Category Archives: Resources for Writers

Setting and Sensory Detail

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No matter what genre you are writing in, your novel has to take place somewhere. In some cases that world is the here and now, a place you and your readers ought to find quite recognizable. In others, you may need to research a less familiar setting. No matter where or when you set a book, though, it is important to remember that every place and time is unique, and that no matter how ordinary an environment seems to you, there are readers who will find it vivid and intriguing–if only you take the time to make it so.

It is all too easy to take the present day for granted, but compare these two fragments:

“Picture a summer stolen whole from some coming-of-age film set in small-town 1950s. This is none of Ireland’s subtle seasons mixed for a connoisseur’s palate, water-color nuances within a pinch-sized range of cloud and soft rain; this is summer-full-throated and extravagant in a hot pure silkscreen blue. This summer explodes on your tongue tasting of chewed blades of long grass, your own clean sweat, Marie biscuits with butter squirting through the holes and shaken bottles of red lemonade picnicked in tree houses. It tingles on your skin with BMX wind in your face, ladybug feet up your arm; it packs every breath full of mown grass and billowing washing-lines; it chimes and fountains with bird calls, bees, leaves and foot-ball bounces and skipping chants, One! Two! Three! This summer will never end. It starts every day with a shower of Mr. Whippy notes and your best friend’s knock at the door, finishes it with long slow twilight and mothers silhouetted in doorways calling you to come in, through the bats shrilling among the black-lace trees. This is Everysummer decked in all its best glory.

In the Woods, Tana French

The rain’s wet Denny’s shirt flat to his skinny back to so the bones of his shoulders and the trail of his spine show through, even whiter than the unbleached cotton material. The mud’s up around the tops of his wooden clogs and spilling in. Even with my hat on, my coat’s getting soaked, and the damp makes my dog and dice all wadded up in the crotch of my wool breeches start to itch. Even the crippled chickens have clucked off to find somewhere dry.

Choke, Chuck Palahniuk

Both of these novels take place in the present day, and both evoke the past as a means of anchoring writers in the present. But they couldn’t be more different. French evokes the romance of an Irish summer; Palahniuk the grim reality of a U.S. historical theme park on an especially dismal day. Despite the fact that they theoretically take place within the same world and timeframe, it is hard to imagine Denny and Victor running loose in the bright backyards of French’s Ireland.

Rather than letting your setting work as a simple, perhaps even generic background for your characters, think of it as the stage on which your novel takes place–and remember how much work goes into designing stages in theater and film. A good set is designed in detail, built from the ground up and carefully ‘dressed’ with objects and spaces that allow the characters and the audience to fully explore the world they move through. In a similar fashion, a well-rendered setting can amplify your theme, enhance mood, add new dimensions to a character’s plight, provide ‘props’ for the action, and even take on character traits of its own. More importantly, setting is where your readers ‘go’ when they enter your fiction. Writing transports readers out of their daily lives and into new realms. . . and, indeed, you will hear from many people that this experience is exactly what they are looking for when they pick up a novel.

Needless to say, some settings are more easily established than others. Speculative fiction authors may build entire worlds from scratch; writers of historical fiction must bring the past to life.

When looking at setting, whether during the draft or revision process, ask yourself what is remarkable about the environment in which your characters move. Might any element of your ‘stage’–from the weather to the architecture to the religious climate–be considered noteworthy, even extreme? What is the first thing an ordinary person would notice, were they to walk through this world? What would excite them, or scare them? What would arouse their curiosity? Where and when are they, in other words? Does the environment require anything special of them–access passes, survival gear, money, social status, a minimum level of physical fitness, a health concern, or simple travel?

Sensory Detail

Once you have given your setting some thought, your task becomes making it real to readers. How do you do that? You can describe your setting, of course–but all too often new writes fall into the trap of offering a few bland visuals before moving on. Pause for a moment, and think about all your senses. How does this place smell, taste? What are its textures? If there is a dominant visual element, is it particularly compelling?

When teachers or workshop members tell a writer their work could use more sensory detail, this is what they are talking about: specific images that allow readers to experience what being in a particular place is like.

Compare the two text fragments above once more. How many colors does Tana French mention? How many sounds and tastes has she evoked within the short passage quoted above? How many of these images are things you remember or can clearly imagine? What about the Palahniuk? Do you have a good idea of what that damp and rainy cold must be like?

