Tag: Setting

Examine House Listings

On By Terry ConnellyIn prompt, Uncategorized, Writing promptLeave a comment

            Whenever you get stuck on setting, look up available houses in the neighborhood. Take a good look at the photos of each room. Check out the exterior as well, whether it’s a single-family home, an apartment or a condo.

            Can you picture your character living there?

            What happens inside the residence? A murder? A hot love affair? The birth of a child? Perhaps a devastating fire.

            Adapt the residence to fit your setting. Change the modern two-story house to an enchanted mansion on a street of Victorians. If it’s in perfect condition, give it a serious flaw, like a leaky roof or bathroom tiles that collapse inward when cleaned.

            How large of a family do you envision living there? If it’s a studio, perhaps you cram a family of four inside as it’s all they can afford. Or maybe a successful business woman buys the triplex in a new, swanky neighborhood.

            Now that you’ve established character and setting, craft the story. Make something intriguing happen, something that draws readers in.

            Invite other characters to populate your story, but make them all different, with spooky characteristics that clash.

            Have fun with this one.

The Best Place You Ever Lived

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Some people live in the same town, in the same house, their entire lives, while most move at least once over the course of their lifetime. Taking into consideration all the places you have lived, which one was your favorite? Why?

Perhaps it was because of the neighbors. They were friendly, open, and welcoming and your best friend lived right next door. Maybe it was that the location offered plenty of things to do, like roller-skating, hiking, swimming or exploring.

Whatever the reason, that place offered you something that no other has.

Your characters will have a favorite place as well. Begin by creating backstory for each of your main characters. Give them each a place and at least one reason. Those places might not appear in your story, but they continue to appear in the memories that your characters carry forward. They may even influence the things your characters say and do.

Your task is to write a story in which a favorite place appears in some way. It could play a prominent role or it could come up in discussion. In this story setting is important, but so are the memories.

Remember that not everyone in a family shares the same opinion about a given place. This could lead to some interesting discussions that create a sense of tension.

Have fun with this one.

Sunset Story

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            Time of day affects the setting of a story. Imagine a broiling hot trek across an Arizona desert or an early morning hike on a Minnesota Lake in the dead of winter. Bot situations might be untenable without proper preparation and the correct gear.

            Try to recall the most spectacular sunset you have ever seen. Where were you? Who were you with? What made it memorable? Was it the company, the situation or the location? Perhaps it was a combination of all those things.

            Your task is to write a story in which your character experiences a sunset so profound that it touches her heart. The colors, the people she’s with, the location all come into play. What she’s doing just before sunset occurs sets the stage.

            As you write remember to include sensory details. Readers will want to see, hear, taste, smell, and touch everything that your character does. Dialogue is also important because it is through conversation that feelings will be revealed.

            Reread looking to see if the picture that you paint with words comes clear.

            Have fun with this one.

Setting Changes Affect Story

On By Terry ConnellyIn prompt, Uncategorized, Writing promptLeave a comment

            You’ve outlined your setting including research into what it was like way back when. If lucky, you visited the cities and are familiar with buildings, streets and plants. Your plot takes the character all over that environment, in and out of predicaments determined by geographical elements.

            Have you taken into consideration how time changes the setting? Does it snow in winter, pour in the spring and roast in the summer? Is there only one season because the story is set on a planet, far, far away? If the setting changes/doesn’t change, how does this affect story?

            A time traveler might have to find clothes if they’re dropped into a winter landscape. Perhaps the desert figures significantly in the story as your character rides a camel over dunes. However, what if the story never changes location: it’s always in the same city, the same house, the same neighborhood? Change still has to take place.

            Your task is to write a story in which significant changes in setting occur that affect plot. Begin by listing those elements that would most likely happen based upon where you’ve chosen to set the scene. For example, during the length of the story will seasons change? Will a catastrophic weather event destroy homes, streets, lives?

            Once you’ve chosen the changes that can logically be incorporated into your story, begin writing. Remember to include details so that readers can “see” the changes both in nature and in terms of how the changes affect your character’s thoughts and actions.

            Have fun with this one.

Choosing the Time Period

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Every story exists within a particular time period. Historical novels are normally centered in the past, ranging from the earliest days of man to the near present. Think cave men and last year.

Futuristic stories might be on Mars after its been settled, on a spaceship as it zooms toward a distant planet, or on Earth after an apocalypse.

When a story occurs affects weather, clothing, buildings, communication systems, all kinds of infrastructure issues and many more. If you’re an expert on a particular era, perhaps you don’t have to research to get information, but most of us will have to spend a substantial amount of time gathering data.

Your task is to write a story that takes place in a time period other than now. Begin by listing three different ideas that intrigue you. Choose the one you will enjoy learning more about. Research until you come up with enough information to develop your world.

Include sensory details so that your readers will grasp when and where the events take place, but be careful not to employ an information dump to do so. Weave together story and details, dialogue and narrative.

Have fun with this one.

