Write Great Fiction - Description & Setting by Ron Rozelle

Author:Ron Rozelle [Rozelle, Ron]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: epub, ebook
Publisher: F+W Media
Published: 2005-03-03T08:00:00+00:00

7

[ TIME AND PLACE ]

In chapter four I pointed out that it is essential when writing fiction to tell a story rather than write a report. The reason is simple: Stories are more enjoyable than reports and easier to digest. You want proof of that? Dust off your Old Testament and start reading, not for any spiritual enlightenment but just for comprehension. You'll probably like Genesis, what with Adam and Eve misbehaving and Noah getting his odd instructions regarding a particular boat and Abraham's test and many other things. Then read on through Exodus, with God continually asking Moses “What's with these people? I promise them all these neat things, give them food that falls out of the sky, and all they do is whine.” That's good stuff, best-seller material if ever I saw it.

Now take a stab at Leviticus, which is a long catalog of specific dietary and ritualistic rules. Leviticus has undoubtedly brought legions of people intent on reading straight through the Bible from start to finish to a screeching halt.

In Genesis and Exodus there is drama; there are murders, betrayals, and interesting characters with various motivations in various dilemmas. In short, there are stories. In Leviticus there is just that seemingly unending list of decrees.

And there is one more difference — perhaps the single most important one — between the Old Testament's first two books and its third. All of those stories are grounded in specific times and places. They each have a definite setting; Abraham looks out across the vast unknown territory that he has been told to traverse, Noah watches the waters cover up the world and gets bumped around by all those animals in the close quarters of the ark, and Moses actually sees the promised land, rather than just hears about it. Readers see it too, since they are right there with him. There's none of that in Leviticus, since the reader is never given any particular place to be.

Nothing so solidly anchors a work of fiction in readers' minds as knowing when and where something is taking place. Settings provide bases of operations for everything that happens in your story or novel, and, as importantly, they — along with the characters that will do things in there — provide you with a means to actually tell a story, rather than simply report information.

In this chapter, we'll look at a few ways for you to put your readers in the times and places where those stories can emerge.

THE CREDIBILITY OF YOUR SETTING

One night my wife was watching television while I tried to read student manuscripts. Bits and pieces of whatever she was watching began to mingle with the words I was reading, and soon I began to realize that I was paying as much attention to the movie as I was to what I was supposed to be doing.

The plot involved a middle-aged woman who had fallen into a romance with her young renter, who had taken to cavorting with the woman's teenaged daughter.

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