Now, consider the novel you are working on. Where does it take place? What is that place actually like? What are its ambient smells, sounds, and colors? What is the quality of the light like? Are the surfaces hard, soft, or a mixture? What does a footstep sound like? Do voices echo? Is it hot or cold? Ask yourself: how does this place affect its people? Who are the wealthy and poor of this world, the weak and powerful? What is an ordinary person’s life like in this milieu?

If you’re working on something now that could use a dialed-up setting, take the time to make a short list of these details, breaking the list down into several examples of each sense being evoked: sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. Next, decide which of these details is most vivid, or see if you can sharpen them from the generic (a blue summer sky) to something more specific (French’s “hot pure silkscreen blue”).

When placing your reader within a particular setting, the old adage “show, don’t tell” comes in. Having made your list of vivid sensory details, place them within your narrative–and let your characters experience the reality you have created. Instead of saying “It was hot,” show your characters sweating miserably and fainting from heatstroke. If it stinks, have them gag, complain, run in the other direction, or, eyes watering, reach for a gas mask.

If you can learn to evoke the heart of your setting with intensely sensory phrases, preferably filtering the sensations through a point of view character you’re developing at the same time, you’re already on your way to writing an unforgettable book.

Point of View – the Basics

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This week’s writing essay is just a “What is,” and a “How to” on an important technical aspect of story structure–the workings of a thing we call Point of View.

Understanding point of view–POV, as we usually say–is as necessary to the process of writing as knowing the rules of the road is basic to learning to drive. If you don’t know which side of the road your car belongs on, or that you’re required to signal before turning, you are doomed to have a short career as a driver. (Or to use a medical analogy–if you can’t tell a human from a horse, your chances of becoming a doctor may be rather slim.)

Does that mean POV is dull? A dry and necessary fundamental, something to be gotten out of the way before moving on to fun and cool topics like voice and scenebuilding? Definitely not. The beauty and power of this element of writing is subtle, though, and once you have a good grip on it, it tends to work invisibly, behind the scenes. When you get into your car every morning, you don’t have to remind yourself to stop at traffic lights; it becomes so basic–so completely obvious–that the sight of an orange light will trigger the proper reaction in a driver without conscious thought.

An experienced driver rarely considers the intricacies of basic traffic law, but focus your attention on a few key details of this apparently dull phenomenon for a second:

1) Millions of people understand and agree on the basic rules and follow them.
2) Those “basics” allow these same people and their passengers to hurtle through space at hundreds of kilometers per hour and to travel significant vast distances in minutes.
3) Visualize the complex simplicity of a highway system, with its multi-lane traffic and the system of entrances and exits which allows travellers to move together and then separate as needed.
4) Last, consider the tragic crashes that sometimes result when people flout these agreed-upon rules.

Point of view is crucial in just the same way, and often just as invisible.

Continue reading →

Got Protagonist?

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If you’ve been following these essays of mine on craft, there are some basic things about book-writing that you probably know by now:

  • Novels are about people. This is true even if all your characters are talking bunnies or lovelorn vampires.
  • 99.99% of novels are going to have more than one character.
  • These individuals will have relationships, which will grow and change over the course of the book.
  • One of these individuals will stand out. They are the protagonist, or main character (henceforth, MC)
  • The action of your novel and the behavior of the other people in your story will all move, to some extent, in relation to the journey of your MC.

    • So far, so good, yes? I hope the above points are blindingly obvious to you all. Here’s a few more:

  • The long-running trend in fiction in Western fiction is to give MC a significant goal, need or desire: whether it is solving the mystery, battling with cancer, understanding themselves, connecting with an estranged loved one, finding true love, becoming a star, or finishing law school.
  • Whatever it is, it’s identifiable to readers and deeply important to them.
  • Whatever that need is, whether they will succeed in fulfilling ought to be in question. “I was looking for a job and then, no problem, I found a job,” isn’t a novel. (“I was looking for a job and then, holy @#$@! you wouldn’t believe what happened…” on the other hand…)
  • The MC has some good qualities and some bad ones. Not every MC is a saint, or even necessarily nice. However, they have some quality that makes the reader interested enough to stick with them for 500+ pages: they are, to reference a previous essay, funny, smart or nice.
  • The MC makes an appearance early in the book, in a way that makes it clear that they are the one.
  • Finally, there’s that dreaded character change thing: traditional Western novel structure tends to go thusly: the MC’s flaws get in the way of achieving their goal, and then when they overcome those flaws (if they do), they either get what they wanted or find they have grown beyond it.

