First sentence in the scene -- Starting the experience

  First sentence in the scene 

 Starting the experience   

 

I’m having some fun creating a big Building Bolder Scenes course, and now I’m focusing on the mechanics of creating the scene experience with the sentences and paragraphs. Scenes are EXPERIENCES, not just recountings. So getting the experience started early—the first sentence!—can set the reader up to FEEL all the way through.

  Just keep in mind that your reader is apprehending the scene holistically-- she's incorporating every detail, not just your character's thoughts and feelings, into her experience. So you can imbed emotion subtly in the description and action. Just remember not to overdo. But yes, you can use adjectives and adverbs here. Just don't use them when you don't need them ("shouted loudly, bright scarlet"), and then when you DO use them, they'll have more effect.

You can set the stage early, hint at that "beginning emotion" of the emotional arc of the scene, by anchoring the setting in the first paragraph or so... but meaningfully. Here are some examples of how to sneak in emotion with physical/setting detail in the first paragraph of the scene:

LIGHT
His bulky body filled the entrance and blocked most of the afternoon light.

She shielded her eyes against the harsh noon light and squinted at the broken window.

He parked in the pool of yellow light from the streetlamp and slowly got out of the car.

She woke when the dawn light sliced through the curtains. Nothing had changed.

He squinted to see through the dimness in the barroom, searching the dark booths for the woman he had lost.

The car brakes skidded on the gravel, and when they finally stopped, the moonlit lake was only a few feet from their front bumper.

TIME OF DAY
The Angelus bells were ringing when she started across the muddy field towards the church.

She woke suddenly. The red glowing numbers on the bedside clock read 2:04. It took her a moment before she realized she had missed her flight.

He was going to be late for work again. Again.

All she wanted to do was rush home and be halfway through a quart of Java Chip ice cream before American Idol came on.

INSIDE/OUTSIDE
She pushed the porch door open and stood there a moment, drinking in the view and the crisp mountain air.

Jamie woke up cold and damp on the bare open ground.

I knew this place—the kitchen looked familiar and unpleasant.

Patty rubbed the condensation off the passenger-side window and looked  out at the snowdrift. "How stuck are we?" she asked.

He put his fork down on the dining room table and grimly called the family to order.

The old barn stood alone on the hill.

The road gravel infiltrated her sandals, and she was limping and lost by the time he found her.

It was a lady's parlor, all dainty and tidy, and he didn't think he better sit down on any of the little chairs.


AIR
The barroom smelled of ground-out cigarettes and spilled beer.

She zipped up her parka and pulled on her gloves, took a deep breath, and stepped out the door into the howling Chicago winter.

From the lantern-lit park pavilion across the river drifted the lazy strains of a dance band.

The library was so overheated every breath felt like she was sucking in a blanket.

It was going to snow. She could taste it with every crystalline breath.

Not a breeze stirred the evening air, and she hesitated with her hand on the gate.

 

Another Setting Example

Here's another setting example. We don't have any genre information, but to me, it reads YA or maybe even MG (though the sentences aren't structured like MG), so we will work on the assumption that this is a young character in a book aimed at young readers.


Thwap, thwap, thwap, thwap. Lucas’s footsteps pounded a staccato rhythm along the trail: you’re late, you’re late. “I’m going as fast as I can,” he muttered, but he pushed his legs faster, hurdling fallen branches and zigzagging through close-packed trees. When the scrub cedar opened up to overgrown pasture, he twisted around and whistled. After much rustling of underbrush and one loud crash, a black head popped out from under a low branch.

The boy whistled again. “Come on, River. Let’s go!”

Ears perked and tongue lolling, the dog hesitated just a moment before launching himself into the field. Lucas turned and broke into an all-out sprint. River loped beside him for a few strides, weaving through thatches of Johnson grass beaten nearly flat by late-season storms and winter cold, then shifted into a gallop and disappeared into thicker weeds.


This is a really strong example of a using motion and setting together to create dynamic text. Remember the recipe for good prose scenes?
1 - Character(s),
2 - in meaningful motion
3 - against a background.

Here the background is conveyed through specific details. Fallen branches, close-packed trees, scrub cedar, overgrown pasture, and more besides, all laid out in neat sequence as the character moves through this environment.

Notice how some of those setting details are presented as obstacles. This is what really stood out for me in this setting example. It's not just that Lucas is running and these things are part of the scenery. It's that Lucas is running and these things are complicating the run. A real sense of tension fills these lines because we know Lucas has a goal, and we see him confronting these small obstacles, one after another, in the quest to reach that goal.

We lose some of that sense of setting obstacles in the final paragraph. Compare the way the setting details are presented in that paragraph to the first paragraph, and you'll see what I mean. The grass is beaten flat, and there's no sense that it's making it any harder to run through it. Maybe it is, but if it is, we don't see it.

That doesn't mean the second paragraph's setting details are presented in an erroneous way. In fact, they're competently written, just with a different focus. The details are clear and vivid and specific to this environment. We can easily see the boy and his dog running in this world. The action continues even as the world around them is described. That's all good.

That said, I'm not wild about this sentence structure:

River loped beside him for a few strides, weaving through thatches of Johnson grass beaten nearly flat by late-season storms and winter cold, then shifted into a gallop and disappeared into thicker weeds.

There's a lot happening in this sentence. Again, it's technically competent, but the present participial phrase interrupts the compound verb in a way that feels off to me. I would edit this by breaking it up into shorter pieces and maybe rearranging some of the bits. Maybe like so:

For a few strides River loped beside him through thatches of Johnson grass beaten nearly flat by late-season storms and winter cold. Then the dog shifted into a gallop and disappeared into thicker weeds.

Still not perfect, but it does take care of that intervening present participial phrase, which is the piece that looked off to me. I moved "for a few strides" to the front of the sentence because I wanted the movement details at the front of the sentence and the thatches of grass details at the end. Now the concept of Johnson grass still separates the loping from the galloping, but the interruption is conceptual rather than structural, which is what I think the author intended.

Theresa

Your Setting Examples

This one comes to us from Green Knight, a longtime friend of the blog.

For a mile and maybe more Venna followed the sweet, reassuring murmurs of the stream. She walked easily, relying on her staff to give her purchase. Maybe she was a little too trusting. When the straff stuck in the mud, she nearly fell. Jolted awake, Venna looked at the ground suspiciously. It felt different, the ground felt different through the staff in her hand. That level of connectedness was frightening as long as she thought about it and exhilerating once she gave herself to it.

Venna pulled the staff out of the ground and looked around. Where she was sanding,the stream was not exactly impassable, but nearly so, tumbling over rocks in what was not quite a rapid. She had no wish to chance it, and did not feel drawn to it at all.

We've known for a while that GK had some good writing chops, and this example shows a lot of skill. We have a good sense of movement and some clear cause-effect connections. The sentences are clean, too, though they probably won't remain in their current state by the time I'm done with them. *ggg* No surprise there, right?

I have two general concerns with the passage. The first is the way conclusions are used, and the second is in some word choices that are a bit vague. These are interrelated problems. We’re shorthanding details instead of developing them. Sometimes this is the right choice, as when we’re transitioning through less important moments in the plot. Then we would want to stay lean and tight and not get into to much detail.

