Category Archives: Setting and Milieu

Double Duty: Using Setting as Character, Theme, or Hook

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Have you heard someone say “the setting was like a character?” I remember the first time a teacher introduced the concept and my young, logical mind thought it was pretty stupid. A character is a character, a setting is a setting. Black and white, one or the other. But I was also pretty stupid as a youngin’, and as I read more, the more I seemed to gravitate toward novels that had a strong, if not overwhelming, sense of setting. It made everything else in the story – the plot, the characters, the conflict – feel real, no matter what genre. I especially love books set in the Midwest United States where I grew up. The characters feel familiar. Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool comes to mind. Set in rural Manifest, Kansas, the book carries with it familiar history of rural Kansas which informs the culture. And yet there is no town in existence named Manifest. That leads me to the first way you could add some magic into your real or realistic setting.

This first point is more of a confession. I adore the Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris. Love it. I love Sookie and will defend every decision she makes in the series. Come at me, bros. Now that I’ve thrown my undying love out there, I can say one of the things I love the most in the series: Bon Temps (pronounced “Bauh Tauuuh” or some crazy phonetic spelling like that), the home town of Sookie Stackhouse. Bon Temps isn’t a real town in Louisiana, but it might as well be. The tone of the town, the people in it, the surrounding towns and communities, and the culture is dead-on small town Louisiana – everything from Sookie’s charm and manners to the people of the town knowing all the other characters’ business.

This isn’t an uncommon way for an author to give their setting culture and context, and for good reason. Setting can greatly change or enhance the flavor of your plot, much like salt can bring forth flavor in food.

Another way you can encapsulate the tone of a location is by describing it without naming the location specifically. Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West takes place in a war-torn country where Islam is a predominant religion. These are all the clues we are given as the reader. When the two main characters travel through doors (portals) to other countries, the cities they pass into are named: real cities, real countries. Written this way, Mohsin Hamid draws empathy from the reader, encouraging them to picture the main characters’ city as their own, or could be their city under similar political circumstances. Mohsin Hamid uses setting as theme in this case, as the plot circles around immigration and migration. In Blindness, José Saramago also offers up an unnamed setting, and yet it feels similar to every big city you’ve ever been to, adding to the creepy factor: this could happen anywhere.

Sometimes, movies have the potential to introduce a unique setting that acts as a hook. Another Earth written and staring Brit Marling is a fantastic example of just that. The story is a tragic drama, a bleak indie film with the exception of the setting. While the story is set on Earth, early on in the story, an Earth 2 is discovered, and soon it’ll be orbiting near our own Earth. As it turns out, Earth 2 mirrors Earth not just topographically… It also mirrors its inhabitants – like an alternate universe. Everything plot-wise in the story is realistic – what we could unfortunately experience in every day life, like a car crash, a devastating death. The setting is Earth, and yet the viewer’s curiosity can’t help but be tickled with the presentation of an Earth 2, making the setting(s) a major player in the plot itself. This movie and its story wouldn’t at all have the same appeal without the setting. The setting is the hook.

As a thought experiment, how could you make the setting in your current project into a character? The theme? The hook? It won’t take long to realize you have a lot to play with for storytelling when it comes to the setting. Take advantage of your setting -make it work in more ways for your book than just one.

Building Epic Worlds

Authorial Trust Believability Craft & Skills Reader Investment & Empathy Sean Golden Setting and Milieu Suspension of Disbelief World-building 1 Comment

J. R. R. Tolkien famously created entire languages and histories as part of his creation of one of the greatest world building exercises in all of literature. Even that wasn’t enough to satisfy his desire to create a complex and vibrant world. He used those languages to create unique poetry and songs, which he then translated into English as part of putting the Lord of the Rings on paper.

Frank Herbert had reams of notes detailing the history, economies, royal house intrigue and genealogy of a “world” that was far too epic to fit even onto one planet.

Is it necessary to mimic their herculean efforts in order to create immersive, believable worlds for your own story?

No, it’s not. Certainly you don’t need to create entire languages.

But it can be helpful if your readers wonder if you did. And that might be easier than you think.

One of the more consistent compliments I get on my War Chronicles novels is on the depth of world-building. I made a determined effort in writing those books to create an epic feel, not just for the character story arcs, but for the entire world. Not just for the story’s time, but for thousands of years into the past. Not just for the physical geography, but for the spirituality and myth.

Sometimes less can be more. In that story we encounter an ancient empire, one that is tied to the current story through a thread that traverses millennia, and will likely continue on into the future. To create the sense of an ancient empire that was palpable and relevant to the story, I wove that empire into the story whenever I could, in the most natural ways I could devise. But I didn’t write a hundred page treatise on that empire, I didn’t create languages.

