Welcome to The Writing Lab, where I try to pass along any insights into the craft of writing I’ve learned during the past thirty years.
For the past four editions of the lab, I’ve discussed the process of prewriting, the start of the writing process where you begin to develop your ideas, transferring them for the first time from inside your head and onto the printed page or electronic file. After discussing some of the basics behind prewriting, taking a look at how I’ve developed stories over the years, how to build characters, and a quick discussion of plotting. let’s spend this weekend talking about another important aspect of prewriting, which is setting.
[AUTHOR’S ONGOING NOTE FOR THIS SERIES:] The advice I give here is geared mostly toward fiction writing; however, it can easily be applied to nonfiction as well.
The Where and When: About Setting
The setting of a work of fiction is based on two different factors – when the story takes place and where it takes place. I would say the latter has the more impact on the story rather than the former, for reasons I’ll get into in a little bit. One thing I will say, however, might be one of my rules of thumb, which I will list below:
The difficulty of constructing a setting for your story is in direct proportion to how similar your setting is to your existing time-space circumstances. The farther removed your fictional setting is from your own surroundings, the more difficult it will be to develop and maintain it.
Into the Time-Slip
I plan to keep this section brief.
The vast majority of stories told in the past, told now, and will be told in the future are presented in past-tense – essentially, a story told which occurred sometime in the past. Few stories are told as if they are occurring right now (present-tense) and much fewer act as if they are telling a story occurring in the future (future-tense). It takes considerable mental energy to keep when is happening straight in your heard, especially if what happens is fictional1.
Again, the same rule I mentioned above applies: the farther away the time period of your story is, the less you know about your setting. For example, if your story is set in the 1920’s, do you know what life was like without the Internet, or without mobile phones, or functioning electricity in half the places you traveled, or with the presence of however many mentally traumatized veterans of the Great War wandering around? Unless you’re a ghost or you’ve done your homework on those times, the answer to this question is likely “not very much.” So, you will either have to pull your story back to a time more familiar to you, or you need to buckle down and get your homework done2.
This also works in reverse if you ware thinking of future settings. Even though the whole point of science fiction writers is to prognosticate and consider what is to come after us, it’s always a tricky process to do well3. I won’t get into the issue much here, but especially if you are working on a first draft, go ahead and make your best guess. Don’t worry, you can always sort out your issues in the later revisions.
Now, let’s talk about place.
Where are You? Where is Your Story?
First, as with time, the further away the place of your story is from your own experiences, the less you will have personal knowledge of it. As with time, you’ll have to do your homework, or in the instance of you fantasy and science fiction writers out there, you’ll have to think long and hard about what this place and the affiliated people, societies, and cultures are all about. And maybe you borrow ideas from other cultures, blend them together into your own ideas, or you come up with your own “unique” ideas you don’t realize you borrowed from multiple cultures and/or places until months or years later. However, you should also know if you borrow from your own experiences, you are going to want to alter that setting a bit so it doesn’t precisely mirrors your real life4.
When I think about the concept of place in fiction, at least two stories come to mind.
- When I was in high school during the late 1980’s, a Nintendo NES console replaced my aging Atari 2600 get-up which had served me for much of that decade. Of course, I was addicted to console gaming at the time, but what surprised me then was my mother becoming nearly as interested in my console as I was. In particular, she was addicted to the original Zelda game. In this game, Link would find certain maps to the underground area of Hyrule or whatever it was and you would have to walk through each area to show where things were at on the map you can see from the pause screen.
- I remember hearing a story attributed to Mark Twain (I heard it retold in the science fiction classic film Deep Impact years ago) that riverboat captains along the Mississippi River back in the 1800’s would switch pilots during different parts of their journey upstream or downstream. These pilots would have a clear and extensive knowledge of given sections of the river – where the shallows were located, where the navigable river channel was located, and things of this nature. They would only have knowledge of their given sections of the Mississippi, but not as much for other places.
The idea behind these stories is an idea behind my understanding and approach to setting. Some people might use the metaphor of setting as an iceberg, with sailors traveling on the ocean’s surface only seeing a small percentage of the entire iceberg, with the majority of it hidden beneath the waves.
However, I think a more fitting metaphor for this purpose would be the reader as an explorer in a new land. An explorer enters a new land with either incomplete maps or no maps at all. I see the reader as an explorer in the world you as a fiction writer create. All they know is what they see as they come across it, whether that is locations, those who live there, and the societies they have created. You as the author of this setting is aware of what is in this wider world, but the audience is not.
We’ll get back to this last point in a moment, but let me advise you that in your role as storytellers, you never want to reveal everything about your setting even by the end of your story. First of all, the only way you could even begin to tell all about your setting is with the clunkiest, most awkward info dump which would take up half of the book or story. Secondly, your readers are explorers in the lands you created. They want to discover the lands for themselves. They want to be surprised and amazed, and to be an effective storyteller, you have to give just enough information to inspire them to keep exploring your world, your story.
How much you yourself know about the setting of your story is another issue.
Some writers might choose to only know, or find out about, the parts of a story’s setting a reader will encounter during the course of a story. Others, however, will want to know about all about what that world is. I would count myself among this latter group.
My reasoning is this: you want to see what is behind the curtain and how it works even if your audience doesn’t manage to see this view. You want to be able to see how your world functions so you can represent it accurately. I’m reminded of Alan Rickman acting as Severus Snape in the Harry Potter series in strange ways but ways that made sense to him because he knew the whole shape of his world, which included the motivation of his character. That made Alan’s performance5. I want to know every inch of my world. Even though it might take some time, I believe it is time well worth spending.
But…
As with all the advice I give around here, feel free to ignore it if you find it conflicts with writing habits or techniques which actually work for you. The number one piece of writing advice I ever have given my English, composition, and/or special education students is this:
If something is working to help you write well, whether or not it’s the recommended thing to do, keep doing it.
Next Time…
With the new year, I’m going to get into what I consider to be definitely an extension of setting, but is also related in ways to other parts of the prewriting process as well, which I will term world building. This is essentially developing your setting with a par more detailed eye than a simple plan. We’re talking about building an entire history and backstory to your story, which will prove helpful even if your readers only see a fraction of what you eventually develop. I’m looking forward to tackling this.
Hope everyone’s writing is going well. I’ve got the rest of the calendar year off from work, so when I’m not traveling to see family, I’ll be trying to meet my personal writing goals for the year. Just about 10 days left, so it’s going to be a good spring to the end.
-30-
- As always, if you can manage a present or future-tense story, go right ahead with it. But I don’t want you to go a step too far if you realize it’s beyond you. Sometimes the old ways are best. ↩︎
- I was a bit reluctant to do a “research for fiction writers” post because it can lead into numerous complications, but the further I get along in this series, the more I see the need for it. We’ll get to world building first, however, trust me. ↩︎
- And just now, I realize I might have to do a separate post for science fiction world building. Not that it is going to be easy, but then again, most of the good material isn’t. ↩︎
- I have a bit of experience on this regarding my most recent writing project, but that’s a story for another Writing Lab. ↩︎
- Rest In Power Alan Rickman (1946-2016). ↩︎