    • How does a reader know when they’ve met the main character? If you aren’t sure, rewatch a few minutes of a favorite movie this week, one you know well. Keep the media remote in your hand and pause whenever an important character appears for the first time. Ask yourself: if I hadn’t already seen this, would I think they’re the protagonist? How do you know? Notice how they look, what they say, what they do. How are they lit? What’s the camera angle like? The music? At the end of each such scene, take a moment to think about what you learned about this character. What stuck, in other words?

    (This is worth doing with all the major characters, even after you’ve met the protagonist.)

    Then watch just a little more, briefly considering those characters who were too minor to rate this treatment. In general, they probably weren’t named, and didn’t draw much attention to themselves. If someone isn’t important to the flow of the story, a writer will probably ‘dial down’ their entries and exits from the narrative, to ensure that the reader’s consciousness doesn’t snag on them. We don’t want our audiences focused on Hill the maid when we’re reading about whether Miss Elizabeth Bennett will accept Mr. Darcy’s marriage proposal.

    Beginning writers sometimes throw their MC into a first scene with nothing but a first name, and perhaps a wisp of physical description. These poor ciphers then move into the plot without ever giving us much sense of themselves as individuals. Establishing who a character is-taking a second to give us some telling detail that makes them unique, memorable and worth knowing-doesn’t have to take thousands of words. It is, however, an entirely worthwhile effort.

    How do you do it? Start by noticing what is distinctive about everyone in your lives. Is it a physical trait, an incident in their past, a situation they’re in? (A person with a South Carolina accent isn’t unique in South Carolina . . . but move them to Vancouver, B.C., and they suddenly become exotic.) Are they addicts? Achievers? Disabled? Sociopathic? Colorblind?

    What ‘s the first thing you’d say about these individuals if you were talking to a third party? And hey–what would you say it if they weren’t present to defend themselves? What would you say at their eulogy?

    Those are the details we desperately want whenever you’re introducing us to an important character, especially if they’re your MC. You aren’t making a film: you can’t cue the audience with music or other non-linguistic cues, but the idea is the same. Take some time. Shine some light on them. Show how they’re special.

    But wait! What if the MC of your hyper-realistic novel is totally, completely, utterly, boringly normal?

    First, I’d ask: Are they really? I believe everyone is unique, that they have some trait that makes them stand out from the crowd. See how many times you can complete the following sentence, drawing on the real-life people you’ve met:

    S/he is completely ordinary, except for _______________________________.

    If you’ve got a book on the go, have a look at your MC, paying particular attention to their first entrance into your novel. Have you taken a moment or two to give us a sense of who they are? Do they get the spotlight, or are they passing through the story, all but invisibly? Are they talking heads, devoid of anything but voice?

    If so, dress them up. Give them a little love. Get them dirty. Remember, if you are passionate about your characters, readers will be, too.

    (Dessert – Katya’s non-profit marketing blog on telling details.)

    Guest Star – D.B. Jackson talks magic systems

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    This week’s writing post comes to you courtesy author D.B. Jackson, whose new novel Thieftaker will be out tomorrow. Wait, let me underline that, because I’m excited: TOMORROW. I asked Jackson to tell me a little about how he developed the magic system for his new series of novels, which combine some of my favorite fictional flavors: they’ve got history, crime and fantasy, all in one go! Here’s the cover.

    Thieftaker by DB Jackson

    Here’s the first chapter, courtesy Tor.com.

    And here’s D.B. Jackson, talking about creating magic systems.

    In developing the magic system for my newest book, Thieftaker, a historical urban fantasy that will be released by Tor books on July 3, I tried to find a balance between following a set of old rules and bringing an innovative approach to conjuring. The result is a form of magic that is powerful enough to make for interesting plot points, but limited enough to ensure that my protagonist will have to rely as much on his wits as on his magic.

