I have had the opportunity to read a lot of contest entries in the past month. One of the more startling deficits I noticed was a lack of tone, mood and setting. Certain genres tend to require more of a descriptive narrative, but all stories need the setting established to engage the reader.
Tone and mood are supplied by the setting, weather and activity first described in any scene. You don’t describe a thunderstorm with rising flood waters and then have a happy go lucky party where no one cares… it just doesn’t work. There have been many novels written where weather or setting could be said to BE a character in the novel. Just one example from the recent past is The Perfect Storm. I think the ominous weather facing the Coast Guard and fisherman took on a life of its own.
That said, not every story requires a dark mood or eerie tone. But if yours does, then use the setting and a few detailed descriptions to get the reader on that same path. Sometimes, it’s hot and humid. When a writer says that the “moist air hit him like a wall” that evokes heat and humidity that everyone has experienced. Air so thick that each breath feels like it’s being pulled underwater. When a writers SHOWS the reader how the hot, humid air affects a character, then the reader identifies in a way with the character. Even if you’ve never schussed down an alpine slope, if an author describes the smell of the cold mountain air, the reflection off the snow blinding you, and the bits of snow and ice hitting your exposed skin as you slide downhill… you may have a clue how it feels.
In many of the entries I read, the reader was engaged in action immediately or dropped into a conversation with dialog. In either of these examples, it’s still imperative to give a few clues about the setting. Background sounds can give some idea of a space. If it’s filled with techno music, it can only be a club or upscale boutique. If it’s low, rumbly jazz, it can be many places.
I heard Barbara Dawson Smith give an excellent class on writing where she suggested using specific detail to set a stage. Instead of describing a room that the character enters by rug color, curtains, and furnishings, she suggested three sentences to set the stage. In almost every contest entry I read where setting was not well described, I could think of three lines of detail that would have gone a long way toward setting the stage. But the writer has to write them. The reader can go a long way with their imaginations, but only if they are given some specific details to imagine along the way.
In most paranormal or urban fantasy, the writer is going for a creepy or otherworldly setting. Even the Forks, WA backdrop for the Twilight Saga, is given a mystical feel by being experienced in the point of view of a girl raised in the desert. The overcast, constantly raining weather gives the vampires some ability to move about in the daytime. Its importance to the characters cannot be denied.
In a ghost story, a writer needs to build some drama while keeping the reader’s disbelief at bay. In the movie, The Sixth Sense, the entire plot progresses with a child who sees dead people and a psychiatrist who speaks to him. The filmmaker uses imagery and color to set the scene. Throughout the movie, a red colored item will cross the screen symbolic of death. Now, do you see this right away? Not necessarily. Sometimes, the best creation of setting is subtle shadings that need repetition in order to be discerned.
As a writer, we need to give our readers a sense of place and time. There needs to be enough of a description of setting (or its impact on a character) that the reader knows historically what time period they are in, what part of the country they are in, and what time of day or night the action takes place in. You might feel like you can drop the reader right into the action or right into a conversation, but you need to weave in some setting so that they can visually draw an image and engage with the story. I think it’s just as hard to establish setting for historicals and contemporaries as it is for science fiction or fantasy. Regardless of the reality of the world or time you’ve chosen as your backdrop, you have to give the reader a sense of it right away while you hook their attention.
–Sandee Wagner