What I did, was to have the empire be remembered in the land itself. The great mountain range dominating the main continent is named after that empire. Ancient structures dot the landscape. Terms are woven into the language of the townsfolk, idioms and proper names woven together even through dialog.

The illusion all this brings forward is one of an ancient empire, so powerful that its great works of art, science and architecture are still the pinnacle of culture and technology. Bridges and temples not only still exist, but some are still maintained and revered by their descendants.

The same approach works for geography and biology. A little variety, consistently applied, can create a compelling sense of distance and scope. As your characters move through the world, change the details of the local flora, fauna and terrain. New sights, sounds, even smells can delight or disgust your characters, which flows through their eyes and into the minds of your readers. Smell, in particular, is a very powerful memory aid. If you can associate a place in your book to a smell the reader recognizes and has a strong emotional response to, you can almost guarantee that place will stand out in their mind as they read it.

Finally, one of the most powerful ways to give a sense of world-ness to your story is to weave these different techniques together. Flowers can be associated with ancient rituals. Tolkien almost literally wove his history into his scenery. Think of the Dead Marshes, The Old Forest, Fangorn forest, Lothlorian… each place unique, each place memorable, each place as much a part of the myth and folklore as it is a part of the physical geography.

Once you start thinking about the story this way, opportunities to use these techniques will appear as you write, or as you edit.

Home As Setting and Theme

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When my debut novel, Sleeper Protocol, was released in 2016, many of my childhood friends, family, and even my teachers commented about my use of “home.” Where I call home is a long way from where I live now, but every time I’m there the feeling of peace is as palpable as wrapping a blanket around my shoulders. I was born and raised in upper east Tennessee in an area called the Tri-Cities. My family actually lived very near a small community known as Midway – it was Midway between Johnson City and Tennessee’s Oldest City, Jonesborough. The Appalachian mountains filled the eastern horizon, running in a roughly southwest to northeast line. It’s a beautiful place.

And I never intended for my story to go there.

As the story of a cloned soldier trying to find his identity unwound from my brain to the keyboard, I initially struggled with “What’s the point?” or even Eric Flint’s famous guidance of “Who gives a $^#@?” I needed something to make the character’s emotional struggle hit home and that’s where the inspiration hit. So, I took my character home. In the third act, he descends Cherokee Mountain, crosses the Nolichucky River, and ends up on a small knoll where a farmhouse once stood. All of those are real places and the knoll is where my family’s homestead still stands. My cousins own “The Farm” as we call it, and it’s wonderful to know that it’s still there and open for my family to visit any time we want. That openness and warmth led me to bringing my character to an very different emotional level. I gave him a sense of place, a sense of a home that he’d once had and was very different than the future one, but a place he could identify with fully and embrace his identity. Once I’d opened that door, I proceeded to move him further along the path by having him stand over his own gravesite in the Mountain Home National Cemetery.

The journey to find his “home” was really the key to unlocking his identity. My first ideas to bring him through familiar territory to help with my description and emotional resonance gave way to something else entirely: a theme I’d never intended. Our sense of home is a large part pf our identity. Even our home nation, or state, or municipality is much more than a common bond to our neighbors. We identify ourselves to that place forever. No matter where I go, when I am asked where I’m from I always say that I’m from Tennessee and just happen to live elsewhere.

My point is this – write about your home or wherever you consider your home to be. Pull that emotion and identity into your own writing. Your voice will improve, your characters will seem more grounded and real, and your readers – especially those who claim the same sense of home – will keep asking for more. When you’re not writing about your home? Put that same warmth and emotion into the characters who are there. It makes a difference to the story and to your characters.

When Settings, Like This Title, are Boring

Ace Jordyn Craft & Skills Setting and Milieu World-building No Comments

Ho hum. Yawn. This story world is boring. YIKES! What does this mean? How do you fix it?

A boring setting means that the story world is dull and that the character’s interactions with it aren’t interesting. Who wants to read about a character’s morning routine (let’s call him Ted) – getting out of bed in the morning, making coffee and toast for breakfast seated at his table and munching and slurping as he reads the paper. (I am yawning, aren’t you? But stay with me, this story will pick up soon!)

Setting, or world building, involves not only the time period, genre expectations (science fiction, fantasy, historical, steampunk, to name a few), the milieu but also the ‘invisible’ things such as economics, politics, stability (war, peace, civil unrest, dystopia). From these are borne personal beliefs (may include religion) and values (for something, against something, or taking pains to be neutral). Mix these elements together to create opportunities for conflict which spurs characters into action.