In other words, the shorthanding technique we see here might work in some cases, but I don’t think it quite works here. This doesn’t read like a transition to me even though the character is moving to a new location. It reads like a character adjusting to a new environment and absorbing new information – at least, it does after the first two sentences. The first sentence is evidently transitional, and the second sentence provides extra information about the nature of the transition time. Those “extra information” sentences between a transition and new scene material can ease the reader from the transition itself into a more active narrative, and here it works pretty well.

Or it would if the material following the second sentence was more scene-like. Instead, as I mentioned, we get a mix of scene details with conclusions and vaguish words. The first one that really jumped out at me was:

 It felt different, the ground felt different through the staff in her hand.

What does that mean, exactly? Different how? I like the rhythm of this sentence a lot, but it states a conclusion without evidence. Is the ground softer, harder, stickier, or something else? In the rush of the moment, her first interpretation might be “different,” but then she might pause to examine what makes it different. Or it might work better to replace the conclusory sentence, even though it’s lyrical. My preference would probably be to follow the conclusion with the evidence in this case, but instead we get another pair of summary statements:

That level of connectedness was frightening as long as she thought about it and exhilerating once she gave herself to it.

As long as she thought about it. What does she think when she thinks about it? Do we know the form of those thoughts? Can we read the cartoon thought bubble over her head and know the words that make up those thoughts? No. We also don’t know what’s involved in giving herself to it, other than a sense of exhilaration. How exactly does she give herself to it?

By the way, when we talk about exposition that masks interior monologue, this is exactly what we’re talking about. We don’t really get her interior monologue. We get exposition that sums up the interior monologue. Different narrative element, with a different impact on the reader, and something I generally edit out of manuscripts. Using true interior monologue will connect the reader to the character in a deeper way, and that’s almost always to be preferred. (Exceptions exist, of course.)

But this post is supposed to be about setting. Do we see the same kind of shorthand in any setting details? Yes. You might be able to spot it yourself if you re-read the paragraphs with this concept in mind. Go ahead. Give it a try. It will be good practice.

Done? Did you pick this piece?

Where she was sanding,the stream was not exactly impassable, but nearly so,

The conclusion is that the stream is almost but not exactly impassable where she is standing. But where is she standing? And what makes it impassable? We get a hint of rocks, but we don’t know how big or sharp they are, or how they’re spaced, or whether they’re slippery or jagged. We get mention of a rapid later, except it’s not a rapid – something which would work very well (describing the thing by its negative) if we had a stronger overall concept of other particulars. That is, if we knew the rocks were sharp and clumped, and that the water foamed and churned around them, and then we learned that despite this it wasn’t quite a rapid, that negative definition would be more effective. (By the way, read the first page of Gone With The Wind if you want a superb – albeit dated, style-wise – example of describing something in the negative. First words: “Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful…” followed by a long passage about her beautiful and non-beautiful attributes.)

So we’ve looked at three places where the sentences are a bit vague and expository. I think that nailing down those three spots would lead to a more effective passage overall. There might be one or two other slightly soft spots, but I think that changing these three sentences would pull the passage far enough away from exposition that we can leave the rest of it alone. GK, if you want to edit the three places and show it to us again, I’d welcome a second glance at this. Post a revision in the comments or send it to our emailbox.

Theresa

Muffled Sounds

Last week, I invited you to write up descriptions of sounds inside soundproofed rooms. And then, Murphy's law being what it is, we had a massive tech issue with the blog and people couldn't post their comments. I gave it a few days for the dust to settle, but I think the comments are still a bit unreliable. Nothing I can do about it, though I'm thinking Alicia and I might need to have a powwow about switching to a different blogging platform. Google is terrific for so many things, but if the comments don't work, that's a big, big problem.

Anyway. Let's take a look at the examples from those of you who were able to get something through. This first one is from Joel Q Aaron.

The first floor window gave him a clear shot at the parking lot as soundless cars drove by. He spoke clearly and annunciated without thought. His voice didn’t echo in the small room, but reverberated across the region to car stereos and office radios. He nodded at the producer and special guest mouthing at each other in the hall. With a wave of his hand, they came though the thick door and into the studio as if a paused CD began to play in mid chorus. Office chatter followed. The ding of a microwave. Then the silent movie returned as the door closed.

This is very interesting. We've got a discussion of sound in the beginning, but we don't have any actual sounds. Notice that? He speaks, but we don't know the words he uses. He annunciates -- great verb choice to highlight this contrast between making noise and hearing nothing. "annunciated without thought" -- nice. It isn't until the door opens that we have more concrete representations of sound -- the CD playing mid chorus, the chatter, the ding of a microwave (probably the strongest and most direct representation of sound in the entire example).

This sentence troubles me a little bit:

With a wave of his hand, they came though the thick door and into the studio as if a paused CD began to play in mid chorus.

With is probably not the right preposition to use there. And I think the chained phrases are meant to indicated the time at which something happens, rather than the nature. In that case, it ought to be an adverb clause rather than a pair of prepositional phrases. (Adverbs can describe time more effectively than prepositional phrases can. 'Tis their nature.) Like so:

After he waved his hand, they came though the thick door and into the studio as if a paused CD began to play in mid chorus.

And then the use of "as if" bugs my eyes a bit. What follows "as if" doesn't describe the manner of their coming. It describes the result of the door being opened. These little words, these prepositions and adverbs and conjunctions and so forth, are more than just glue to hold together the bigger words. They signal relationships between the parts, too, and here I think we need a different relationship signal. What "they" do and the resulting sound effects have a different relationship than what is currently written. Maybe something like,

After he waved his hand, they opened the thick studio door to the external sounds as if a paused CD began to play in mid chorus.

Or maybe,

After he waved his hand, they came though the thick door and into the studio along with a noise like a paused CD beginning to play in mid chorus.

We're still not quite there with either of these options, but the relationship between the pieces is a little more clear, which is my point.

Also, I might reverse the order of that final sentence so that we end with that really nice image:

Then as the door closed, the silent movie returned.

Because I think the silent movie concept is more powerful than the image of the door closing. The last spot in a paragraph is a power spot. Use something good there, something evocative or resonant, and your paragraph will automatically read better. We've already got that nice detail, that silent movie, so it's easy enough to rearrange the parts to emphasize it.


Jami, whose original setting example led us down this delightful side road, showed us in the comments how she revised that bit to highlight the quality of the sound:

The odor of sour sweat and smoke clogged the air in the sparse room. She made herself at home, shoving the three utilitarian steel chairs and industrial table toward the back wall so she could approach the mirror unimpeded. The deadened screech of the furniture rearrangement gave evidence of the room’s soundproofing.

"deadened screech" is evocative and interesting, and I have a feeling that in context, it might even have some symbolic resonance. And I know just what that deadened screech sounds like. Don't you agree? That's a good use of language, concise and precise. I'm a little less enthusiastic about "the furniture rearrangement" because that's a little flat and vague. Something more specific might be better. Maybe something like,

The deadened screech of metal legs against concrete gave evidence of the room's soundproofing.

