The Writer's E-Zine Home

Writers' Village University - F2K: Free Fiction Writing Course - ePress-online
Writers' Village University Membership Information

Craft of Writing

Lon Prater

The Stowaway in Your Story
(How to Make a Lazy Setting Earn Its Keep)

Does your fiction have a stowaway? Is there a character who hides in every scene, getting a free ride without having to earn its place in the story you're creating? If you aren't making good use of setting, there may as well be.

Many books on writing and even some workshops urge writers to think of setting as a backdrop for the action. The setting you choose should be interesting and realistic, they tell you, but also appropriate to the story. This is good advice, as far as it goes, but the theatrical mindset about setting suffers from the same weakness as a painted stage backdrop: a lack of depth and a static quality that constantly reminds the audience they are merely pretending a story is happening rather than becoming lost in the experience.

Writers who want to get the most out of their settings would do well to think of them as invisible characters, agents of the author who move unnoticed through the story, subtly manipulating the reader's attention to produce the desired effect. What kinds of tasks can a writer assign to his otherwise flat and lazy settings? Things like:

Helping Suspend Disbelief
The sensory details of a setting are a key element in making the story feel grounded in a concrete reality. But don't settle for a by-the-book description of the sights and sounds of a place. Smell, taste and touch are often the most underused senses in a writer's arsenal, which is surprising given how much more evocative they can be: The smell of a freshly mown lawn and the feel of a cold wet glass of lemonade held against a sunburnt forehead do just as much (and sometimes more) to capture the feeling of a suburban summer day than any number of descriptions of mowers left abandoned by shade trees or the sound of bees droning circles around the honeysuckle bush.

Building Mood and Atmosphere
Everyone who hasn't been living under a rock for the last thirty years has become familiar with the trope of thunderstorms and creepy old unlit mansions as tension builders. But what about other moods? Do the sights and smells of a barbershop on Sunday afternoon evoke menace, nostalgia or something else entirely? In the hands of a skilled writer, the answer can be "all of the above." Menace in a barbershop? Talk about the gleam of a straight razor along Deacon Jeb's wrinkled throat and the squeaky old ceiling fan that everyone swears is going to fall down and kill somebody one of these days. Nostalgia? Let your reader hear the deep and friendly conversation of old men who've been coming here for decades; let them feel the spongy seat give beneath them as the barber jacks up the chair. Virtually any setting can be adapted to convey whatever mood you desire. The trick is deciding what mood the scene calls for and then selecting and slanting the details to bring it out.

Setting the Pace
The setting can also be used to move the action along as briskly or as slowly as the author needs it to. Want to make your reader experience the thrill of being chased? Let them feel the mountain path growing steeper beneath your hero's boots and the scrabble of loose rocks falling behind them; remind them how good the half-eaten stew would taste right now, if only there had been time to finish it before the outlaws had come crashing into the pass. Slowing down to ruminate after a particularly intense action scene? Mention the coarseness of fresh hospital sheets, the dull regularity of meals, pills and the beeping machines attached to someone your character cares about, the smell of antiseptic that reminds her of. . . Well, you get the idea. The more active a setting is, the faster the pace will feel, and vice versa.

Acting as Adversary/Obstacle
In some stories, the environment, or setting is the source of greatest conflict. Avalanches, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are always useful to challenge your protagonist with, but if you only think of the weather and big picture environment as an obstacle, you'll be missing out on some of the most helpful roadblocks you can throw in your hero or heroine's way. She left so fast she forgot to bring her purse. How will she pay to cross the toll bridge so she can keep following the man who stole her daughter? Or when she gets to the other side and finds herself lost in a maze of unfamiliar city streets: How will she ever find one white pickup truck among so many vehicles? Using a well chosen setting to complicate your character's life adds a layer of depth often found missing in more straightforward person vs. person plots.

Symbolism/Development of Theme
This is one of the easiest ways to use setting, and also the most prone to overuse. So tread lightly here; a little symbolism goes a long way. The most overused technique of all is having the sunset or first bloom of spring or some other natural event occur just at the moment your character has come to an epiphany, or finishes up meditating on the big lessons she's learned over the course of the story. While it does work most of the time, the motif has been used so often that it smacks of a lack of inventiveness, or—at best—lackluster craftsmanship. If you plan to use some element of the setting as an ongoing note of your theme, take care to use it sparingly, and in a way that makes sense. Far better though would be finding something unique about the setting and letting it express its own theme (or even counter-theme) such as the smell of gunpowder that hangs in the air following both a murder and the shooting off of New Year's Eve fireworks, or the crunch and bitterness of an unripe apple when perhaps the character has bitten off more than he can chew.

Making the setting pull its own weight in a story isn't always easy, but it's effort well spent. An author must be like the stern captain of a sailing ship. It's not enough to root out the stowaway, you have to put it to work earning its meals and passage. Once adequately directed, you'll find the setting can come to be a capable and efficient member of your story's crew. Before you know it, your fiction will be that much closer to "shipshape."


About the Author
Lon Prater's life is currently set on the Florida gulf coast.  His fiction has appeared in Writers of the Future XXI, Borderlands 5 and many other venues. To find out more about him and his writing, click to http://www.neverary.com/notes.htm.