The next chapter in Bird By Bird is titled, “Set Design”, or in other words, setting. Setting is critical, but it can also be nauseatingly overdone (and underdone, as my sad story will reveal).
The reader needs to be able to picture your characters somewhere. And not just somewhere, but in what kind of weather? What time of day? What season of the year?
Setting is impacted by history, of course. I’ve long been impressed and depressed by historical fiction writers. It takes SO much work – extra work, beyond developing characters and plots and writing well.
In historical fiction, setting can make or break the book, plus the task of learning all that was happening – what people wore, how they spoke, what kind of technology existed, what kind of cars they drove, not to mention all the social and economic and political issues of the time period. To me, that’s like doing AP Novel writing. All that extra work and people will often only care that you did it if you get some element wrong.
But even if you’re writing fan fiction for Fifty Shades of Gray, setting matters. We don’t exist in a vacuum. Our feet have to be standing on something, somewhere.
Lamott advises that you imagine yourself as the set designer for a movie. And she shares multiple antidotes of her own experiences learning to create a setting that involves killing houseplants and having lengthy conversations with the guy at the local plant nursery.
Her story is a reminder that you don’t have to be an expert in whatever your characters are into or even in the period of time they inhabit, to be able to tell a good story. But you do need to get the details correct. Otherwise, someone who is an expert in that area will call you out.
In my novel, Blind Turn, I originally set the story in Pennsylvania (where I was living at the time), but at the behest of a literary agent who thought the high school football setting would be more intense in Texas, I moved it there. I found an area of east Texas that was relatively similar to the landscape of south central Pennsylvania and plucked a county and a town from the map. Beyond that a precursory google search to see that it was a tiny town with rivers nearby, I did very little research.
I’m not sure if I just never considered that anyone from Jefferson, Texas would ever read my book, or if I was just sick-to-death of editing that book and only trying to please the would-be agent (who did not sign me). But either excuse is inexcusable (see: lazy writers).
Not long after the book came out, I got a review from a woman who loved the story but was furious that I didn’t mention the annual Christmas festival or the main street in her hometown of….you guessed it…Jefferson, Texas.
That reviewer taught me a valuable lesson. Do more research. Don’t just toss out setting details willy-nilly with the defense that ‘this is fiction, it’s all made up’.
Get those setting details correct. Before you even start writing, learn as much as you can about where/when/what was happening in the place where you are setting your story. Even if you’re writing Fantasy and you get to make it all up, it needs to be vivid in your mind so that your ‘world’ and the supernatural qualities are consistent throughout your story.
If you don’t know anything about the Ninja-turtle franchise or the habitats of spotted lantern flies (lately that’s been the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia), but your characters do, then find someone who does. I’ve discovered that when you ask someone to teach you something for the book you’re writing, they are over-the-moon excited to help.
For the arrest/court scenes of Blind Turn, I interviewed an assistant DA, who explained it all to me in layperson’s terms so I could get it right. And then when the book moved to TX, I found the laws and regulations and processes for Texas courts online and studied them, knowing what to look for. Why I didn’t also put that effort into learning about Jefferson, Texas, I couldn’t tell you. It was 2020, that’s my best excuse.
True confession (but maybe this is obvious): I really hate worrying about setting. It’s work for me. I often leave too much up to my readers’ imagination. But that’s lazy writing, and something I’m aspiring to correct.
Don’t be lazy. Do the work to create real settings that bring your story and your characters to life. Good writing makes the story so real the reader feels they are right there, in that time, or on that planet (check out setting in The Martian – masterful!).
Setting is real, and getting it right matters. You just never know when some resident of some tiny town no one has heard of will end up being a noted book reviewer and call you on your laziness.
Hey, thanks for reading. I know you’ve got lots of options, so thanks for sharing a few of your minutes with me.
Honored,
Cara
If you’re curious about what else I’m up to, check out my website, CaraWrites.com.
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If you’re a dog lover, check out my other blog, Another Good Dog. And if you want to know what is really happening in the animal shelters in this country, visit, Who Will Let the Dogs Out, and subscribe to the blog I write there.
I’d love to connect with you on Facebook or Instagram, and I’m thrilled to get email from readers (and writers), you can reach me at carasueachterberg@gmail.com.
My latest novel, Blind Turn is a mother-daughter story of forgiveness in the aftermath of a fatal texting and driving accident. It won the Womens Fiction category of the American Writing Awards in 2022. Learn more about it and find out how to get your copy here.
My most recent memoir, 100 Dogs & Counting: One Woman, Ten Thousand Miles, and a Journey Into the Heart of Shelters and Rescues is available anywhere books are sold, but if you’d like some help finding it (or want to read some lovely reviews), click here.
My Life in Paragraphs 