Though, maybe not -- we already have steel in an earlier sentence, and that's more precise than metal, so this has an also-ran flavor in that adjective. So maybe move the adjective, and the article, like so:

She made herself at home, shoving three utilitarian chairs and the industrial table toward the back wall so she could approach the mirror unimpeded. The deadened screech of steel legs against concrete gave evidence of the room’s soundproofing.

There we go. That's better. I would probably cut the adjective sparse from the first sentence, too, just to shift the balance of plain nouns and adjective-noun combos. When too many nouns are paired with adjectives, the prose begins to feel a bit overweighted. I don't think we're at that point here, but I do think cutting "sparse" pulls us back from the territory where we even have to consider it. And now the final paragraph reads thus:

The odor of sour sweat and smoke clogged the air in the room. She made herself at home, shoving three utilitarian chairs and the industrial table toward the back wall so she could approach the mirror unimpeded. The deadened screech of steel legs against concrete gave evidence of the room’s soundproofing.

Sometimes little changes can make a big difference, and to my eyes, this is one of those times. It was a strong paragraph to begin with, and I think the rhythm in the prose is intact, but it's a little tighter and smoother now.


Now Thomas Sharkey shares some observations from a recent hearing test:

A soft sound of silence surrounded me, numbing my senses.
The walls were covered in foam blocks shaped something like the inside of an egg box.
When the assistant spoke the room felt even smaller. Her voice was a flat sound and it had a sort of finality about it.

Thomas, I know just the egg crate foam padding you're describing. I worked at a radio station in college, and the sound studio's walls were lined in that stuff. I don't know what it's called, but I do know it sucked the echoes right out of the air. Finality -- that's a good way to describe the quality of that sound effect. And it's hard to describe the way things sound in that kind of environment. It's almost like being in a house when the power goes out. The slight hum of the electric appliances is gone, and everything is just a little too still and quiet. You almost hear your own voice differently. It's not that your voice changes, but everything around it does.

Theresa

An Exercise

I keep thinking about Jami's setting example from yesterday, the one with the soundproofed room. I think there are two basic types of soundproofing -- the kind that keeps sound from leaving (or entering) the container, and the kind that also changes sound within the container. For example, sound booths are designed to muffle echoes and feedback.

With that in mind, how would you describe the quality of sound inside either of these soundproofed environments? Does it depend on the kind of noise being made? If you want to take a stab at a sample and post it in the comments, it might make for an interesting roundtable. Keep your examples brief, please, no more than a couple hundred words. We're not telling stories, but trying to achieve an effect in a few sentences of action or description.

Theresa

Another Setting Example

I've been so start-and-go with this series that I can no longer remember what number we're on. Thirteen? Ish? In any case, here's our next example. We're closing in on the last few in the queue, but if you want me to look at your setting example, send it to edittorrent at gmail dot com.

Here's what we know before this excerpt: We're in her point of view, and they've entered a police interrogation room.

Daniel shuffled his shoes against the concrete floor. “I’m sorry, I didn’t want it this way at all.” His features twisted with some inner struggle. “No matter what happens, in my heart I’ll always be with you.” The thick metal door slammed behind him after he fled without meeting her eyes.


Oh-kay. She ignored Daniel’s melodrama and scanned the room. Despite her history, she’d never been in a police interrogation room before. Never caught. As expected, the sparse room stank of sour sweat and smoke, with three utilitarian steel chairs around an industrial table. She made herself at home and shoved them all toward the back wall so she could approach the one-way mirror unimpeded. Once she’d finished the furniture rearrangement, the room’s silence gave evidence of its soundproofing.


There's some good writing here. All of the yellow-highlighted passages are setting details,and for the most part, all of those details are presented in the course of action. We don't read, "The floor was bare concrete." We read about the shoes shuffling against the concrete floor, which gives us setting, sound, and a hint of the character's emotional state. It's good technique. We have shoving, slamming, approaching -- a character interacting with the environment instead of merely observing it. This is almost always a good way to sneak in setting information without creating an info-dump. Show the characters in motion against the background. (Wonder how many times in my life I've said exactly that! Characters, motion, background.)

I highlighted a trio of phrases in other colors just so I can make some quick editing points. The fuschia one -- 5 out of 8 words there start with the letter S. It's too much alliteration to my ear. Try, "the sparse room reeked of sour bodies and sweat" -- which preserves the alliteration in the compound object of the preposition at the end. I think that adds resonance without distracting. And I think the alliteration in "room reeked" counterbalances it, but even so, it might be too resonant.

The phrase in red bothered me for a very minor reason. I've been in soundproofed rooms, and depending on the method of soundproofing, the way noise carries within the room can be affected. So it might be evident while she's dragging around those chairs, and not only afterward. And I don't know that a room is truly soundproof if it has concrete floors, but I suppose it's possible to describe it as soundproof even with concrete floors.

The pinkish-gray highlighted phrase gives us an opportunity to discuss some of the routine editorial decisions we have to make in every text. Ordinarily, we like to see things presented in linear time. If we were to revise that sentence to put it in linear time, he would 1) fail to meet her eyes, 2) flee, and 3) slam the door. However, this is the final sentence in a paragraph, and the last words of the last sentence always carry more impact than the stuff in the middle of the paragraph. So which of those three details do we want to resonate? Not the slamming door, but the fact that he didn't meet her eyes. That's the emotionally resonant detail, and it becomes highlighted by putting it in the last slot. So this is one of those instances when the ordinary "rule" favoring linear time is trumped by a competing "rule" for ending a paragraph on a strong note. There's an art to balancing all these competing rules, and in this case, I think the author hit just the right note.

Theresa

Your Setting Example #12

Here's a new setting example from an anonymous author that starts with a bit of action.

The luxury of a soft towel to wipe his face afforded him a few moments to forget why he’d been sent back to this vipers’ pit. He drew a whale-bone comb through his unruly, cropped curls until a clipped rap at the door brought his guard back up.


He grabbed his sword from the washing table and walked through the doorway into his living quarters. Two low couches surrounded a square table in the center of the room. A writing desk and dressing table stood against the opposite wall, his traveling roll and pack tucked neatly between them on the hand-woven rug. The closest window on the right was open, the breeze chilling a decanter of wine that sat on a table flanked with short armchairs. No sign that anything was out of place.

This second paragraph contains quite a lot of information to help the reader understand where things are in relation to each other. I bolded those pieces. This kind of information puts a three-dimensional space into the reader's mind and can really bring a setting to life. It's also an easy way to cheat a little description into a fast-paced bit of prose without slowing the prose too much. For example, compare,

He jogged to the mayor's house.

He jogged two blocks to the mayor's house.

The first sentences gives us a sense of action and destination. The second gives action, destination, duration, and a bit of orientation. That's a lot of narrative impact created by just two words.

So that's a good general technique, but I'm a little concerned about the way the description is handled here. The overall tone of this piece is deliberate and detailed, and it's possible that this excerpt would fit in perfectly to the overall piece. So I offer this comment with the understanding that the excerpt might work better as part of the whole. But here, given the nature of the action, this description feels a bit disruptive.

That is, we know the character is upset to be in this setting. We know it's a bad place, and we know that a knock at the door has him on high alert. We know that a knock at the door is threatening enough to require him to take arms. There's danger here.