Back to Ted. Let’s add an alarm clock and let’s make it a nagging hologram. Hologram – that’s futuristic. Ted has been partying the night before because today was his day off from his job as a strategist for the Space Army. Only the hologram won’t let him sleep and it’s nagging him to contact his commander – code confidential and urgent. Only, Ted isn’t thinking clearly yet so he tumbles out of bed, hits the dispenser for coffee and it’s not working yet again. He stumbles back into the bedroom, searches for his laser gun and notices a lump on the bed. He rips the sheet off and sees a woman obviously dead. A hologram of the commander appears to tell him to get his sorry self to a meeting. Secret Agent Alvaret is missing and along with her, key information that will compromise Space Army’s plans to stop the advance of the Slimy Worms and to save Space City.

Ted’s world now holds the promise of a futuristic science fiction world with an impending war and a murder to solve. We have the sense of the politics, the chain of command, and although the economics and daily lives of inhabitants are somewhat sketchy at this point, there is a lot of opportunity to create something interesting. The murder victim provides an opportunity to explore and to learn about the world through the investigation of her murder (Ted will have to figure this out because he’ll be blamed, and as he searches for clues, we’ll get to explore the world through his eyes).

Someone may argue that what I’ve just created is a premise not the setting. Boring Ted in a boring setting wouldn’t have an opportunity for a dead body to appear in his bed let alone have the fate of a space nation in his hands. He’d likely just have read about it in the paper and then gone to work. But that does not make a story.

However, if it’s boring Ted you still want, he needs to somehow be made a character readers will want to read about. He may be an ordinary man thrown into extraordinary circumstances. He’ll need quirks, issues to overcome, a reason to overcome them in a setting/world which won’t want him to overcome them. So although Ted may be your ordinary man, he’ll still have to function in extraordinary circumstances. Those circumstances are setting, with attention to detail even if it’s set in current times. Again, that means paying attention to details and taking nothing for granted about time and place. For some great examples on how to do this, read current mysteries set in modern times.

If the setting you’re creating feels boring, here are a few things to consider:

1) You don’t know the setting well enough yet.
Settings, like characters, can become cliché and trite. In Ted’s case, the author would need to know something about military strategy, about life on a space station/city, how the science operates, who the Slimy Worms are (background, aliens, humans) and why and how they pose a threat. In short, we need to know how the world works and what the character’s place is in it and how he sees it and himself. If these details haven’t been thought through, the setting won’t be rich enough to hold the reader or for the character to interact with.

2) You know the setting well and have thought through the details.
You know it but does the reader? Have you shown it as best as you can? Have you shown us the important details and not assumed that we can see what you can? Find ways to integrate the description into the story. For example, pinpoint tangible details using strong nouns and verbs along with dialogue and action. This will help strike the balance between showing and telling.

3) Too much telling and not enough showing.
Too much telling can be boring. Description after description after description! Is that information important? Sometimes it is. Telling can be in the form of exposition, narrative summary or static description. There is a place for it but it must be used sparingly: if there is information that a reader needs to know: actions or time need to be sped up; or showing would be too long and would slow the story down. But always, avoid adjectivitis! Too many adjectives, too many descriptors, can bore readers and slow the story. Always consider if the details are important. If not, cut them. If they are important, use strong nouns and verbs.

No matter how and when you describe setting, how you show it through dialogue, emotion, internal monologue, action or exposition, setting has only one purpose. That is to help move the story forward.

When editing your story, ask these questions:

1) Is the sentence showing or telling?

2) Note if you or your beta readers feel themselves skimming over information. Ask: Is it info dump? What purpose does this information have?

3) Is the sentence too long? Does it contain too much information? Is it important? What do I need to say to move the story forward? How much impact or punch does the sentence have?  This means accuracy, clarity and brevity. However, as Ken Rand notes in THE 10% SOLUTION, if accuracy and clarity (therefore more words) are needed to tell a story, then brevity must take a back seat.

Setting need not be boring. It is only if we don’t explain it well enough, or use it properly (either in info dumps or without clarity) in the context of the events in the story. Know your world well and explore it with your protagonist as you write. Use the editing process to determine if there is sufficient information about the setting and if your characters are serving not only the plot, but also to reveal the world to the reader.

Now, to do something about that boring title …

When Setting Sets the Scene for a Publisher’s Rejection

or

I Forgot Where I Am or Why

or

Zzzzzzzzzzzzz…………..