Functional Infrastructure

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Infrastructure is the combined facilities and structures that a society needs for its economy to function. It includes bridges, roads, telecommunications systems, water and sewage systems and electrical grids. Airports, tunnels, hospitals, lighthouses, public schools, parks and other public spaces also fall under the umbrella of infrastructure. The degree to which each is developed tells a lot about that society.

A primitive society might have dirt roads and wooden dams while a technologically advanced community would employ systems that perhaps have yet to be developed.

When creating the setting for your story, these elements might not play a major role, but they could. Imagine if an earthquake breaks the walls of a dam and water pours down river, flooding cities in its wake. Perhaps the local hospital is so overrun with accident victims that additional cases have to be transported to other communities.

Your task is to create a story in which something happens that threatens an element of the infrastructure. Begin by settling on the one event that you feel the most comfortable writing about. Place your characters in the scene, taking into consideration how the event will affect each and how they will react, realizing that people behave differently when threatened.

You can start with the disaster right from the beginning, or establish the “normal” world so that readers understand what life was like before things went wrong. Dialogue and narrative are both important. Narrative puts readers into the heart of the action while dialogue exposes the fears, the concerns, the reactions of characters in the story.

Have fun with this one.

Rooms, Houses and Buildings

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In any story, regardless of genre, characters enter buildings of various types, ranging from simple mud huts to enormous skyscrapers. They might pass through a grand ballroom with an array of sparkling chandeliers or a rustic bathroom consisting of a hole in the floor.

No matter the room, the descriptions must be real because rooms are where we gather. In the ballroom they might attend a conference focusing on a medical issue or participate in a fiftieth wedding anniversary. At some point they use the bathroom. Are the counters granite or mud shelves imbedded in the wall? Does water run out of an artistic arrangement of descending pots or is there a simple bowl with standing water?

The spaces through which our characters pass reveal details about environment and its impact on they lives. Your descriptions are therefore critical in setting the scene. The way residences are decorated tell us who the characters are. A sparsely outfitted studio is vastly different from a castle on a hill filled with massive wood tables, chairs and cabinets.

Your task is to write a story in which buildings are not just backdrops but play a role in adding to the story.

How will readers know if a room is lavish unless hints of splendor appear? Or if the hut’s dirt floor is neatly brushed or covered with straw mats?

While setting is important, it also cannot dominate the scene. Be careful when writing to ensure that the amount of description does not overtake the story.

Have fun with this one.

Draw a Map

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Back in the old days when going somewhere new you’d pull out a paper map and highlight the streets to be crossed in order to arrive when and where you were going. Today we rely on portable devices that show in real time where we are and tell us when to switch lanes, when to turn, when we have arrived.

Before you write a story we need to establish a map. If it takes place in a real city, real neighborhood, procure a paper map. Drive on the streets that you will use, making note of businesses such as fast food, medial centers, shopping opportunities. Mark schools, churches and traffic lights.

Take pictures of houses, plants, trees. Crosswalks. Intersections. Stop and wind down your windows. Listen to the birds. Smell the flowers in bloom or the pollution from industry or car exhausts.

In other words, cover the scene so completely that it lives in your mind and on paper.

Your task then is to go for a drive. Take a camera and paper and pen. Stop periodically to snap images and to record sights, sounds, smells. Spend an hour or so over each day over the period of time that your story will cover. Winter, spring, summer and fall might be changes to the area that play important parts in the story.

Create an album or folder on your computer and access the information before you begin each writing session.

Have fun with this one.

Establishing Setting

On By Terry ConnellyIn Uncategorized, Writing promptLeave a comment

I’ve always had a hard time getting the introduction of setting on the first page. I realize that it’s important that readers know when and where a story takes place, but how do you insert the details without being pedantic?

I’ve tried beginning with a description of the scene, such as John  Steinbeck did so well in both Of Mice and Men and The Pearl. What seemed to come naturally to him is forced from me. Steinbeck was able to set the scene so well that you could almost hear the wind blowing through the trees and smell the smoke from the cook fire.

Science fiction writers have to describe a whole new world in such a way that the reader understands exactly what’s going on. Many might begin with a map, naming places and drawing boundaries in such a way that readers will feel at home as characters pass through the different areas.

Stories set in the past have to establish historical accuracy from the get-go. This includes foods, dress, language, environments and so on. It requires a great amount of research to make sure that this world depicts the way things were.

My stories tend to be contemporary in my world, which means in the San Francisco Bay Area. I do this on purpose. First of all, it’s a world I know and understand. Secondly, I don’t have to use too much imagination to place my characters in the world and set them in motion.

So how do you establish setting? I recommend looking at authors that you respect. Reread the first pages of many different books. Take notes. Imitate what you read, down to the sentence structures, replacing a noun for a noun and a verb for a verb.

Do this over and over until you feel comfortable working on your own.

This is your task. Think of a story that you want to tell.  Using one of the models that you have created as a beginning, tell the story. When you are finished, go back and reread. Does the setting work? When you start reading, do you know the time period and the place or do you have to guess?

If you, the writer, don’t know, then neither will your reader. In this case, go back to your models and try again. Repeat this process until your setting works.

Have fun  with this one.