The danger is paused to describe the contents of the room. And that's the part that troubles me a bit. He doesn't answer the door. He examines the layout of the furniture. It reads like a bit of a distraction from the threat which he has already perceived. The stimulus (danger at the door) is triggering a response (description of the room) that doesn't quite flow.

My guess is that the author intended the description to show something about the extreme caution required in this setting. I think the character examines the room for threats. But it doesn't quite read that way because we don't learn why he's scanning the room until the end of the paragraph. Maybe it would help if we had some indication that he thinks the knock at the door might translate into intruders hiding behind the chairs. A bit of action would do the trick, like this:

The luxury of a soft towel to wipe his face afforded him a few moments to forget why he’d been sent back to this vipers’ pit. He drew a whale-bone comb through his unruly, cropped curls until a clipped rap at the door brought his guard back up.


He grabbed his sword from the washing table and walked to the doorway into his living quarters. Weapon at the ready, he peered around the jamb and scanned the room for any traps. Two low couches surrounded a square table in the center of the room. A writing desk and dressing table stood against the opposite wall, his traveling roll and pack tucked neatly between them on the hand-woven rug. The closest window on the right was open, the breeze chilling a decanter of wine that sat on a table flanked with short armchairs. No sign that anything was out of place. 

 I highlighted the new second sentence and the concluding sentence it's meant to link to. Now the reason for the description is clear before it begins, and the conclusion at the end has a stronger context. Do you see how that works? If the excerpt were in a more intimate point of view, we might opt for a bit of interior monologue there instead of the action. As it is, I think action is a bit more in tune with the tone of the excerpt.

But the point is that by bracketing or framing that description with action that makes its purpose clear, it feels less like a pause and more like something that's part of the action.

Theresa

Your Setting Examples -- Where Are We? #10-ish?

Batter up! Who's next?

Blackberry Gap was a wide spot in the road on State Highway 90N. As northern California towns went, it was pretty normal. The highway formed the central street and was intersected at right angles by three cross-streets. The middle intersection formed the central corner, with four red brick structures facing each other in all four directions. Constructed of red brick with windows and doors picked out in white brickwork, those buildings had formed the core of the town in its hey-day. Now they were flanked on all sides by more modern developments, gas stations, a strip mall and eventually, farm land. Several cars passed up and down the street, and a few parked head-in along the sidewalks in the same way farmers had parked horse-drawn wagons when the town was young.

Okay. This is a pretty big block of description without much to break it up. The closest we get to action comes from the line, "Several cars passed up and down the street." Everything else is static. No dialogue, no clear point of view character -- actually, no characters.

We've talked about ways to make description dynamic and to integrate it with the text. We're not going to talk about that again here. Instead, we're going to take a different angle altogether and talk about why you might want a passage like this, one that breaks the basic guidelines, but does it with clean prose.

So here's your assignment. Read that passage very slowly. Read it aloud, if that will help you slow down. Really listen to the tone and voice. And tell me in the comments when a stripped passage like this would be effective. What type of character would evaluate a setting like this? Under what circumstances in the text would this type of description feel that it's advancing the plot? (In other words, can you envision a scene and character in which this block of description would read as appropriate in both pace and content?)

I can think of two right off the top of my head. Here's one to get us started. The character is a location scout for a film production company. He's tired. He's determined. And he'll know it when he sees it, but for right now, this town is a Plan B type location. So it would make sense that he catalogs all these details in his head in this somewhat emotionless, viewpointless way. His viewpoint really isn't all that important, anyway. What would matter is how the camera would see this town.

What else? There are more. The point is that sometimes it makes sense to abandon the ordinary guidelines, and being able to recognize those exceptions is part of the writer's art.

Theresa

Your Setting Examples - #9

Keeping the party train rolling with another anonymous example. To set this up, a man and a woman have just arrived at this house. The woman is sleeping in the front passenger seat. The man first studies her, but then, when he remembers that she has rejected his advances, he turns away and stares through the truck's front window.

The stone farmhouse with its sunburned thatched roof looked the same. The lamppost light spilled yellow beams across a yard overgrown with weeds enclosed within a rusty fence. Battered shutters, that long ago lost their white sheen, hung at precarious angles on the bare windows. Tall, gnarled oaks hovered over the house. A few branches seemed determined to push their way under the roof.


The place seemed derelict. Exactly the way it was supposed to. His gaze slanted over to the washed-out red barn. The building still leaned a little too heavily on its right.

I suspect some of you out there read this and expect me to talk about the passage being overwritten. By current standards, it is overwritten, and in edits we'd tighten it -- for example, we don't need lamppost, light, and beams in three out of five words, and we probably should have only one sentence about the trees. And I think there would be some value in taking a passage like this and showing you all how to reduce it in edits so that the subtextual emotion and vivid imagery is preserved.

But we've been using this series to focus on the good -- well-used techniques for manipulating setting details to achieve certain effects. In keeping with that, we'll look at this one for tone and mood because this author does a great job using setting details to echo or reinforce the pov character's emotional state. It's subtextual, and it's effective.

Before we get into that, I do want to point out that the author is using techniques we've discussed in other posts in this series. The verbs are strong and vivid. There's a sense that things have changed ("long ago lost their white sheen") or will change ("hung at precarious angles" / "branches seemed determined to push").

Let's look at some details.

His Emotion:
Tense because she rejected him. (Trust me, it's in the material that precedes the description.)

He Sees:
Defects (overgrown yard, rusty fence, broken shutters)

The Technique:
Symbolism. But a very subtle kind of symbolism. We can assume there's some defect in him that led to her rejection. (It's probably one of those romance defects such as emotional detachment or inability to trust.) He doesn't see defects when he looks at her sleeping on the front seat. But when he looks elsewhere, he sees the defects, and this mirrors the way she looks at him -- or, at least, at this stage of the game, it's what he imagines she does when she looks at him.

---

His Emotion:
A Bit Unsettled

He Sees:
Things that give him a sense of stability. See "looked the same" in the first sentence, "Exactly the way it was supposed to" in the second paragraph, and "The building still leaned" at the end.

The Technique:
Contrast. By having the character witness things that contrast with his current mood, we show that he is reaching for a new state of mind. This reaching might be subconsciously done, but he's doing it nonetheless.

---

So here's my big question. Bat this one around in the comments, kids, and see what you think. Ultimately, do you think he wants to change? Or do you think he wants her to see him as he is -- defects and all -- and recognize that he's "exactly the way it was supposed to" be?

I don't know that we have enough material to be able to answer this question definitively. The answers might lie in other scenes. But just based on what we know, which way do you think this one goes?

ETA another question: Look at those tree branches. What's the symbolism in what they're doing? I think that's pretty cool, personally.

Theresa

Your Setting Examples - #8

This one comes to us from someone whose name I recognized instantly, but who didn't say whether anonymity was preferred. In keeping with my standard policy, then, I'm not going to disclose the name. What we have here are two pieces of setting interrupted by a long action sequence, and we'll pull the action sequence out.

The docks spread out across the wild prairie, the tall grass punctuated with octagonal landing pads like a flattened fullerene molecule.  The Iron-clad lay several pads away, the square, bulky monstrosity the only other ship in sight.

