Description & Setting by Rozelle Ron

Description & Setting by Rozelle Ron

Author:Rozelle, Ron. [Rozelle, Ron.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
Published: 2008-08-29T17:14:47+00:00


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chapter 7

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[ t i m e a n d p l a c e ]

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 enjoy-

able 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 Exo-

dus, 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

setting

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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

description

bumped around by all those animals in the close quarters of the ark, and

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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 opera-

tions 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.

t h e c r e d ib i l i ty o f y ou r s e tt i n g

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. The whole mess ended tragically for the mother



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