Today’s Killzone post will reappear as a handout in a couple of weeks at the end of a panel entitled, “Settings and Secrets” at the always-terrific Creatures, Crimes and Creativity conference in the Washington, DC suburb of Columbia, Maryland. Here’s the setup, what the moderator has sent to us:
This weekend I researched “setting in novels” and found the following varying, although accurate depending on one’s viewpoint, definitions:
- The setting of a story is defined as the time, duration, and place an author chooses to write about.
- The four types of setting are: physical, social, historical, and psychological.
- The five types of setting in fiction: realistic setting, fantasy setting, science fiction setting, historical fiction setting, contemporary setting.
- The core elements of setting are time, place, mood, context.
- There are three different kinds of story setting: temporal, environmental, and individual.
As a self-schooled pantser who’s seen considerable success in the novel writing business over the past three decades, the one rule I preach the loudest to anyone who will listen is that there are no rules in the world of fiction. When I see definitions assigned to the elements of creativity, I feel my jaws lock. Then, when a hard number is assigned to those elements, I growl. Creativity defies numerical value, and I think it’s a mistake to set struggling writers’ minds wandering on a journey down that road.
Stories are about interesting characters doing interesting things in interesting places in interesting ways. There you have the traditionally accepted three elements of story: character, plot and setting. But they are not separate elements and they cannot be addressed separately. (Okay, that sounded like a rule–but it’s what works for me.)
Setting, per se, in most modern fiction, is important only to the degree that it establishes the place where scenes unfold, since every scene has to happen somewhere. All else being equal, a scene that occurs in an interesting location is inherently more engaging than a scene that occurs in an uninteresting one. Rocket science, right?
The secret sauce in making a setting pop lies in its presentation. I believe in filtering everything through the perceptions of a character with enough detail to orient the reader, but without so much description as to stop the action of the story. I like to stay with suggestive terms that let readers fill in their own blanks.
Irene crossed the threshold into a marble monument to money and poor taste. The footprint of the foyer equaled that of her first house, with pink veined walls that climbed thirty feet to an arched ceiling adorned with images of mostly-naked cherubs swimming through the heavens. Twenty feet straight ahead, at the head of the first flight of the grand staircase, at the spot where the risers split to form a giant Y, stood a stone carving of Carl Adams himself, dressed as Caesar, and looking far more fit than Irene imagined Carl had ever been.
In my mind, as a thriller writer, that setting is a utility for the future. Yes, it’s the place where the rest of the scene unfolds, but note that there’s no detail on the type of marble or on what the cherubs are really doing. There’s a dismissiveness to the tone of the description that lets the reader know that Irene is not a fan without having to actually articulate the fact.
Note that I said the setting was a utility. It’s a storytelling tool. It’s a leverage point for advancing plot or character. In my head, that foyer with the statue seems like a great place for a climactic gunfight, but because I truly am a pantser–I write without knowing what’s coming next–I don’t yet know if the story will take me back around to the mansion to make it happen.
But let’s say, for the sake of argument, that I decide that I do want a big scene of violence in the mansion and I want it to involve the structure being on fire. Well, okay, no big deal. Since marble doesn’t burn, I would go back to the description of money and poor taste and replace that veined marble with mahogany and ebony. Maybe there are vaulted wooden beams and the statue becomes something tasteless in the vein of a cigar store Indian. That would make a great fire. If that was that was the way I went, then I’d have to plant something in the setting that would provide a means of escape for my heroes.
In my stories, setting serves the character and the plot, and is the easiest element to mold to every other component of good storytelling. Depending on your genre and you character, be mindful of the level of detail. If your character is lost in the woods, is he going to be noticing the difference between pin oaks and live oaks and white oaks and red oaks? Or even the difference between oaks and maples? Hardwoods versus evergreens, maybe?
The key questions for you as the writer are, do your descriptions of setting advance both the plot and the character without upsetting the pacing? That’s the test.
Good points, John. (Just make sure there are no mentions of the marble later on–I’m always missing things when I make changes.)
I’m a ‘less is more’ when it comes to descriptions, because I like reading them even less than I like writing them.
I like your “utility” term. When I was just starting out, toying with writing for fun, I wanted to write a mystery. I had one scene where I tried to hone my description-writing tools, and that one sentence had my early readers telling me the book was a romance, not a mystery. I had no clue of how much power a simple sentence could wield.
I agree, descriptions need to be written from the eyes of the character seeing them, and if there’s not going to be that fire later, to me, they slow the pace.
Sounds like the people who attend your session are going to enjoy it.
“Creativity defies numerical value.” Thank you for saying that, John! When someone starts slinging numbers, I tighten up. However, from teaching, I realize some writers appreciate such guidelines. Their brains are more orderly and methodical than mine. They feel comfortable filling in an answer to each numbered item.
My early drafts are very spare. On subsequent drafts, I fill in setting details that complement the story line. As a reader, I skip past long descriptions of live oaks, pin oaks, etc., etc., etc.
However, your great description of marble walls did bring to mind an image of future blood spatter on them!
If the questions I get from new writers is any indication, description is right up there with character and plot as a difficult thing to figure out, but once I explain it is POV and character it becomes much easier. Setting is more about plot. A heist in an old barn in West Virginia or the aforementioned tacky mansion create very different plots.
I like your description of setting as utility, John. It’s there to serve the story, not the other way around. I could envision the foyer Irene stepped into through your words.
In my first novel, I tried to define the setting not by physical description, but by attitude:
“Bellevue was one of those adolescent towns that had sprouted out of the hip of a larger, more mature city to its east. Spurred on by some kind of urban hormones, it continued to develop enthusiastically without the burdens of old infrastructure, old industries, or old ideas….”
Writing deep third pov, with three viewpoint characters taking irregular turns, I continuously ask myself, “What is THIS character noticing about the setting right now – and WHY?”
Then I use that – and only that – to add the setting details.
No narrator. No thinking of a reader and what that reader would want described – unless the pov character has a strong reason in the story.
Which is a bit of an exaggeration, because if I decide the story needs something, I will find a reason why the character would be motivated to notice that something at that point in the story.
But it keeps all these details anchored in that very personal, right-behind-the-eyeballs viewpoint of the character – for an immersive experience first for me, and then for a reader.
It takes a fair amount of work – things are motivated and planned and then executed – but there comes a point in the writing when it’s seamless and obvious and present. Then the planning recedes and ‘being the character’ is all that’s left. Sort of like the ‘lost wax’ method of casting molten metal.