#
(intervening actions - Protag gets threatened by a bunch of Hunters)
#

He glanced back at his ship.  The cargo ramp lay a dozen steps away.  Three, four seconds max.
 
The leader followed Deep's gaze.  “I wouldn’t do that.  Just give us the crate and walk away.”

The wind droned through the prairie grass drenched blood-red by the morning sun.  The horizon spread out around Deep, empty save the distant and smug Iron Clad, and now more than ever he wished his father was still with him. 

But he was alone.

In the comments to the Example #7 with the weedy herringbone driveway, we briefly talked about the way we can use different narrative elements to frame other elements on the small scale or at the scene level. And now, conveniently :) , Anon is giving us an example that zeroes in on this exact technique.

First let's start by explaining what a narrative frame is. The term is usually used to describe two pieces of story, one on the first page and one on the last page, that act as a container for the rest of the story. Usually this frame occurs outside the regular story timeline, perhaps with different point of view characters narrating, perhaps with an entirely cast or setting or time period, with the result that the whole piece feels much like a story within a story. A great example of this technique can be found in the film The Princess Bride, in which the outer frame is the story of a boy and his grandfather, and the inner story is about Buttercup and the farm boy.

If we shrink this frame device down to the smaller level -- not the story as a whole, but a scene or a piece of a scene -- we end up with something much like the knocks on the door in Example #7. There's a knock. There's a pause to describe the setting. There's a second knock. Those knocks frame the description with action.

Here, we have the reverse of that pattern. Now the bits of setting description are used to frame the action. I bolded two particular words used to build the frame -- prairie and grass in the opening frame, and prairie grass in the closing frame is the first, and spread out is the second. That deliberate repetition, not just of an image but of the words themselves, proves that sometimes repetition can be a good thing. What else is repeated? The Iron-clad and the sense of vastness or openness.

Note that Anon's frames aren't exact duplicates of each other, though. The term "prairie grass" is used differently, first split into two pieces and last as a compound noun. The verb "spread out" is used first in conjunction with the prairie, and second with the horizon. This is how to build a repetition -- repeat a key element and recombine it with something new. (Though, I might advise ditching one of the two uses of "out" -- dealer's choice on that.)

There are two possible narrative effects from using a frame on this level. The first is that the framed inner story will feel contained to such a degree that it will have a "case closed" feel. This is the rarer of the two effects. The more common effect is that the framed inner piece will feel elevated in significance. If we were to read Anon's story as a whole, I suspect this confrontation would provide a lot of narrative fuel, a lot of tension that carries over into other parts of the story.

In either case, it's a good example of this particular technique.

Theresa

Your Setting Examples - #7

This example comes from an anonymous author too shy to send her example in directly. She asked a friend to do it for her. I want to commend our shy friend for taking this step. It can be hard to share your work if you feel intimidated or unsure. I think Alicia and I are pretty friendly and approachable most of the time, and yet I hear frequently that we scare people. Must be with our claws and scales and firebreath, not with our attitudes, or at least so I hope. In any case, sorry if we come across like dragons, and pat yourself on the back, Anon, for donning your armor and entering the fray. It's a good thing, and we're glad you're here.


She paused and glanced at her surroundings, taking note of the weeds forcing their way through the herringbone-patterned driveway, the overgrown lawn and the growing collection of unused charity bags tossed into an empty flowerpot at one side of the welcome mat. Ted O’Malley’s garden was his pride and joy, a riot of colour last time she’d visited in the summer, yet looking at it now it seemed unlikely the elderly man had made it outside in weeks.


Still the bungalow’s door remained shut. She frowned and knocked again, standing slightly back to make sure she was easily visible through the peephole.

Those of you who've been around the blog long enough to remember the neverending PPP rants will not be surprised to see me single out the "taking that" phrase. It's what I do, and there's no help for it, so let's just accept that this is going to be my first comment about this piece. In fact, let's just line edit that sentence.

She paused and glanced at her surroundings. Weeds forced their way through the herringbone-patterned driveway and the overgrown lawn, and a growing collection of unused charity bags had been tossed into an empty flowerpot at one side of the welcome mat. Ted O’Malley’s garden was his pride and joy, a riot of colour last time she’d visited in the summer, yet looking at it now it seemed unlikely the elderly man had made it outside in weeks.


Still the bungalow’s door remained shut. She frowned and knocked again, standing slightly back to make sure she was easily visible through the peephole.

It's a simple change but it yields big dividends, even without any modification beyond what's needed to change the structure. We eliminated "taking note," which is a bit weak as far as verbals go. We can't picture "taking note" the same way we can picture "writing a note" or "taking a nap." It's not concrete or active. And it sort of duplicates the idea contained in "paused and glanced." It's not a direct repetition, but it's the same basic notion. And finally, it's what some people call filtering -- what happens when the act of thinking is narrated in the text. This can be a complex notion to grasp, but the basic idea is this: it puts a layer of interpretation between the character's direct experience and the reader's grasp of that experience. It's a form of micro-exposition, and I've never yet read a manuscript that didn't do this at least a little bit. (You can get away with it a little bit. A very little bit. And as far as we know, Anon rarely uses this type of narration. I'm really not trying to be a dragon about this, but it's an important concept, so I have to talk about it.) (And in the effort to stem my firebreathing tendencies, I'll just point out without further comment that "looking at it" can be cut for much the same reasons.)

Now, we're supposed to be talking about setting, so let's take a loot at how it's being manipulated here. In that second sentence, we have six concrete setting details -- weeds, driveway, lawn, bags, flower pot, welcome mat. Boom! That's a packed sentence, and I like it. It works. Why? Because what we're seeing aren't lifeless details, but specific details used to show the way the environment has changed. Overgrown. Weedy. Trash mounting in a specific way in a specific location. These details are evidence of negative change, and even without the conclusion offered in the final sentence of that paragraph, we know that something's not as it should be.

Let's take a moment to look at that conclusory sentence:
Ted O’Malley’s garden was his pride and joy, a riot of colour last time she’d visited in the summer, yet looking at it now it seemed unlikely the elderly man had made it outside in weeks.
If you're going to have a character state a conclusion, this is the way to do it. First she evaluated the evidence in a way that let us see the evidence and experience it with the character. Then we got the emotion (pride and joy -- a bit of a cliche, but we'll let it go on the assumption that it fits the character's viewpoint), and then the past state for contrast (riot of colour last summer). And then -- and only then -- we get the conclusion (unlikely he'd been outside in weeks).

Using a progression like that -- specific details, evidence of change, an emotional component -- leads the reader to understand how the conclusion is being formed. More than that, the reader will be silently, and perhaps subconsciously, thinking, "Yes! That's exactly what I think, too!" So the psychological bond between reader and character is deepened by this small moment of agreement. And none of us are surprised by the final paragraph with its suspenseful action. Something is very wrong at Ted's bungalow, and we all know it.

So there's a good structure here, and some good detail, and we'll just pretend we never saw those little PPPs. :)

Theresa

Your Setting Examples - #6

This one comes to us from a writer who would like to remain anonymous.