    Thieftaker tells the story of Ethan Kaille, a conjurer and thieftaker (sort of an 18th century private investigator) living in Colonial Boston in the 1760s, as the North American colonies are beginning to chafe at British rule. So my first goal in creating my magic system was to come up with something that was not only cool, but that also blended well with my colonial setting. Of course there were (as far as history can tell us) no conjurers in the Province of Massachusetts Bay. But there were witch scares, the most famous of which, the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, led to the imprisonment of 150 “witches” and the execution of twenty men and women.

    I wanted my hero to face the possibility of persecution for his conjuring — I thought that would add tension to the novel — and so I created a magic system that could be confused with witchcraft by people of the time. Ethan’s magic appears to the unsuspecting to come out of nowhere; he doesn’t need a magical stone or a staff or any other physical tool to conjure, although for some spells he does need to spill his own blood. But that only adds to the whole “dabbling in the black arts” feel of the magic. While in my version of 1760s Boston there is no such thing as witchcraft, conjurers are constantly being accused of being witches, and Ethan lives in fear of being hanged as a witch.

    In other respects, though, my system of magic for this book is similar to those I’ve developed for other projects. I use three strict guidelines for my magic systems, no matter the world in which I’m writing.

    First, my magic follows a set of rules that remains consistent throughout the book. My goal in creating a magic system is to come up with something that feels as real and natural and rooted in the world I’ve created as any natural law of our own world. In my opinion, magic should seem as ironclad and constant as the law of gravity. As soon as the rules of magic begin to shift or soften according to narrative needs, the magic ceases to be a realistic part of the worldbuilding and becomes instead a plot device, and a transparent one at that.

    Second, my magic is limited in scope and power. Magic that can do anything and everything, that can’t be defeated, is destined to take over a story or series. At least that has been my experience. By placing limits on what my magic can do, I force my characters who have magic to rely as much on their intelligence and physical skills as much as they do their spells. In my opinion, that makes for more interesting characters and storytelling. So Ethan can only cast so many spells before he begins to tire and weaken. His spells can do some pretty cool stuff — among other things, he can heal wounds, he can change the shape of matter, he can move unseen among those who do not have magic — but he can’t, say, make himself fly or move through time. Magic is a tool, even a weapon at times. But it is not all-powerful.

    And third, the use of magic in my world exacts some cost. As I mentioned before, the casting of spells takes a physical toll. But more than that, each spell Ethan casts has to be fueled by something. The simplest spells can be fueled by the elements — water, air, earth, fire — but more complicated magic demands blood or something else from a living organism. And the most powerful and complex spells can require the taking of a life. Finally, as Ethan learns during the course of Thieftaker, spells can carry emotional costs as well. (I won’t say more than that for fear of spoiling plot points. You’ll just have to read the book.)

    After establishing the framework for my magic system with these guidelines in mind, I could then turn to the fun part of creating a magic system; you know: the cool stuff. Ethan’s conjurings consist of four elements. The first is the spell itself, which has to be spoken in Latin. The second is the “fuel” or source of the spell that I mentioned a moment ago: water, blood, a life, etc. The third is the conjurer him or herself. And the fourth, is a spirit guide who allows the conjurer to access the power that dwells between the world of the living and the realm of the dead. This spirit usually takes the form of a glowing ghost (for want of a better word) who appears whenever a spell is cast. Ethan’s ghost takes the form of a silent, dour old soldier wearing chain mail and a tabard bearing the sigil of the ancient Plantagenet kings. He reminds Ethan of his mother’s splenetic brother, Reginald, and so Ethan calls the ghost Uncle Reg, much to the shade’s annoyance. But though their relationship in the book provides some comic relief, the ghost plays a serious role in the magic system: Without him, Ethan could not conjure, because he could not access that magical realm.

    Finally, there is one other written element that has been crucial to making my magic system blend with my historical setting. In the book, I never use the word “magic” to describe it. After discussing the matter with my editor, we agreed that magic would have been an anachronistic term. “Magick” was considered a dark practice and was associated strongly with witchcraft in sermons and tracts that condemned both by name. Conjurers, who sought to distinguish their spellmaking from “witchery,” would never have used the word magic to describe their abilities. And so Ethan speaks of conjuring, of casting spells, spellmaking, of his “talents.” But he never calls it magic for fear of finding himself at the wrong end of a hangman’s noose.

