Creating Your Setting
In relation to writing, whenever I think of setting, I tend to think of it in the most simplest of terms: place; like the ocean or mountains.
But setting is so much more than that. Aside from place, it also involves time and can include historic circumstances of the time. For instance if you think of Europe (place) and World War II and the Resistance (time & circumstances), all sorts of associative images immediately come to mind.
Setting can be my own personal blindside. I am so wrapped up in trying to create voice, character, dialogue and plot and tie it all together, that inevitably my setting tends to fall right off the page.
To create a setting, I do two things:
Engage the Senses
First, I try to engage my five senses. And I go about this in a roundabout way. I had to train myself to use all my senses rather than just the visual. To train the mind, go back in time and recall an earlier memory and try to remember as much as possible as it relates to sight, sound, touch, taste and smell. For example, I like to think about a vacation I took in Cape May, NJ back in the summer of 1995.
Cape May is located at the southern tip of NJ. These are some of the wonderful things I remember that I can recreate in my mind’s eye as if I were there today: stately tri-colour Victorian homes that hint of a bygone era. White beaches. Navy water. The shiny backs of the dolphins glistening in the sun. The smell of coconut oil. The sound of a tinny radio from another blanket. The snippets of other people’s conversations competing with the sound of the ocean lapping against the shore. The cold taste of a Cherry Coke slushie with the hot July sun beating down on my back.
Show Not Tell
The second thing to do is show and not tell. By that I mean that once you have your setting down, the trick is to incorporate it into your story without making it sound like a travelogue. That is not to say that there will not be times when you describe the setting. But keep it to a minimum: one to two sentences rather than one to two paragraphs. You can also use your character to show the setting.
For instance, if we meet an old woman with a weather beaten, browned face we can assume a few things about the setting which are not told: the woman has spent most of her life outside and the climate is reasonably sunny most of the time. Or we know it is cold when our character decides she will need her hat and scarf. A character is distracted by something: whether it be the hum of a refrigerator while she does a crossword or a deer leaping out from the woods while she’s driving a bending road.
Weave your setting into your story and you will not only create atmosphere, you will transport your reader as well.
If you have to, do what I do: post a note that reads SETTING onto your computer and comb through your book diligently, making sure it is present.