He grunted before leading her into his study. The walls were covered in maroon flocked wallpaper. A big antique desk dominated the room. The air smelled of leather and old books, with just a hint of tobacco. She hadn’t stepped into Aldous’ study for many years. The giant Remington typewriter he’d always used was still on the desk, but shoved to one side and shrouded in a plastic cover. The heavy velvet curtains were half-drawn, allowing only a pale wintery light to dilute the gloom. Saffron rubbed her upper arms, chilled by the atmosphere, a mood of faded glory, of golden triumphs tarnished by loss and the passing years.

Okay, so let's start with the assumption that this is a poignant moment for her. There are signals of emotional importance, especially toward the end of the paragraph. If this significance has been set up before the paragraph begins, then it makes sense to slow down the pace here and let the character observe the room, detail by detail.

So the pace might be appropriate, but then again, maybe not. She's with a man and the interaction between them is entirely suspended once they're inside the study. So the question then becomes, is there a way to slow down the pace here to allow her to absorb the atmosphere, and yet not have him temporarily drop out of the scene?

Yes, and the solution lies in the way the details are presented. Let's take a look at the first descriptive sentence:

The walls were covered in maroon flocked wallpaper.

The sharp-eyed among you will notice right away that this is in passive voice. "To cover" is a good, vivid verb, but without a subject to take the action of covering something, the verb loses some of its vigor. But does it follow, then, that the best way to fix this sentence is by switching it from passive to active? Hmm.

He had covered the walls in maroon flocked wallpaper.

Because of conventions associated with literary time, we have to shift that verb into the past perfect. After all, he's not papering the walls in this very scene. It's already been done sometime before she entered the room. The problem now is that story chronology has been interrupted to take us out of the scene moment and into some other, less poignant moment. So this isn't a great solution. We want to stick with the present scene moment.

How do we do that? How do we make it both active and present? Well, we have characters. Let's use them. Show the characters interacting with the setting. Some examples:

He lounged against the maroon-flocked walls.
He flicked the lightswitch and his fingers brushed over a patch where the flocking had been rubbed from the maroon wallpaper.
She froze inside the doorway and clutched the maroon-flocked walls for support.

These aren't equal sentences, of course. The first suggests a casualness, the second hints at obsessiveness, the third contains a strong shock response. We could keep going, I'm sure, until we hit on a sentence that conveyed the right degree of action with the right emotional connotation. It's out there. It's just a matter of finding it, and that might take a bit of mucking around with words. Which is pretty darn fun, so aren't we lucky to be able to do it?

The second sentence is much like the first -- dominated is a strong verb, but the sentence itself is static. But what if this is a scene in which the woman begins to feel dominated by the man? Then the desk becomes something of an emotional stand-in. If surrounded by material that shows the power balances (or imbalances), then this could become symbolically significant description. But as it stands, it's a good sentence that could be made better.

Now it's your turn. Pick a descriptive detail in that passage and tell me one example of how a character might interact with it in the present scene moment. Then tell me if there's an emotion being suggested by the action. You don't have to use the characters in this sample paragraph. This is just an exercise.

Thank you, anon, for sharing your work with us. You're off to a good start! With just a bit of revision, it will be even better.

Theresa

Your Setting Examples - #5

Today's example was custom made by Susan Helene Gottfried using an existing character from her books. She wrote this as an exercise for this setting thing we're doing. Let's take a look.

The things men do for their wives, he thought. The door weighed nothing and slipped out of his fingers. It crashed into the metal chair rail on the full-length windows. Weird how he looked through all that glass and could only see himself. Distorted. Fuckin' A.

He'd expected sterile rows of glass grocery-store cases inside, with half-dome fronts. Instead of seafood, these would be loaded with truffles and bon-bons and bark and all that shit girls craved.

Nope. No cases. Tables. Round ones. They'd seat two in a restaurant. Each covered by a tablecloth so bright, he wanted his sunglasses. Each stacked with chocolate. Every table had a theme and a flower post on a pedestal -- every bit as gaudy as the damn tablecloths -- holding a hard-to-read, hand-lettered sign.

He groaned. Deciphering what was what would take all day. He'd need another day to decide what to placate her with.

He only had an hour.

When Susan and I were originally tweeting about her exercise, she told me she was struggling to get it down to 150 words and preserve the character voice. Even if she hadn't told me that, though, we'd be using this example as an opportunity to discuss point of view and setting.

Every detail in this setting is viewed through the strong lens of this character's point of view. This particular man notices particular details that another might not notice. This is great. This is what we want to see. This is step one in connecting the character to the environment. Maybe a PMSing woman walks in and sees only the truffles. Maybe a state health inspector focuses on the open displays. Characters perceive environments in different ways.

In this case, we have a musician whose eyes are probably sensitive from exposure to stage lighting, and consequently he notices the brightness of the colors and the tininess of the text. But the chocolates themselves hardly rate a descriptive mention after that first scornful "all that shit" line. This is all character-specific.

But that's just the first step in joining the character to the setting. What's step two? It's something Susan is doing very well here. All those viewpoint-specific setting details are pinging off this guy's radar. He is INTERACTING, not merely noticing. And he's doing it all without making a single gesture. First we get the contrast of his expectations versus the reality. Then we get a taste of his scorn for the very thing he's there to buy. Then we get his visceral reaction to the tablecloths, followed by an emotional reaction. Then we get his whining about the signs. It's very deftly done.

If this were a real piece rather than an exercise, I would be extremely pleased with the way the setting was handled, but Susan and I might be talking about ways to make this guy a little more warm in this moment. We might talk about tempering his negativity with genuine worry about his wife. We'd be killing that thought tag in the first line (it's unnecessary when the pov is already this deep and clear), and we'd be shifting that first paragraph so he's not thinking about himself but about his wife. But that's a separate issue unrelated to setting. I only point it out because, you know, I'm incorrigible that way. Tinkering with that first paragraph would shift the entire tone of the piece so that we might feel more sympathy for this guy.

Now, here's an exercise for anyone who cares to do it. I want you to take this chocolate shop setting as set up  by Susan and put another character in it. In the comments, give me a one-sentence description of this character. Then give me three things this character will notice about this environment. And then give me one unique way this character will react to one of those three things.

Ready, set, go! :)

Theresa

Your Setting Examples - #4

Today's setting example comes to us from Leona Bushman, longtime friend of the blog. If you're not already following her on twitter, consider adding her because her feed is big fun. Let's take a look at her sample.

No. They wanted the person in the file they were holding. She leaned back on the old wooden chair and put her feet up on the matching desk. She had a moment's unease as she wondered if that brown stain was coffee-or blood. These men were an unknown to her.

The blue suit, as she thought of the slightly shorter, more dour of the partners, held her file. She recognized it from her stint in the military hospital after some freak biological substance had leaked in their neighborhood.

That was back when she was still married--she put an abrupt stop to that train. It had left the station long time ago. She stubbed out her cigarette in the small old-fashioned glass ashtray on the desk. They obviously didn't have an updated dossier on her or they never would have left her with such a hand weapon, much less matches.

Leona presents us with a great opportunity to talk about narrative balance. The setting details are sparse, but that doesn't undermine the piece. In fact, I think this is probably a very good balance for this excerpt.

