 Fantasy: October 30, 2024 Issue [#12812] |
This week: Creating a Mood or Genre with Setting Edited by: Dawn Embers  
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Fantasy Newsletter by Dawn
Today we take a look at what the character sees in their world, the setting. While over description can become boring or cause a reader to lose interest, the right amount of details can make the story come alive. The setting gives many details to the reader, including creating a mood or giving it elements to fit within the genre. |
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"The value of biodiversity is that it makes our ecosystems more resilient, which is a prerequisite for stable societies; its wanton destruction is akin to setting fire to our lifeboat." - Johan Rockstrom
In the speculative fiction genres, whether writing science fiction, fantasy or anything else, setting can be a difficult task for any writer. We want to show the amazing world with its delicate levels of biodiversity and various ecosystems that hang in precarious balance as the background to the main story. Since it is common to write about some place other than our current locations, it does seem necessary to provide setting details in order to make it easier for the reader to understand the different technologies or use of magic that wouldn't have fit within how we understand out own existence. However, it can also be a challenge to not go too far in the descriptions. It is a very well known fact that some readers have quite reading novels or skipped sections because they found the descriptive nature, often about setting or what they thought might have been about setting, as something too boring to read.
Which means we've got a challenge as a writer. You want to be able to create an image for the reader so they can see the setting of the world in their mind without going into too much detail where the reader doesn't want to continue. One could try to avoid it by keeping things as minimal as possible but that might be selling the story short. Like many other elements such as character and plot, the setting has an important place in writing.
Setting can play a number of different roles. There is the most obvious element in that it gives the characters a place to exist, which is obviously important. However, the setting can also help with other aspects involved in stories. One example is the mood.
Think about horror stories and the use of setting within them. Horror is considered a subgenera of speculative fiction that can include supernatural or fantasy type elements. Description of the setting during any particular scene is helpful in setting the mood, to create the environment for things to get a little spooky. A cemetery at night on a moonless night might have a different feeling than the basement of a castle with cold stone and metal with no lighting other than a few lanterns or torches.
While the importance of the setting does seem obvious, there is still the pesky challenge when it comes to actually writing things. My main advice is that you don't even worry about it in the first draft. Write in a way that feels natural. While I love writing fantasy novels, even when I write 160,000 words I tend to lack description. It's something that I have to develop during rewrites. Other people might go overboard in the details for the first draft while trying to get everything in their head down onto the page. For a first draft, there is nothing wrong with going too little or too much. The goal is just to write. When you start to do the rewrites and edits, that is a little time to consider how much detail is necessary. Having a test reader can be helpful too, if you happen to find one. Either way, take some time during the writing process to consider how you describe the setting and what mood it helps to create.
Have fun and keep writing!
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How do you approach showing the setting of a story to your audience?
As a little challenge, whether you are writing NaNo or not, take a little time to write a 500 word scene that describes a setting. You can pick the setting that you already have picked out for a story. If you want a different challenge, check out a setting generator. Take one option and put some details into the scene. Do you overwrite details or underwrite? Let's find out.
https://www.languageisavirus.com/setting-generator/
https://writingexercises.co.uk/create-a-setting.php
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