    I hope that the magic I have created for Thieftaker will feel like a natural part of my historical setting, that it will seem consistent and “realistically” limited, and that it will entertain and occasionally elicit a “Cool!” from my readers. Those have been my goals as I have created and refined it. Because as a reader, as well as a writer, those are the things I look for in magic systems.

    About our guest star…
    D.B. Jackson is also David B. Coe, the award-winning author of a dozen fantasy novels. His first book as D.B. Jackson, Thieftaker, volume I of the Thieftaker Chronicles, will be released by Tor Books on July 3. D.B. lives on the Cumberland Plateau with his wife and two teenaged daughters. They’re all smarter and prettier than he is, but they keep him around because he makes a mean vegetarian fajita. When he’s not writing he likes to hike, play guitar, and stalk the perfect image with his camera.

    Implied Scenes

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    Unless you have been living in seclusion up until now, actively avoiding all forms of writing advice and instruction, you should have encountered the phrase Show, don’t Tell. The question of writing in scenes, (rather than simply summarizing some character action) falls under this Show, don’t Tell umbrella.

    (If you want the larger picture on this idea of Show, here are links to a couple excellent entry points:

    http://fictionmatters.blogspot.com/2009/10/writing-workshop-show-vs-tell.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Show,_don%27t_tell )

    For the moment, though, I’m going to home in on the idea of scene writing for two reasons:

    • In my reading of hundreds of student manuscripts, I have found that the most frequent beginner problem I encounter is writers who summarize the key moments of a story, rather than dramatizing them.
    • It is my passionate belief that summaries are almost never stories: they do not succeed artistically or commercially. It may not feel entirely comfortable at first, but if you are serious about learning to write fiction, you must learn to write in scenes rather than just implying that they’re happening.

    Let me start, first, by addressing a question that will inevitably arise in some of your minds: do I mean that you should never summarize–that every single word of your manuscript should be devoted to real-time action? Of course not. Quick mentions of certain types of story information can be revealed to readers if they meet a few criteria.

    • They must be important enough to merit inclusion at all–in other words, they are not so trivial that they ought to be cut.
    • They’re simple details, things that can be conveyed fast and elegantly.

    Here are some examples of perfectly legitimate “tell” sentences:

    • She wrestled with the question of clothing and settled for her most conservative suit. (This shows “she” has a meeting, but isn’t quite sure to expect.)
    • Dithering about which route to take made him late. (The dithering doesn’t matter; the tardiness is what is important).
    • Ma’s attitude when she saw him off was frosty; there would be a scene at dinner. (This is a promise to the reader that there will be some conflict, onstage, at suppertime.)
    • They had spent six years competing for a promotion… (Obviously you aren’t gong to play out all six years of cut and thrust. Equally obvious, I hope, is that whatever is happening now is the key moment in that conflict.)
    • He had bluffed his way through the last bounced chck, and sweet-talked that collections guy yesterday. (Here what’s established is past character action, setting up what is probably going to be a failed attempt to get away with it the third time.)

    See how each of the above examples is setting up some action to come? The meeting, an event that some poor fellow is late arriving to, a parent-child fight in the evening, work conflict, and so on? Summaries of this sort can be used to get readers to the meat of the story–the important thing. And that important thing–to belabor the obvious–is the scene.

    Contrast the above sentences with ones where the quickly-referenced action is obviously important:

    • She wore her most conservative suit to the meeting. . . and everyone showed up naked, causing her considerable embarrassment.
    • They had a relationship-shattering argument about which fork in the road to take.
    • Everything he had fought for for six years came crashing down in flames when Ms. Jones brought the stolen Powerpoint presentation to the meeting. Nobody believed it was his work. She got the promotion and he got fired.

    The above examples describe pivotal events within your conflict–events that should unfold as we read. We want to hear every word of that relationship-breaking fight, and be there in the room when ‘she’ is the only person there in clothes.

    What are the characteristics of implied scenes?

    • Generally, they are short.
    • They reference character interaction but have little or no dialogue.
    • They address important choices, character actions, or conflict in a few sentences.
    • They may tell us what characters are doing or feeling, using s/he felt, s/he thought, or I verbed-type sentence structures.
    • They have little in the way of sensory detail or setting description.
    • In tone, they may sound a bit like a somewhat dull book written for younger readers.

