Finding Your Fiction: Concise Steps to Writing Successful Fiction — Setting

Setting is character. Almost everything that applies to character applies to setting. Science Fiction and Fantasy often rely on unique settings. However, setting is no less important for realism, romance, commercial, literary, women’s fiction, and so on. A teenage girl can confront organized crime in the hills of Missouri, the slums of Chicago, on Mars, Pluto, or in a parallel universe.

Creating Your Setting:
1. Choose a familiar place
2. Research unfamiliar locations
3. Create your own world
Or, combine familiar places with unfamiliar locations and create your own world.

Better to give too little than too much. Choose specific details that will help readers form their own image. Of course classics such as Charles Dickens “Tale of Two Cities” (or almost any eighteenth-century novel) can take several pages to “set the stage” for the action. Most modern readers, however, expect the setting to blend into the action. Your characters should interact with the environment, each with their unique perspective.

Example A
The four-foot high metal railing was painted black, bordered the apartment courtyard, and was bolted into the concrete with three-quarter inch bolts. The concrete was cracked. Past the railing was an open field full of weeds, some rye grass, and some bluegrass, and a bare spot of dirt where a structure must have stood at one time but was gone. The wind was blowing from the North at 20 miles per hour and Canadian Geese with their gray and white fluff and distinctive beaks flew over the field. A fluffy white cloud drifted in the blue sky which made it look warm but the temperature was 32 degrees. The landscape was dark and the day gave the impression of being undecided on whether to be spring or still winter.

Example B
She leaned against the wobbly railing and looked up at the old apartment building – three stories, L-shaped, yellow brick with streaks of dirt stained down its walls like permanent black tears. The sun broke through the clouds. Self-pity, she thought, was getting her nowhere. Time to go. She leapt over the railing and ran, splashing through the muddy vacant lot, nearly falling but determined to go on.

Activity
Look around you right now and list objects quickly. Create a scene with the first three objects (or observations) using a first person narrative with yourself as the main character. Use the same three objects, or others further down your list, to create a scene with someone else as character.

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Likely I am being self-indulgent, but the following opening to my novella “Cynthia and the Blue Cat’s Last Meow” adequately demonstrates the importance of setting. (And it sets up the conclusion to “Finding Your Fiction: Concise Steps to Writing Successful Fiction.”)

     Cynthia’s cabin is nestled among trees next to a blue river. The river is alternately deep and shallow, running smoothly over amber stones, mottled by an occasional pearl white stone. Cynthia fishes the blue river. The path to her cabin is matted yellow and the nearby grass bright green.
     I was hiking into Cynthia’s land when a man, walking from the opposite direction, met me on the trail. He was short, bent over, carefully watching his step, and he wore a sailor’s cap tilted back. Slung over his shoulder, he carried a wicker basket held by leather straps, and he stared at the ground while he walked, nearly bumping into me.
     I greeted him, but he grumbled and stepped around me, then tottered off balance. The basket swung to the side and a fish spilled out. The fish was blue with bright orange cheeks. Its colors were vibrant even after flopping about and gathering a layer of dirt.
     The man hung his basket on a tree and began hopping after the fish. Maybe by emulating it, he hoped to catch it. The effort did not look promising and he was becoming frustrated, so I went over and, with my foot, pinned the fish against a tree trunk. Without offering thanks, he grabbed it and returned it to the basket. The basket was full of fish.
     “Where did you catch them?” I asked.
     “Cynthia caught them,” he responded without looking at me, then added, “I help eat them.”
     I didn’t understand, not knowing that there was not much more to understand. Cynthia caught them and he helped eat them.
     He slung the basket over his shoulder again, then leaned close, squinting his eyes and grinning. “You’ve never been here before, have you?”
     “No sir, I haven’t.”
     He winked, then whispered, “Pay close attention to what you think you are, to what you see, what you hear, but pay no attention to me.”
     With that, he tipped his cap, turned and skipped once, twice, and off he went, whistling, birds chirping and fluttering out of the trees.
     “Is she home now?” I called.
     “Cynthia?” he yelled back over his shoulder. “She’s always home.”
     Perhaps most of the time, but not always. When I met her, she was buying groceries at the general store in town. I had been out hiking for the day and was on my way back to the city when I decided to stop and buy a snack. Cynthia looked at me, I smiled, and she started a conversation that quickly centered on fishing. By the time I drove away, Cynthia and I were friends, and she had invited me to her cabin, which is accessible only by foot. I was skeptical at first, but she was sincere, even gave me directions. Anytime, she said, she was almost always home.
     The trees blocked the sunlight and I felt as if I was walking through a tunnel, finally emerging into a field of long grass forming waves in a gentle breeze. I sat, pulled off my hiking boots and socks and stuffed the socks into the boots. I tied the bootlaces together and hung them over my shoulder. I felt like a young sailor, barefoot, through the waves of grass.
     I was young, twenty-two, and while in Cynthia’s land, I took that man’s advice, at least what I understood of it. I paid close attention to what I saw and what I heard.
     I paid attention to the breeze stirring the yellow bushes growing tall and wild up the sides of Cynthia’s brown shingled cabin, and the front portico stretching across the entire front of the square building, and the porch swing moving and creaking as if she’d just gotten out of it. I skipped up the portico steps, past the swing, and tapped on the front door. It eased open. I leaned over and stuck my head inside. An old gray couch and an end table were pushed against a big, bay window facing south.

Note: Cynthia and the Blue Cat’s Last Meow is available as a kindle ebook.

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