Make That Scene: A Writer's Guide to Setting, Mood and Atmosphere by Noble William
Author:Noble, William [Noble, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Writing
ISBN: 9780839757085
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 1264711
Publisher: Paul S Eriksson
Published: 2011-04-03T07:00:00+00:00
Prelude
A sense of place. We discussed it in connection with setting, and we know it as our experiences and memories coming together to form a foundation for who we are and where we come from. In terms of setting it tends to be limited to a geographic area—our hometown, for instance, or a certain house or street and we are able to describe it in fairly simple, straightforward terms: The island was shaped like a partially devoured ice cream cone, with both ends eaten away not hiding the original shape. .
But a sense of place—to be fully developed—actually has a second side. Giving it a geographical location is like putting together the framework, the outline; what we have to do next is to fill in the flesh and blood. We have to breathe some life into it.
Make that Scene How?
We develop mood and atmosphere so that the sense of place pulses and throbs! It's no longer over there, now it's here, around us, through us, under us, over us. It exists because we feel it and breathe it.
The techniques for developing mood and atmosphere are based on the creation of emotion, not only within the characters on the written page but within the reader as well. These emotions, if sculpted properly, should provide depth and substance when we answer the question "where are we?"
Take a restaurant scene where two lovers are conversing. Suppose we want to show a sensuous side to their relationship. We could do that with dialogue, but perhaps they aren't the type of people who find it comfortable to express their feelings that way. Why, then, couldn't we set the scene by adding sensory details to the basic physical setting? For example:
. . . creamy, damask table cloth, velvety smooth, un-wrinkled; delicate orchid scents misting from soft-lit walls, hushed voices and purple-red carpeting, glassware tinkling in graceful witness. , . Now it's not just a restaurant, it's an experience, and the mood we've created gives flesh and blood to the scene. Obviously, not all mood and atmosphere would be as vivid as this, but the point is that once we add emotional content to the bare bones of our setting we are able to make the scene do many more things.
We can buttress the emotional state of the characters, as we did above; we can add conflict; we can introduce a change of pace so the storyline will perk up; we can develop different points of view from the same set of facts; we can beautify (denigrate too!) a bare-bones geographic scene. . . and more.
Mood and Atmosphere
By injecting mood and atmosphere into our scene we provide dimension to our story, and the reader can't help but feel a greater kinship to our words and phrases. It's as if we've taken the reader into our confidence, saying "Now this is what we really mean, this is what we want you to feel. Isn't it more exciting?"
Perhaps the easiest way to imagine mood and atmosphere is in connection with a sense of place.
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