Mastering Story Setting

In stories, “where” usually matters. “When” usually matters. And it goes beyond “a dark and stormy night.” The setting — both time and place — does at least five things:

1. It orients readers (and audiences). It’s difficult to connect with characters floating in a void, unstuck in time.
2. It sequences the story. I think of The Graduate. Ben Braddock needs to reach the woman he loves (Elaine Robinson) before she is married. His car runs out of gas, leaving him (what seems to be) miles from his goal as the clock toward “I do” ticks away. Even a flashback (if clear) connects moments ties to urgency and provides revelations that matter against the real time of the story.
3. It creates the mood. We feel differently about sunshine and blizzards. A jail cell is confining. A view from a mountain peak is freeing and maybe inspiring. Note: Often the writer’s voice provides a key contribution to adding mood to setting. Think of the dread that underlies Poe’s setting descriptions or the dark humor that permeates Joseph Heller’s Catch 22.
4. It provides context. We connect periods of history with assumptions of danger, etiquette, rank, and ignorance.
5. It exposes the characters. Personal items in a space often say things about who the character is or who he/she aspires to be (or maybe what the character wants to leave behind). But setting can also be used to show the values, emotions, and desires of a character by reflecting the interior or standing in contrast to it. Weather has often been used to suggest characters’ feelings.
   

Sometimes setting can even become a character. This is especially true for survival tales. Or it may create wonder and a sense of possibilities. Think of Oz. Think of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Yet, setting is often the most neglected part of a story. The mortal sin is a talking in white spaces scene. But almost as bad is putting people in a generic office. Or shoving characters into booths in diners. Or police stations that have plenty of stuff, but nothing distinctive. (A detailed description of a cliche is still a cliche.)

Overdoing setting can be just as bad. “Literary” writers seem particularly vulnerable to the temptation of painting pictures that don’t serve the story. Beauty in the service of nothing. Those paragraphs (or pages) often get skipped.

What’s too much? What’s too little? It depends. My preference is to do just as much as is needed to get the job done. Orientation is a necessity, but, in a longer work, it can often be evoked by context (following a pattern or suggested by the section before) or with a cue rather than reiterating details. Place and time may be entwined with a specific character or a goal. (In the film The Wizard of Oz, the first visit to the city of Oz is a full tour. The second visit jumps right to the Wizard’s hall, with Dorothy holding the singed broom.)

How much description is provided depends on the needs of the story and the expectations of readers. Mysteries need to plant clues. SF needs to present an unknown world. Historicals and romances have traditions of providing rich, sensual details.

Getting the measurements just right so they fit the story generally comes from rewriting, not drafting. Since it’s easier to cut than to add, overdoing it in a draft may be best. But if the words are flowing, with dialogue and action coming to mind at a speed almost too fast to write down, do what script writers do. Use headers before each scene.

The first three scenes from The Shawshank Redemption are set up like this:
INT. - CABIN - NIGHT (1946)
EXT. - CABIN - NIGHT (1946)
INT. - PLYMOUTH - NIGHT (1946)

While action lines develop these, scene headings provide the essentials — place and time — with economy.

Unless you skip the scene headings, it’s hard to get lost in a screenplay. But that’s just the start of making sure readers don’t get lost. In a story, other information is needed. Setting includes the people present in the scene. It’s irritating and distracting to come across action or dialogue from a character you didn’t know was there. Essential information needs to be included well before it becomes important. If someone is going to fall off a cliff, that bit of dangerous landscape can’t become an “oh, yeah.”

“As Marilyn backed up to avoid his embrace, her foot came within inches of the (oh, yeah) forty-foot cliff.”

Mastery of Story Setting 1: Orient your reader.
Practice: Go to a beloved contemporary story in a genre you know. Chances are, the first page or two will provide much of what is needed to orient a reader to the story. Check to see if you can pick out the following:

What’s the period, season, and time of day?
Whether the scene occurs inside or outside and at least three descriptive ideas related to place.
Who is present in the scene at the opening of the scene?
What’s the point of view? Usually, the setting is experienced through the senses and memories of one character.

Now consider how the author might have selected the details. To take this practice further, you might rewrite the scene to orient with different details. Or do this a few times with good stories and then look at your own first pages.

Note: In the 1800s, lots of novels begin with an omniscient point of view. This is less common today (except in literary fiction) because it tends to work against immersing readers in the scene. There’s nothing wrong with it and it can be fun to explore, but using omniscience may limit your audience.

A messy workspace. A collection of action figures. A cupboard under the stairs that serves as a bedroom. Often the settings we remember most clearly are those that connect to the values and circumstances of a character. It’s not just a place. It’s a special place. It’s not just a time. It’s a special time (birthday, exam day, the last day of freedom or exile). We experience stories through what they mean to characters, so it’s not surprising that memorable settings are intertwined with characters. This doesn’t mean they need to be congruent. Fish out of water stories depend on settings that become vivid because they are at odds with characters.

Mastery of Story Setting 2: Create a connection between the setting and a character.
Practice: Look at the work of fiction you admire or explore one of your own, and consider what about the setting matters to the character. A night owl might be grumpy in the morning light. A fancy ballroom might make a character feel underdressed. Machine gun turrets might dissuade a character who wants to rescue his or her beloved. See if there are missed opportunities to connect with the task at hand or goal. Find the element in the setting that is most emotionally engaging (fear, envy, anger, curiosity) to the viewpoint character. Depending on the story, there may be opportunities for irony. A character may be lured in by bait or act foolishly because he or she misconstrues what something is.

In addition to connecting to the plot and the character, a setting can engage readers because of its details. One reason people come to stories is to learn something new. Sometimes, it’s just fun facts to know and tell your friends. But it can be more basic, often arising from research. I find that the tools set out for a profession, the irritations of a workplace, the surprise (a Monet print hung in auto repair shop) can keep readers reading.

When all else fails, dazzle them. An apt, poetic description can hold readers even when it brings a story to a complete stop. But it has to be special. It has to become a set piece that enthralls readers so thoroughly that it will entertain despite interrupting the story.

Mastery of Story Setting 3: Make your setting engaging.
Practice: A great starting point is to turn to the work of a writer whose voice captures you every time, perhaps because the language is poetic (George R.R .Martin) or distinctive (Hunter S. Thompson) or full of personality (Austen). Focus on how setting (time, place, items and people present) is handled, and how the language adds to engagement rather than distracts. Once you’ve noticed alls this, put what you’ve learned to work. (f you have the facility to imitate a writer’s voice in a scene you create, that can be a great way to internalize high-level skills. Otherwise, just jump from your analysis to writing a setting for your own story.

For those with well-developed styles, a good exercise is to move beyond voice to details noticed. If you can write about the room you are in (and time and people present), no matter how mundane, and make is interesting and distinctive by picking out something new, that’s powerful.

One more thing: see if in a setting you can surprise readers (fairly). Surprises delight and raise questions that can keep pages turning.

These three elements of setting are unavoidable. They must be done well. Next time, we’ll level up with a few more focus areas that can help settings bring more to storytelling.