As we quickly rush towards November, I wanted to touch on three things that I have found helpful while trying to tackle the NaNoWriMo challenge. NaNoWriMo is about progress, 50,000 words in 30 days leaves little time for idle thoughts, so I wanted to touch on things that tend to trip us up while writing, namely Setting, Character and Plot. I am at heart, a planner, spontaneity is great but I like to have a bit of structure before trying to write a book. The point of these prep talks is not to give individual pointers so much as it is to get us thinking about the importance of each element, not individually but blended together, and how they will form the basis of the stories we tell . That said, let’s get to it!
How many really great stories have you read where the characters didn’t interact with the world around them? How many tales have been spun where the world is just as memorable as the characters? Have you ever completed reading a book in a series only to jump right into the next one, excited to see what you will find next? Today I wanted to start off by talking about setting and why it is so important to your novel.
What are we talking about when we talk about setting? It is simply the world, country, city or building in which a story is told. That is however it’s most basic definition; your story’s setting can be much, much more than that. Think of the social norms that dictate our interactions with one another, that too is part of a book’s setting. The time period and accepted scientific or religious beliefs can also be part of the setting. Setting encompasses everything the characters will interact with, everything they will smell and see and do. A setting is much more than just a location; it is a whole world contained within that location.
Many early writers tend to set aside setting, thinking that once they have a location they are ready to go. But is that really the case? Let’s think about our own world, the suburbs of Atlanta, the Southside of Boston and the streets of Mortimer NC, are all very different locations just on the eastern coast of America. The differences would have a staggering impact on your story and characters. Your characters will act differently depending on where they are at and where they are from. The setting is not just a passive backdrop for the story to be told, it is an active participant in shaping how your characters behave and go about their lives. A battle hardened Marine will act differently on the battlefield than a fresh faced journalist on their first assignment. The same can be said of that same Marine fresh off their tour of duty and back in suburbia.
Setting shapes not only the physical world but the customs and interactions of its inhabitants. A story set in Atlanta in 1996 will be very different than one set in 1864. The background of events, the things that matter to the people living there, even the social interactions between whites and blacks will vary greatly between these two time periods. If you aren’t writing a modern story, then you will need to look into the goings on of the people of the time period you are writing about. Even if you are writing a modern story you still need to know what matters to the people who are there. No story set in the 80’s would be complete without neon colors and big hair, and those items would never appear in a story set seventy years ago. Even if you are working with a fictional world it is important to know at least some random facts of history that shaped the population that live there. These lend weight to a world, a history, a past, that gives rise to its actions.
Setting is not just limited to the time and location of your story. There is another element of setting that will have a huge impact on your characters and that is the social norms that govern society. Everyday we make a thousand decisions based off of the societal norms we were raised with. Every society has its own unspoken rules for proper behavior. A master servant relationship from the early 1900’s will be different than an employer employee relationship of more modern times. Some norms dictate who we can and can’t talk to, who would be acceptable marriage partners, who are the haves and who are the have nots. This is also part of your setting. As your characters communicate with one another they are navigating a whole unseen world of social interaction.
Your setting is much more than just a passive background unrelated to your work, it is vital to how your book plays out. Your characters aren’t just standing in front of a backdrop they are navigating through the setting both physically, figuratively and socially. Your plot will hinge upon having the right setting so that the interactions of your characters are seen as relevant and not wholly out of place. The world your characters live in should be as real and solid as the world we live in, and that is hard to pull off if you don’t give it a thought until you are knee deep into your novel. So don’t ignore it or put it off, develop it like you would a character. It has a past, it has motives and it has repercussions on what can and can’t be done by your characters. This week let’s take a moment to pause and consider where your story will take place, after all you and your characters are about to spend a great deal of time there!