street. Even those readers who are not from California have a sense of this type of driving environment. Crais didn't need to write:
traveling north along the scenic winding highway called the 101
. In fact, it would have killed the pacing of this scene.
] Pike gave no warning before horsing [
Another fresh action verb.
] across four lanes of traffic [
Strong visual of what the road looks like while reinforcing that they are on a highway.
] to the exit ramp. They fell off the freeway like a brick dropped in water. [
Emotional metaphor that reinforces the action element of this setting.
]
In this next example, one from a paranormal romantic suspense novel, let's look at how the author took what could have been simply movementâcharacters walking from point A to point Bâand instead ratcheted up the tension. With a brief paragraph, this brings the reader into the world of modern warfare and Special Ops teams. Before we jump to J.R. Ward's version, what if she wrote several drafts, until she was sure she focused the reader on the grittiness of a specific Setting, through the point of view of an experienced military operative? She might have written something like this:
FIRST DRAFT:
Walking up to the village was always scary.
Telling, not showing, and the reader is only in the POV character's thoughts, not his skin or his emotions as to why approaching a village would create this response. There's definitely no image of what this village looks like.
SECOND DRAFT:
Like many of the desert villages, this one was small, built of mud and scrounged material, and full of potential hazards.
Better, but there's no sense of action. The reader isn't moving with the POV character, instead we are left to wait until he arrives somewhere. So let's see how Ward makes this short paragraph work harder by showing the reader what it really means to walk up to an isolated village, at night.
The “village” was more like four crumbling stone structures and a bunch of wood-and-tarp huts. As they approached, Jim's balls went tight when his green night-vision goggles picked up movement all over the place. He hated those fucking tarpsâthey flapped in the wind, their shadows darting around like fast-footed people who had guns. And grenades. And all kinds of sharp and shiny.
âJ.R. Ward,
Crave
Can you see how the author builds throughout this paragraph to leave the reader with a strong sense of a real village in the desert and what that Setting means to the character? Notice the sensory details, the emotional introspection that helps set up the mood of what it means to approach this village. Then a specific action is expanded to make clear that the fear here is legit. Let's pull the elements out piece by piece to see why this short paragraph works.
The “village” was more like four crumbling stone structures and a bunch of wood-and-tarp huts.
[The reader now sees specific detailsâ
crumbling stone
,
wood-and-tarp huts
, a detail that plays out more in the third sentence.
] As they approached, Jim's balls went tight [
Visceral emotional response here creating emotion for the reader.
] when his green night-vision goggles [
Item that clearly indicates military or clandestine maneuvers.
] picked up movement all over the place. He hated those fucking tarps [
Here readers are told how the character feels about the tarps, but there's more.
] âthey flapped in the wind, their shadows darting around like fast-footed people who had guns. [
And at last it's very clear why the Setting creates conflict and tension.
] And grenades. And all kinds of sharp and shiny. [
And here it's not simply about possible men with guns, but all sorts of lethal threats.
]
The combination of specific Setting details with emotional body language and introspection creates a paragraph that makes the reader feel she is in this desert, on this operation at night, and looking around for all the threats that could appear from any direction.
When talking about movement through space, we mean a character transitioning from point A to point B, whether it's from one room to another, one area of a city to another, or one city to another. But there's more involved than simply describing point A and then giving equal description to point B. You, as the writer need to keep in mind pacing needsâis this a fact action-oriented scene, so the character needs only to focus on elements of Setting that will help him hide or disappear? Or is this a scene where the character needs to remember elements of one Setting in hindsight? Or is this movement simply to let the reader know the character is now in a new Setting? In the last case, a brief anchoring of Setting might be all that is needed.
NOTE:
Always keep in mind the intention of your scene when weighing what the reader needs to know about the Setting. The more details shared, the more the reader is being shown that the Setting will play out in some way deeper into the story.
Here's an example by mystery author Nevada Barr. The reader already knows the POV character is in New Orleans. The following short description not only moves the character from one location in the city to another in active movement, but weaves in details specific to this city. At the same time, Barr layers the POV character's insights about her response to the city to add a stronger sense of the emotional relationship between place and character. Nevada Barr shows the city while the protagonist, the POV character, actively moves from one location to another, following a lead:
A horse-drawn carriage slowed cars coming from the French Market. Anna darted between two frustrated SUVs and jumped onto the sidewalk, where, if they did hit her, they'd be poaching. None of the drivers even bothered to flip her off. The Big Easy might have the highest per capita murder rate in the country, but the citizens were nice folks for all that.
Sprinting through lackadaisical tourists like Drew Brees through linebackers, Anna zigged down Dumaine and into the narrow alley where the punk's dog had gone.
âNevada Barr,
Burn
Look at everything that's being accomplished in this very active Setting description:
A horse-drawn carriage [
Specific sight in some tourist locations.
] slowed cars coming from the French Market [
Specific place in New Orleans.
]. Anna darted [
Action verb which shows a sense of urgency.
] between two frustrated SUVs and jumped onto the sidewalk [
Jaywalking is universal to most larger cities where pedestrians often have to walk in between traffic.
], where, if they did hit her, they'd be poaching. None of the drivers even bothered to flip her off. [
Here are insights to the POV character about dealing with traffic, so we're getting some characterization and insights about her relationship with this specific city.
] The Big Easy [
Specific nickname for New Orleans.
] might have the highest per capita murder rate in the country, but the citizens were nice folks for all that. [
Character's internalization that gives a specific impression of the people of this town, as compared to her expectations as she dodges traffic.
]
Sprinting [
Action verb revealing emotions.
] through lackadaisical tourists like Drew Brees [
Quarterback for the New Orleans Saints football team, which is again specific to this location.
] through linebackers, Anna zigged [
Action verb.
] down Dumaine [
Specific street in New Orleans.
] and into the narrow alley where the punk's dog had gone.
Let's look at how Nevada Barr might have moved from bare bones to layering Active Setting on the page in her final prose:
FIRST DRAFT:
Anna followed a dog through the streets of New Orleans.
The reader knows which city she's in, but since we're deep into the story, that information has already been imparted, so it becomes redundant.
NOTE
: Unless you show the reader that a character has left a Setting you established earlier in the story, repeating the fact that they are still in that Setting is like hitting them over the head and will jar him out of the story.
SECOND DRAFT:
Passing the French Market as she followed a dog, Anna marveled at how different New Orleans was from her last duty station.
A little more info, but you're still leaving it completely up to the reader to experience this location in the same way as the POV character. The reader needs more specific details to be able to cue her into the world of New Orleans.
Now revisit how in the first passage Barr, by adding a few more intentional words, really brought the reader deeper into New Orleans.
NOTE:
Focus on reader expectations. For some genresââhistorical fiction, amateur sleuth and cozy mysteries, fantasy, and science fictionââreaders tend to want a stronger experience of the world of your story. They also don't want the story to bog down in narrative details, so threading Setting through action satisfies reader expectations well.
In this next example, which is interspersed with introspection between the Setting details and the POV character, a Military Police inspector has followed the dots connecting the suspicious death of a high-ranking general and the murder of his wife all the way to a potential conspiracy in the highest echelons of the U.S. Military. The inspector has pulled strings, called in favors, and is putting his career on the line seeking answers that have brought him to a secret midnight meeting in the Pentagon.