In today’s Journal
* Setting Matters. And Detail Matters.
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Setting Matters. And Detail Matters.
When you say or write a noun, you put a static picture in the listener’s or reader’s mind. That’s important to remember. It isn’t theory, it’s fact. (Then if you add an action verb, the picture moves. But in this lesson, forget the verb.)
You want that picture to be there. It is what draws the reader into a scene.
There’s a popular and widely misundertood belief that ANY description of setting you put into a scene MUST advance the scene.
I’m here to tell you, that’s a bunch of bullshtuff.
That probably is a misinterpretation of Stanislovsky’s (or whomever’s, I’m not an actor) Rule that if there’s a shotgun on the wall in the opening scene of a story, the shotgun had better be used somewhere in the story.
I take the guy’s point, but that “law” goes to FORESHADOWING, not to which aspects of the setting you should describe in a scene.
Okay, First, Foreshadowing
What if the shotgun is simply decorative? Who you gonna shoot with it now?
If there’s a picture on the wall or a lamp on a table or a broom in the corner in the opening scene, does someone have to get bashed over the head with it later in the story?
Of course not.
And as anyone who writes into the dark and cycles can tell you, any foreshadowing is often added after the fact. Because you have zero way of knowing what’s going to happen next.
So when something happens that you didn’t expect to happen, you can cycle back to an earlier point in the story and insert a line or two to foreshadow that event.
My example about Aunt Marge finding a burglar in her home late at night and producing her deceased husband’s revolver from the pocket of her robe is a great example.
Because how could she pull a gun from her pocket without first putting it INTO her pocket?
I just heard someone say, “Wull, whut if she keeps it there all the time?”
Fine. But if she keeps it there all the time, y’gotta let the reader in on that fact too. It can’t be a secret.
But back to the example.
When she pulls the gun in the current scene, you cycle back (right now) to the transitional scene in which she first hears a noise in the living room and gets out of bed. And you show (meaning enable the reader see) her reaching into the drawer of a nightstand and putting Harry’s revolver into the pocket of her robe.
Readers read a story from the opening line to the end. But writers don’t have to write it that way.
Okay, Now Back to Description
Drawing the reader into the scene and grounding him solidly in the scene is the sole purpose ofevery description of the setting in a story. Not to “advance the scene.”
And detail (detailed, focused-down description) matters even more.
Why? Because the more detailed the description, the more deeply the reader is engaged. You achieve that by focusing down.
If you’re describing a love scene during the first intimate encounter between a man and a woman (or whatever couple you want to conjur) and the man sees and maybe kisses each of three tiny moles that are perefectly aligned directly below the woman’s navel, will his mention of those three little moles advance the scene?
Of course not.
But will that mention pull the reader more deeply into the scene and the story?
Of course it will.
You might also describe the velvety (or whatever) texture of the skin or the warmth rising to his lips or the sweet, heady scent of her skin, etc.
I realize this is a specific and maybe extreme example—got your attention though, didn’t I?—but you can as easily alter it to suit any setting and any scene in any story.
Maybe the lens of an old watch the protagonist believes holds the key to a mystery has a chip out of the glass just to the right of the 12 on the dial.
Or maybe instead of the moles on the tummy it’s three perfectly spaced indentations on the wall of a barn and the scent is of hay and dusty, rotted wood.
Maybe any of those details are significant to the story and maybe it isn’t. But either way you’ve focused the reader’s attention and drawn him deeper into the setting and scene and story. And that’s the whole idea.
Note: If you are writing an authentic story—
meaning the characters’ story, the story that they, not you are living—you can’t know what will happen next.
In that case, writing any description of any setting is simple: write whatever appears in your mind as you’re writing the story. If it weren’t important on some level, whether to foreshadow something else or to pull the reader deeper, the character wouldn’t have noticed it, and it wouldn’t have appeared in your mind.
To learn writing setting, writing the scene, and a great deal more in depth, I strongly recommend you get Writing Better Fiction. And I recommend you save money buy buying it direct from StoneThread Publishing.
Read the description here, then (if you want to) click the appropriate Buy Now button toward the bottom of the page.
Thanks to Amazon’s price gouging, you can get any electronic format from StoneThread Publishing for only $9.00 (first Buy Now button). Or you can purchase a binder-ready paper copy for $25, postpaid (second Buy Now button).
The e-book version will currently cost you $14.99 anywhere online. (I get lower royalties, but I don’t really care. It’s a valuable book.)
The paper version is available only from me.
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
Nada. As I do with Quote of the Day, in the future when I have nothing for Of Interest I won’t include it in the TOC above.
The Numbers
The Journal……………………………… 1000
Writing of Blackwell Ops 21: Johnny Mercer
Day 1…… 4190 words. To date…… 4190
Day 2…… 2599 words. To date…… 6789
Day 3…… 3380 words. To date…… 10169
Day 4…… 2812 words. To date…… 12981
Day 5…… 1726 words. To date…… 14707
Day 6…… 1866 words. To date…… 16573
Day 7…… 4349 words. To date…… 20922
Day 8…… 2244 words. To date…… 23166
Day 9…… 4743 words. To date…… 27909
Day 10…. 2221 words. To date…… 30130
Fiction for March…………………….…. 23341
Fiction for 2024…………………………. 187933
Fiction since October 1………………… 490989
Nonfiction for March…………………… 16330
Nonfiction for 2024……………………… 115520
2024 consumable words……………… 303453
2024 Novels to Date……………………… 4
2024 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2024 Short Stories to Date……………… 1
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………… 86
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 9
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)…… 239
Short story collections………………… 31
Disclaimer: I am a prolific professional fiction writer. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Unreasoning fear and the myths of writing will slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.
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