Today I want to talk about my favorite part of writing—the setting, and how I use setting in my upcoming YA Southern mystery, The Existence of Bea Pearl, out next Spring from Owl Hollow Press.
To me, setting is a character unto itself. It drives the tone and tension of the story just as much as the walking, talking characters. When I’m brainstorming a shiny new idea, it’s usually the first thing that comes to me. Then the characters, and after much angst and gnashing of teeth, the plot.
Let’s start with the basics. Setting is two of the Five W’s: where and when. Place and time. It’s an element of literature that is introduced at the beginning of the story. Setting may be comprised of physical location, climate, cultural surroundings, time of day, time of year, or time period.
The reader needs to know at least one aspect of when and where the story happens to be able to fall into the story’s spell. Otherwise, without that rootedness, the reader can feel unmoored. Grounding the reader helps give the story context. To what degree used depends on genre as a science fiction or fantasy story needs more world-building in the beginning than a contemporary, well-known setting so the reader knows when and where the story takes place.
Here are the opening lines from The Existence of Bea Pearl (subject to change as final edits aren’t complete):
We are a murder of grounded crows, shrouded as we are in our black. The raw, red clay rectangle in the ground fills my vision, shoving out every other color besides shades of gray and black.
Let’s look at the clues: red clay, we’re near a river (physical location); a rectangle in the ground, a funeral (cultural surrounding). We don’t know the character yet but seeing what she sees, a gray world with only the rawness of red, we can guess she’s grieving. So just from the setting, we’re given a little glimpse into her emotional state. And that’s what you want—every description to be intentional so that the setting shows just as much as the characters and storyline. You want all the W’s working together to create a tight story.
How do you create mood and tension using setting? Let your character use their five senses. What does your character see? Hear? Taste? Smell? Touch? What your character notices about the world around them says a lot about their personality. This helps them become more fully-formed and relatable to the reader. Zooming into the details of the setting and having a relatable protagonist means your reader will have a hard time putting down your book. At least, that’s the goal—to make your novel un-put-downable.
In this excerpt, I use my main character’s senses to create mood and tension.
The lightning bugs still dance their tipsy dance to the songs of bullfrogs and cicadas. The moonflowers still make me think of what Heaven must smell like. Even the Big Dipper is in the same spot it always is.
But it’s all wrong.
The coyotes off in the woods know something’s off. Their mournful, lonely howls stir the sadness within me and tears well up in my eyes. I sniffle and wipe them away with the hem of my shirt.
Bea Pearl is struggling with the fact that the world is constant yet continuing to go on without her as she persists in her belief that her brother is still alive. I use her sense of smell (the moonflowers), sight (firefly and star light), and hearing (the bullfrogs, cicadas, and coyote howls) to show the juxtaposition of the world moving on as it always does while she stays rooted in place, unable to pick up the pieces. This immersion of the senses also hopefully draws the reader more fully into the heart of the story.
If you have a scene in your story that feels flat, have your character use their senses to observe the setting in more detail, though make sure it’s intentional to the tone and tension of your story to deepen the reading experience.
A good way to further study this is to pick up your favorite book and type out the first scene. Highlight the where, when, and senses to see how setting balances with the rest of the story. Two novels that do atmosphere awesomely are Ali Standish’s How to Disappear Completely and Erica Waters’ Ghost Wood Song.
