by Mary Lois Sanders & Sarah Nell Summers
You have your story idea and its setting, but how do you write it so that your readers experience the characters, places, objects, sights, sounds and smells of the book’s world without “info dumping”? Simple, you weave description into your scenes organically.
Say what?
True! We all want to choose the right “set design” in which our characters act out their tales. Or we need to create a “world” for our fantasy or sci-fi tale. But the last thing we want to do is describe it in detail like a list. Lists are for information boxes in magazines. Our goal is to find a more interesting and engaging style of letting our readers experience the story. But before we can WEAVE, we must KNOW!
Know Your Setting: When you first conceive your story you need to decide whether your location is going to be a real place or a made up place. Either way, rich detail will make your location come alive for your readers. This is the enrichment that builds each time you revise your story, even unto the 3rd or 4th time.
Real Location: You’ve chosen a REAL location for your setting. Do you know that location well enough to give credible detail? If not, how far are you willing to go to do so?
Edwin Crispin, author of A Moving Toy Shop lived in Oxford. His setting is so well known to him that it is reflected in all of his writing. It is said that after reading that story several times, one could find her way around Oxford easily the next time she visited that old English city.
Here’s a thought. What would happen to your credibility as a writer if you set your chase scene in New York City and didn’t know which streets in Manhattan are one way and in which direction? Ah-ha!
Dickens is another writer who knew his city well. He had walked the slums of early 19th century London while visiting his father who had been sentenced to Debtor’s Prison. You can see this detail in Oliver Twist and other novels. Engrossing!
Read the Nobel winning author Alice Munro. She writes about her home in Canada and you feel as if you know that place well.
Fictitious location: If you’re going to create a town, base it on a real town and then research everything about that town. Not to copy, but to solidify in your mind what your town looks like, feels like. Make a map. Locate that town in a part of the state (or another state) where there is no town. Voilá!
It’s not so strange. Dorothy Sayers, in her novel Gaudy Night, needs a women’s college in Oxford. In a note to her readers she apologizes to Balliol College for putting her fictitious school in the middle of its cricket ground! She has therefore created a fictitious setting within a well-known city. Hmm!
Sci-Fi & Fantasy: Needing different approaches, Sci-Fi writers must create whole new worlds, while Fantasy writers may choose future worlds or ancient worlds in which to set their stories. However, it isn’t just the setting that has to be created in either case. The writer must also create customs, language, history government, etc.
Now that we KNOW, we can begin to WEAVE … watch for Enriching Your Narrative – Part II next month.