Why? Because there's emotional tension in the moment that results from the character interaction and premise, and if we were to pause to describe the architecture, it would siphon off some of the tension. Instead, the setting details as presented contribute in subtle ways to the tension. There's a file -- we can't see inside it, but the character recognizes it and actively wonders if the contents have changed. There's a stain -- we don't know where, or how large or dark, but we know it could be coffee or blood. There's a lit cigarette and matches -- weapons in the hands of this woman.

The only setting details that don't ratchet up the tension are the ashtray, desk and chair. Everyone take a look at those particular details and then compare them to the other setting details. Notice anything different between the two groups of details? Really look and see what you notice. This is a chance for you to practice using an editorial eye. :)

Done looking? What did you notice? The tension details are presented very cleanly, but the non-tension moments have adjectives. Those adjectives add narrative weight to those non-tension details, with the result that the tension and non-tension details carry a similar amount of narrative impact. The tension details will still feel more oomphy than the adjective details, but adding those adjectives evens things out a bit.

Why would this be a good thing? If we want to create the impression that this character doesn't miss a trick, that she's on permanent high alert, this will get you there. And you won't have to slow the pace to let her absorb a lot of details in a static way. It's incorporated into the action of the moment.

The downside is that it does slightly dilute the impact of the "pow" moments -- bloodstain, weapon -- but those moments are strong enough, and balanced well enough, that they don't disappear. So this is probably a good choice in terms of narrative balance IF the character is meant to be a hyper-attentive type.

My one slight quibble with the setting details derives from this sentence:

She recognized it from her stint in the military hospital after some freak biological substance had leaked in their neighborhood.

Has this backstory been referenced elsewhere before now? This kind of sentence is a cheap and easy way to sneak in a bit of backstory, but there's a problem. We don't know why she recognizes it. What makes this file look different from any other file? Are there markings on it? Because, of course, she doesn't recognize it from her stint in the military hospital. She remembers it from then, but she recognizes it from its size, color, markings, etc.

So we're not getting a visual on this prop, and I think we ought to. If the backstory has already been presented elsewhere, you can pare it down here and replace it with a visual. You probably still want to link the file to her industrial accident somehow, but shift the focus off the backstory and to the present scene moments.

If the backstory has not already been presented, then keep this sentence more or less as it is, and give us a visual on the prop earlier, perhaps in that first sentence or even earlier.

Theresa

Today's setting example comes to us from Sylvia Spruck Wrigley, a friend of the blog whose name you might recognize from the comments.

Once out of the park, Clotilde stood still, the sounds and sights of the city surrounding her. Brightly dressed people bustled past on the pavement and the street was full of large car and double-decker buses. Everywhere she looked, something was moving. Her fingers clenched the plastic bag with the advertisement. She resisted the urge to run back to the river and hide. She needed to find someone to give her directions - not the Yank, obviously, but someone who lived here and knew London.

Across the raging traffic she could see a small coffee shop. Clotilde waved at the car until one stopped. She smiled and stepped into the street to cross. The driver hooted his horn and she broke into a run, dodging the rest of the traffic. She practically fell into the coffee shop, shaking the rain from her hair.

What is done well, and what could be done better? I'm impressed with the way prepositional phrases are used to orient the character into a dimensional space. Out of the park, across the traffic, into the street, back to the river. We get a strong sense of what is before and behind the character. That's neatly done.

I think the sense of motion in the world around her is also clear, but I want it to be more concrete. Phrases like "sights and sounds of the city" are too abstract to register a sensory impression. What exactly does she hear? Cars. Footsteps. Horns. What else? What exactly does she see? Cars. People. Pavement. Coffee shop. These words are more concrete than "sights and sounds."

Do we notice anything else about those setting nouns? Most of them are general, though they are concrete. I think this is because the setting details are being presented in the aggregate. We see cars as a group rather than yellow cabs and black sedans and tiny green smart cars. Other than double-decker buses, the street traffic is presented without detail.

You might be thinking that it's better to treat cars and pedestrians in the aggregate in a scene like this -- after all, in this particular excerpt, it does contribute to the sense of busy-ness and bustle to talk about the big groupings of like objects. And that's a good thing. We like the way abundance and aggregation are used to almost overwhelm the reader and character, as if there's so much for her to take in that she can't possibly grasp it all.

But when that car almost hits her? That's when we need to get a bit more specific. That's when the character's focus will shift from the chaos of the many to the problem of the one. Describe that car more specifically. Don't rely on "brightly dressed people" to work as a tag for the driver, either. Give us a flash of him, too, as a specific detail within this setting.

Was anyone else surprised by the rain in the final sentence? I'm assuming that the rain would have been mentioned before now, perhaps when she's still in the park or by the river. But I wonder if it also needs to be mentioned in the context of the setting. Do the pedestrians carry umbrellas? Is there thunder contributing to the noise?

In all, I would characterize this as a good early draft. We have clear orientation and the setting supports and merges with the character's actions. But in a final draft, I would expect some of the less vague details to be made more vibrant and specific.

What else do we see in this setting example?

Thank you, Sylvia, for sharing your paragraphs. Overall, you're on the right track, I think.

Theresa

Settings - Your Example #2

This one comes to us courtesy of Jody Wallace. Jody's other self, Ellie Marvel, sold to Alicia a few times. I was a particular fan of her interactive erotic romance - scifi hybrid, Megan's Choice, as longtime readers of this blog might remember.

So let's take a look at what Jody can do.

"Sorry, sweetie, we're out of porterhouses." Annette, Harry's grey-haired waitress, slid a stemmed water glass onto the table in front of him and flipped her receipt book to the next page.

Out of porterhouses? How could Miss Sandie's Tea Room run out of steaks when he was the only customer who ordered them?

Harry stared at the frilly, blue-checkered menu as if another werewolf-friendly item were going to appear among the scones and scotch eggs. Miss Sandie's was his customary lunch spot, but he'd rather fire up the grill himself than settle for a fruit plate.

Which was saying a lot. Harry hadn't gotten a culinary gene, just a furry one.

"Are you sure, Annette? Did Sandie order T-bones?" He sniffed, but he couldn't detect much beyond the fresh flowers on his table and apple pie odor that saturated the dining room.

Yes, we like this. Notice that the setting is named, and then almost every other detail related to the setting is a prop. The water glass, the menu, the order book -- these are all items that reinforce the setting. Notice how Jody slips these details in as part of the action. The world is coming alive around the characters because the characters are interacting with the world. The pov character has a scene-level problem related to the setting. The elements are integrated and coherent.

For contrast, look at what would happen if we did a brief info-dump type description.

Harry sat at his usual lunch table in Miss Sandie's Tea Room. There were fresh flowers on the table, and the odor of apple pie saturated the dining room air. A frilly, blue-checkered menu was propped open at the end of the table right beside a stemmed water glass.

"Sorry, sweetie, we're out of porterhouses." etc.

A lot of the same vivid details, but the presentation is less effective because it's all static. Nothing is moving. Even where the verbs are interesting, they're immobile. Instead of a scene in which the story details are interrelated and support each other, we have a flatter version of the same.

