Recommended Reads: Setting

A conversation in a group prompted this one. Setting is more than just place. It’s also time period (and the things that can and can’t happen because technology), and the unique mores or manners required in a particular scenario at that time and place. If your character will be breaking these rules of behavior, there should be consequences. But so often, the characters just do whatever the author or plot wants and there’s no communal consequences because the writer hasn’t thought about that part of the story.

My usual advice to a writer lacking in creating setting boils down to:

1. get to know the place intimately
2. have characters interact with objects in the space
3. stick to the point of view character and write about the things in the setting that are important to them or have meaning to them.
4. And for goodness sake, don’t let characters get away with stuff in a space where they couldn’t/wouldn’t. It adds depth.

Anyway, In this writing group post, a reader was lamenting that a story set in New York clearly had been written by someone who had not been there. And even more so, they were writing it clearly as a non-American, using terminology that would fit their native land, but had no place in the U.S.

Total bummer for an otherwise mildly enjoyable story.

So today’s resource list is a little different. Authors writing contemporary stories have an embarrassment of riches for “being there” even if you can’t go there.

1. Google Maps and Google Street View – for all your geographical setting needs.
2. Community lists and groups. Subscribe, lurk, and watch how people talk to each other to get the rhythm of their words and the relational importance they place on different dynamics. Do they apologize for cursing, refer obliquely to people to avoid directly causing offense? All of these are nuances of setting you can use in creating your story in this place. When done writing, ask in these groups for your sensitivity readers – yes, that means I defined “community” to include LGBTQ, BIPOC, differently abled, as well as geographical region groups.
3. Subscribe to newspapers in your story’s target region. This will give you a sense of the “slant” of the community. Newspapers organize and prioritize the news they know their community wants to have. Read the op-eds, and the letters to the editor to learn the “hot topics” and tetchy subjects. FYI, if the newspaper has subscription numbers available, check the ratio of online to paper circulation numbers. This will tell you how the locals prefer to get their news – this will be easily cross-referenced with the average age of readers and the general population.
4. Find the governmental information pages – do they have a city council or a city manager? Is it properly referred to as a “county commission” or a “county council”? What about terms of service, districts, and whether or not the local offices are non-partisan, or candidates align with state and national parties?

Yes, you will find out more than you will ever explicitly include in your story, but it will implicitly inform and shape your dialogue and choices of topics when your characters come together.

~ Lara