This week: Writing What Readers Don't Skip Edited by: Max Griffin 🏳️🌈  
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In my last newsletter, I asked for readers to give me input on future topics. The leading vote-getter was, "How to write setting so that it doesn't interrupt the story." So, this newsletter is in response to reader input. |
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Authors build fictional worlds. This is more obvious in some genres than others, science fiction and fantasy being the two most obvious. But even a modern-day, urban romance must bring to life the world in which the characters live.
Fictional worlds can include multiple elements. There’s the natural environment, for example: plants, animals, landscape, and even weather. Then there’s the built environment, including structures, roads, parks and parking lots. Of course, the characters live in a cultural and social world that the author must bring to life on the page.
These bits are structural elements that support the story. But the story itself is more than just plot. Hitchcock reminded us that the audience—or readers, in the case of fiction authors—cares about the characters. The plot, he continued, is there to give the characters something to care about.
The way that we learn about the plot is through the words and deeds of the characters. The characters have goals. Bad things happen if they fail to achieve those goals—those are the stakes. The characters face obstacles in achieving their goals, which gives rise to conflict. The outcome of the conflict matters because of the stakes, hence the story has tension.
The fictional world is where the tension takes place. Building on Hitchcock’s observation, readers care about the characters, and the fictional world is where the characters live. We should show the fictional world in the same way that we reveal the plot: through the words and deeds of our characters. In the case of the point-of-view character, we can add sensations and thoughts to the list.
Elmore Leonard tells us to “try to leave out the parts that readers tend to skip.” Vonnegut tells us that “every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.” So, how can setting, for example, meet these two criteria?
It’s easy to think of the setting as a passive part of the story, the background of the fictional events that transpire in a scene or story. All stories have background, of course. But if we narrate the background in an info-dump, it stops the story. Readers will skip it, even if the description is essential to understanding the character or the plot. Readers are there for fiction, not Wikipedia.
But the setting isn’t a passive part of the story. The “setting” is where you live. You interact with your environment all the time, whether you think about it or not. There’s the comfortable aroma of morning coffee brewing, or the brush of your cat against your ankles while he purrs for food. There’s the chill of morning frost prickling your cheeks, or the chitter evening crickets. There’s your immaculate, mid-century modern living room, or your messy kitchen with the sink piled high with a week’s worth of dirty dishes. Notice each of these implicitly interact with your characters or reveal things about the character, so they also meet Vonnegut’s rule.
It’s important, then, to think of setting as an active rather than passive part of the story. If your characters respond to or interact with the setting, it’s active. Similarly, setting can reveal things about your characters, either through what they notice, how how they react, or how they created the setting, as in the spotless living room or the messy kitchen.
Examples are always better than exposition, so let’s conclude with a simple example. Suppose that Jill is waiting in her run-down kitchen for her husband Jack to come home. She’s mad that her coffee is stale, mad that it’s 2AM, and mad that the overhead light flickers. She’s especially mad that her husband Jack isn’t home yet and she thinks he’s been two-timing her with another woman. The problem is to set this scene without falling into an info-dump.
We could start with something like this.
Jill sat in her kitchen at a decrepit table drinking too-cold coffee. The room was a faded pale yellow, and the puce-colored linoleum floor needed wax. Gauze curtains hung on the window at her left, and the oak door to the outside was closed. Jill was wearing a loose-fitting, floral moo-moo and fuzzy pink bunny slippers. A spider's web hung in in one corner, and the fluorescent overhead light flickered. Jill was angry.
This gives us a lot of information about the kitchen. It’s easy to imagine a movie where camera pans over the room, revealing these little details. In a movie, the camera provides the point of view so that pan works. But in written fiction, a character, in this case Jill, provides the point of view. She’s passively sitting there, angry about something, but not otherwise thinking about her somewhat seedy kitchen. In some ways, there are too many details here. The reader can fill in things like the colors, but needs some clues about the broader picture. Most importantly, the setting needs to be part of the story—something Jill acts on and reacts to.
Here goes with a possible revision.
Jill took a sip of her coffee and grimaced. Bitter and cold.
The clock on the microwave flashed 2:06. Way past time for her husband, Jack, to come home. The fluorescent overhead light flickered, and she glared at it. Her two-timing husband apparently had time for his floozy, but not to change the blasted bulb. She stomped across the room to dump her coffee in the sink. Her pink bunny slippers caught in a crack in the cheap linoleum floor, and she muttered a curse. Something else Jack had promised and failed to fix. She tugged at the loose-fitting moo-moo nightgown he’d given her two Christmases ago. Cheap and tasteless, but it was all she had.
Jack hadn't bothered to answer her text messages. Maybe he'd been in an accident. A smile bent her lips. Maybe he was dead.
Jill shivered and retrieved a dishcloth from the clutter of dirty pots and pans piled in the sink and used it to scrub dried-up catsup and other debris left over from dinner on the kitchen table. She considered taking a swipe at the spider’s web over the door, but pulling out a chair and standing on it was more effort than she could tolerate. Besides, what difference would it make? Jack would never notice.
The clock flashed 2:07.
Not perfect, to be sure, but there are some elements to notice. First, we establish Jill’s point of view with the coffee. We do this before all else, so we know who is in the room and sensing all the descriptions that follows. Her reaction to the coffee is also a metaphor for Jill’s emotional state.
Next the clock flashes, and we know she sees it because she reacts by thinking it’s time for her husband to return. Notice this bit and her reaction advances plot. Similarly, the broken linoleum is part of the setting, but it’s active, too, and her reaction again advances plot. Next, character comes in, both Jack’s and Jills, via the moo-moo. Her nightgown is both a tacky prop for her to tug on and adds knowledge about their relationship.
Finally, we learn the kitchen is messy, with spills on the table, pots and pans in the sink, and a spider’s web over the door. These suggest an unkempt household that serves as a metaphor for the Jill’s marriage. We end with the clock flashing again, an advancing clock being a device to add some tension to the scene.
Notice some details get dropped, like the colors or the gauze curtains. These could readily be added in or replace things that we did include. The point is to make them active parts of the scene and to use them to advance plot and/or character.
We never explicitly tell the reader that Jill is angry. We don’t have too because it’s clear from her thoughts and actions. The setting—the kitchen with cracked linoleum, a spider’s web, a flickering light, dirty dishes and table, all serve as metaphors for the underlying story of a marriage that’s also in a mess. They not only provide the physical setting, but the way Jill interacts with them provide the emotional subtext. Whatever ensues, these are inescapably parts of the fictional world, parts of the story.
For a complete opening, we need at least a suggestion of Jill's goals. When she smiles after thinking her husband might be dead, we get that, and a hint of where the plot might be headed.
However, this little essay is about using setting to advance story and character, not about the perfect opening. Make the setting an active part of the story, something that the characters react to, and you’ve taken the first step at weaving the setting into the story. Thinking of elements of the setting as metaphors for other parts of the story—like the coffee or the messy kitchen above—also help blend setting into story. Adding emotional energy to the setting can make it more compelling, too, and something readers are unlikely to skip.
The basic principles are, as usual, easy: show, don’t tell. Be active, not passive. Use the words, deeds, and thoughts of your characters to reveal story elements. Simple, yes. But hard to do in practice. It’s well worth the effort, though. After all, you don’t want readers skipping parts of your story!
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