Writing Active Setting Book 1: Characterization and Sensory Detail (3 page)

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.

–Suzanne Collins –
The Hunger Games

Here we have more
Setting
details that allow the author to show some
characterization
of the POV character, reveal emotions based on her interaction with this room
,
and all by adding just a few more details of
Setting
.

N
ote: As
in painting, when you use a cool ultramarine color then dab a spot of warm orange on the blue, it makes it pop. The reader can suddenly be “popped” deeper into the POV character’s head with a clearer picture of how he
or
she sees the world.

S
UBTEXT IN SETTING

Have you ever attended an event with a friend or family member and
later
in discussing
the
event, you discover that based on
the
description
the friend
seemed
to have
—
been
at a total
ly different event
? Mystery writer Agatha C
hristie used this
ability of people to focus in on what
matters
to them in one of her
Hercule Poirot
stories to great effect. The Belgi
an
detective asked half a dozen participants of a party to describe the room where the murder took place.
All of the
character
s
, because they came from different background
s
, with different interests, described highlights of the room from totally different perspectives. One noted the very valuable and esoteric collectibles scattered around o
n the tabletops. Another, a sol
d
i
er who spent many years in the
Middle East
, could tell the detective the tribal names of the woven rugs on the floor, whereas another character saw the room in terms of colors,
and
another could describe the type of period furniture.

Now if the reader had not
“seen”
the room through
the
detective’s
eyes
initially with a whole room image
, but only saw the small snippets from the
individual secondary
characters the reader might see
only
a room with
knick-knacks
or
just
a room
with carpets
,
but no furniture.
By letting the audience see the whole room through Poirot’s POV
first
,
and then
revisit
ing
the room through each
character’s POV
,
the reader is led to solve the mystery of who killed the victim
because only one character
“saw”
the weapon that was at hand.

Note:
The world Setting you are creating will be seen only
through one character at a time, so it’s important to make sure that what your character sees matters.

Let’s revisit an earlier point to see how a
POV character
that
is miserable in a school environment will not see or notice the same items as a POV character who finds
that same
school a sanctuary and the center of
his or her
world.

Example 1
: I strolled down the empty hallway, hearing the slap of my hard soles against the wor
n
linoleum, remembering the all too many times I
had
crawled this same route to Mrs. Pendragon’s office.

One slap; you’re in trouble.

Two slap; shouldn’t have got caught.

Third slap; loser.

The stink of sweat and cheap cleaning supplies gagged me back then and did the same today. The flicker of a fluorescent light sent a shiver down my back.
But
I wasn’t sixteen anymore and heading down the fast slope of trouble even as I
stopped before
the closed wood and glass door of the principal’s office.

Example 2:
The sounds caught me first. Laughter rico
cheting off the metal lockers,
the low rumble of
a
guy’s voice changing
timbre
, the kick slam of tennis shoes hitting stubborn locker doors. Then came the memories. Hand-lettered signs promising the next school dance,
a
n
orange and black banner urging the football or basketball team on to new heights, the crepe paper streamers still hanging from the last Pep Con. I’d been gone twenty years and in the space of twenty footsteps this hall tugged me back to the best times of my life.

SETTING THE STAGE

Remember to think of
Setting
as the stage
that
contains your story.

Keeping setting lean and mean is important, but it can be dangerous to stuff all the details about a story setting into one paragraph. Often this will stop your pacing dead. However, it can be done well if your pacing is so strong that all the reader wants to do is get back into the story already. For example
:

It was a sunny April day. But
Stark Street
looked dreary. Pages from a newspaper cart
wheeled down the street and banked against curbs and the
cement
stoops of cheerless row houses. Gang slogans were spray
painted on brick fronts. An occasional building had been burned and gutted, the windows blackened and boarded. Small businesses squatted between the row houses. Andy’s Bar & Grill, Stark Street Garage, Stan’s Appliances, Omar’s Meat Market.

–Seven Up – Janet Evanovich

Let’s look
more closely
at the above and break the
Setting
down to specific elements. First off Evan
ovich describes
this
Setting
in depth because it is
the first time her POV character arrives at
this
new location
and she wants
to
make her character’s world vivid to the reader
.
This is one of the places [
pun intended] where the
reader
will allow the
author to slow the
pacing a bit in order to see where the character is so
that
the reader can feel and be in that place with the character.

Let’s examine
more closely
how Evanovich uses her descriptive phrases
to create the world of NJ Bounty Hunter Stephanie Plum
—
she does not leave it to the reader to guess about the neighborhood
;
she uses key details to make it come alive.

It was a sunny April day.
[O
rient the reader to time of year and a general sense of time of day. It’s not night or early morning given
that
it
’
s
sunny.
Also acts as a contrast to what comes next
, which makes the reader take notice
.
]

But
Stark Street
looked dreary.
[T
he
author “tells” (versus shows)
here what the
POV character thinks about the Setting
, but
then goes on to show with specific details. Telling alone is shorthand and too much
of it
holds the reader at a distance from the story, but when
telling is
used with showing
it
can be effective
. By telling us, Evanovich gives us a direction from which we can interpret what we’re going to see next on this street.
]

Pages from a newspaper cart
wheeled
[
Action verbs
, as opposed to
passive
“to be” verbs, make stronger, more concrete images in the reader’s mind.
]

…
down the street and banked
[action verb]
against curbs and the cement stoops of cheerless row houses
.[S
pecific types of houses
—
these are not bungalows or 80s ranch style homes and the reader can start to see the
Setting
more clearly
by this small detail.
]

Gang slogans were spray painted on brick fronts.
[V
ery specific detail
s
showing the neglect of the area and how the buildings were made which paints a
distinct
image
.
Change this one detail, from brick to concrete or faded lap siding and you have very different images of the houses.
]

An occasional building had been burned and gutted, the windows blackened and boarded.
[B
y repeating the terms
—
burned and gutted, black
ened
and boarded
,
the author hammers home the images
in this specific world
.
]

Small businesses squatted
[action verb]
between the row houses. Andy’s Bar & Grill, Stark Street Garage, Stan’s Appliances,
Omar’s Meat Market.
[N
otice the male names most common in the 50s
. This
tells the reader these are small, family
-
owned and probably older businesses
.
]

Now what if Evanovich had simply written:

It was a sunny April day. But
Stark Street
looked dreary. We looked for Omar’s Meat Market and found it.

The reader would have felt rushed
,
and while knowing they were on a particular street in
New Jersey
because the story is unfolding in
New Jersey
, they would hav
e no more sense of this world e
specially if the reader had never been to
New Jersey
.
S
o instead of seeing the world of Evanovich’s story
the reader could be
inserting images from a
Kansas
town or a French
city
.

Without clues the reader will default to what they
know
already and
may
get a
n
erroneous setting image. One paragraph was all that was needed to anchor the reader to the world of the characters and make the setting come alive. Evanovich does not use a lot of Setting in her stories, but makes sure that at least once or twice in every story the reader experiences the world of New Jersey-bounty hunter Stephanie Plum.