    Here’s a somewhat longer example based on a classic horror situation:

    Halfway there, they argued about which fork in the road to take. Bob favored the shortcut; Jane wanted to stay on the road clearly marked on the map. Bob teased her for being scared of the short-cut, which was creepy looking. Feeling embarrassed and hurt, Jane let him have his way.

    The first thing to notice about this fork in the road tiff is that it is a plot point. Obviously, this choice is going to have consequences further into the story. (If it doesn’t, then the whole thing is a waste of a paragraph.)

    Second, there’s character conflict going on in it, which is potentially interesting.

    The third is how little we learn from the above passage. The fork is described as creepy. Jane is sensible but a bit wimpy, and Bob is, perhaps, a bit mean.

    Perhaps you’re thinking that’s not bad. Anyone who’s seen a few crime dramas or suspense/horror films can easily fill in the blanks, right? This scene always plays out the same way.

    But you aren’t writing, I hope, simply to encourage our audiences to cobble together a story out of remembered bits of their late night TV viewing. You want to put them in the car with the quarrelling couple. You want to raise the hairs on the backs of their neck when Jane peers down the shortcut. Maybe you even want to play against their expectations.

    So how do you do that. . . especially if you are still trying to get comfortable with scene writing?

    Step One: Talk it Out. This may seem awkward the first few times you try it, but the simplest, most mechanical approach for getting into scenewriting is to start with dialogue–write it like a script for a radio play.

    Bob: Hey, there’s the shortcut I mentioned.
    Jane: It’s not on the GPS.
    Bob: Come on, I know where I’m going.
    Jane: My experience with shortcuts is they take longer and the roads are worse.
    Bob: Who was going 90 a minute ago? You said being late would be a disaster. Why are we late now? Because you hit the speed trap.
    Jane: Exactly. Haste makes waste. Going off road now, down some. . . there aren’t any lights or signs.
    Bob: Honey, it’s daytime.
    Jane: For now. And look, up there . . .
    Bob: Oh, like there’s never any roadkill on the highway? We should ask the GPS to steer us clear of every squashed gopher between here and–
    Jane: Gopher? That carcass is huge! Whatever it is, it probably would show up on satellite.
    Bob. And it stinks, granted, but if you’d just put it in the rear view…
    Jane: Fine, have it your way!

    My point with the above example isn’t that it has the depth and subtlety of Shakespeare. What the above does have going for it is conflict and immediacy–it is playing out as we read it, in other words. Even without description, dialogue tags or action, it is already more specific than the summary.

    Left with the summary and informed by the tropes of television and cinema, a typical reader will put the man in the driver’s seat and set the stage at twilight or night. Instead, we have a brightly sunlit strip of road with a mangled corpse of some unknown, largish animal on it. What’s more, the woman arguing against the short cut is literally in the driver’s seat. If they take the ‘bad’ fork, the responsibility rests with Jane, not just Bob. For good or ill, just putting words in our characters’ mouths has moved at least a few paces away from standard Hollywood fare.

    Step Two: Flesh it out. Writing just the dialogue for a scene puts the characters onstage and gives you the bones of the conflict; now fill in the rest. This isn’t a radio play, after all, it’s prose fiction. So start with those details that aren’t delivered elegantly in conversation.

    Let’s tweak a couple lines.

    Bob: Oh, like there’s never any roadkill on the highway? We should ask the GPS to steer us clear of every squashed gopher between here and–

    “Gopher?” Jane said. “That carcass is huge! ”

    She was right–in fact, whatever it was was probably big enough to pick up on satellite. A deer? Moose? Bear? Hair and hamburger, warming in the sun, and all of it obscured by a shifting murder of crows. . . Bob cleared his throat. “Let’s make up our minds one way or the other, okay? Whatever it is, the smell’s getting in the car.”

    What have I done here?

    I’ve added dialog tags, correct punctuation, a little description and some sensory details: namely fur, birds and stench. If I was to go through the entire scripted conversation, making the same changes, I’d have transformed this exchange from a summarized bit of action into the fully realized scene it obviously wants to be.

    Make sense? Want to add your own two bits? You know what to do.