When we talk about things like blending setting with action, this is what we mean. But it's also a good example of another principle: don't describe the setting detail until it becomes relevant to the action.

Take another look at the way the menus are used in Jody's good example and my junky rewrite. In hers, the werewolf is reading the menu and trying to solve a problem. The menu details are mentioned as he reads and thinks it through. In mine, the menu is mentioned before we reach the point where Harry has to read it. It's out of sequence.

Any questions? Any other observations?

Theresa

Settings - Your Example #1

A few days ago, I offered to look at setting excerpts from your manuscripts and give some feedback. You can still send them in if you want to -- the more, the merrier. If you want to get in on the deal, send 150 words max to edittorrent at gmail dot com. I'll be going through them in the order received.

So here's the first example, from an anonymous submitter.

Franque the mathematician sat up in bed. The bobble of his nightcap bounced gently on his ample cheek. He pulled the cap from his head, twisted the bobble on its plaited threads, turned it so far, then let go, watching it unwind.

The sleepy voice of wife seven, lying beside him, asked, “You alright?”

“Yes, I'm fine. Need to sort something out. You go back to sleep.”

Franque swung his legs over the side of his bed, shuffled forward and dropped the three or so inches to the floor. For the three thousand six hundred and fiftieth time he said to himself, Must get a lower bed. He donned a fluffy white dressing gown, slipped his chubby feet into a pair of leather flip-flops and flapped his way through the dimly lit halls of his huge home, down wide sweeping stairways, along vaulted corridors, to his office.

I've bolded two types of details in this passage. The first are the props -- the dressing gown, the slippers, the hat -- and the second are the proper setting details -- the bed, the corridors, etc. Although these two categories of details read differently, and although the characters might interact with them differently, they still hold down basically the same job in the narrative. Concrete details in the story world help to bring the reader into that world. Whether it's a shoe or a speedboat, it's accomplishing that same basic task.

Here, the details are weighted toward props. The great thing about props is that they can change fairly easily, and as we know, change can create dramatic interest. If he's wearing pajamas in this scene and a track suit in the next, we can conclude something about a change as the character moves forward through time. This is minimal change, of course, but don't overlook even these micro-ways to manipulate the way the reader interprets the story. You want some mix of both props and immutable setting in each scene, in most cases.

Let's take a look at how these particular props and setting details are communicating character and story details.

--bed, nightcap, dressing gown, slippers, dimly lit hall.
These indicate the time in which the scene occurs. We're never told it's the middle of the night, but we know it from the props and the action. I'm all in favor of this kind of suggestive writing because it can lead the reader into a more engaged state. Details are presented that allow us to draw a conclusion on our own. The trick in this sort of writing is making sure the details lead the reader to the correct conclusion. Here, because there's nothing to contradict that impression and there's a wealth of facts to confirm it, we can be assured the reader will correctly conclude "dead of night" as the time.

--bobble
Are we actually talking about a tassel here? A bobble is a little lumpy bit knit into fabric. Here's an example of a bobbled hat. Here's an example of a hat with a corded tassel. If the mathematician often misnames objects or stumbles over words -- I'm thinking absent-minded professor stuff here, not so much malapropisms -- then this works to help establish his character. But it would work better if we saw him stumbling for other terms, too. This could be a hallmark of his behavior when he's trying to work out a problem. Do we see any other evidence that he might be a bit garbled when he's thinking hard? Hmm. The "three thousand etc. time" seems to work against that -- it's a funny line, but it's a little too precise if we're aiming for an impression of confusion.

--three inches or so from the floor
Yes. This. Why is this a great detail? Because it focuses on something slightly out of the ordinary. This automatically lends a bit of interest to the setting. Do you all remember in one of the setting posts when we talked about how it's better to skip the expected details and focus on things that are unusual? This is a strong example of that principle. We're not just told, there's a bed, there's a blanket, there's a pillow -- although any of those details could accurately describe a bed. Instead, we're told he has to maneuver to get out of this bed and that it's too tall. There's a nice subtextual suggestion that he's small, the bed is large, he's small in the bed as he wrestles with his problem -- almost a hint that the problem itself is too big for him. Throw in the bobble thing, and maybe this guy is more lucky than bright? Good detail. (Assuming this is the impression the author is trying to create.)

But contrast this with,
--his huge home, down wide sweeping stairways, along vaulted corridors
So, we're told it's a huge home. Okay. And then this impression is magnified with the stairs and corridors. Okay. It ties in nicely to the giant bed, but where the giant bed was unusual, the big stairs and halls are sort of expected in a huge home. Right? There's nothing wrong with these details, but they don't have quite the same impact as the big bed. As an editor, if I were working on this manuscript, I would mentally flag these details. If the halls and stairs are important in later scenes -- if, for example, there's a chase through this labyrinthine network of passages, or if our absentminded mathematician gets lost in his own home -- then setting up for it now is not a bad idea. Otherwise, different details might work better here.

I also want to point out that the details are feathered into the action very nicely. It's a good blend, and it moves at a pretty solid pace.

Is anyone else wondering why Franque can't sleep? I am. It's a good scene question, but as we're in his point of view, I almost wonder if we shouldn't be getting glimpses of the problem keeping him awake. We hear some of his other interior monologue. Why not this, too? If the paragraph starts giving us this insight, then I think this might be okay. Hard to know for sure without seeing the whole piece, and I won't make any judgment on this, but I did want to flag it for the author as something to think about during revisions.

Any questions?
Theresa

Setting By Example: Crusie/Mayer

Still talking about effective ways to write setting--
This example comes to us from "Agnes and the Hitman" by Jenny Crusie and Bob Mayer. I think I might have used this book as an example once before, but I can't remember what purpose it served then. This book is good enough that we could use it as examples of lots of great things -- action, comedy, pov, emotional writing, pacing, beats -- you name it, we can probably find an example in these pages.

So let's take a look at how setting details are made relevant. This passage comes on page 27 of the hardcover edition. Agnes, our heroine, is a food columnist who has just been the victim of a crime in her home. Shane is the man who has been sent to protect her.


Shane had started in the kitchen, a big warm room with red walls and white counters that smelled of chocolate and raspberry, quiet except for the rumble of voices from the hall.

"That's Detective Xavier and Joey," Agnes said, looking worried.

Everything in Agnes's kitchen was neat and professional, but nothing said big money, ransom kind of money. In fact, the only thing that had caught his eye was the row of gleaming razor-sharp knives stuck to the magnetic bars on the wall, and next to them long-handled forks that looked sharp as spikes, and beyond those more sharpened, shiny tools, every damn one of them lethal as hell.

Agnes worked in the Kitchen of Death.


There are several reasons this run of setting information is well written. It incorporates many sensory details -- color, sound, temperature, and scent all appear in the first sentence alone. It's relevant to character, both to Agnes as the woman prone to weaponizing her kitchen tools and to Shane who would evaluate the environment for threats. It taps into the air of mystery surrounding the crime when the question of ransom is raised and discounted. It breaks up the description with a line of dialogue to keep the pacing quick, and it keeps us pretty solidly in Shane's point-of-view throughout. It even ends in a punchline to sum up the environment and enhance the comic tone.

And it does all this in 116 words.

Now that's some efficient writing.

Theresa