Tag: novel settings

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Writing for YA

Details, Details: How to Write a Rich Setting for Your Story

It’s incredibly exciting to have a new story idea. The characters develop in our mind and seem to be itching to plunge right in and share their story. All the important parts of the setting are complete in our imagination and will flow onto the page. After all, the setting is simply the stuff surrounding the characters. All the author has to do is establish a time and a place.

Sounds simple, right?

It’s not always so.

As writers, we are often immersed in our own story world before we create it. We take familiar elements and weave them in, using past experiences to provide a backdrop for novels.

Because we’re so familiar with certain environments, we risk making the unconscious assumption that our reader knows exactly what we’re talking about. We forget to add little details that bring the story world to life for readers who may not have previous knowledge of our chosen setting.

This can be a particular challenge for authors of young adult fiction, because it’s tempting to skip over details for the sake of word count, but without a firm setting readers can’t get oriented.

Put It On the Page

Make sure there is enough description and detail of the surroundings, the clothing, and the items in your setting to evoke a sense of time and place. Just not so much that the reader will become bogged down and lose interest. At the same time, give enough of the necessary descriptions, pertinent details, and explanations to ground the reader firmly in the story world.

I told you it wasn’t as simple as it sounds!

Why Time Markers Aren’t Enough

Often in novels, a date is indicated at the beginning of a chapter. This is a good starting place to help orient your reader, but the author needs to go a little bit further. Readers expect an immersive experience that walks them through the story, and unless a date has events attached to it, it can be quickly forgotten.

Unfamiliar Settings

Sometimes a story comes into being in a setting completely new to the author. If the region, country, or environment is one the writer isn’t familiar with, it’s best to do the required research, and then have fact checkers go over your manuscript for inaccuracies, both large and small.

Many readers won’t like stories that play fast and loose with inaccuracies vital to the plot of a story, but even little things can be an issue, such as having a species of trees growing in an area that they would never grow, using figures of speech incorrectly, not understanding the customs of the culture, and so on.

Dialogue as Part of Setting

Use dialogue and sayings consistent with the time or the region where your story is set, but without going overboard! Nothing screams “I don’t know what I’m talking about” as much as misused dialogue and obvious mistakes with commonly known details of the region.

Vocabulary

Language is constantly changing. Along with dialogue and how your characters speak, the author’s word choices help establish setting. Words like “ridicule” and “rotund” evoke certain eras, and probably wouldn’t find their way into contemporary, but would be perfect for a story set in the 1800s. The opposite is true. Contemporary vocabulary shouldn’t show up in historical fiction.

As always, there are exceptions. For instance, unusual word choices can work for a quirky character.

Update Your Info

An author may have the utmost confidence they understand their setting. Perhaps their novel is set in another country, and they have lived in that country. Personal experience lends authenticity to the narrative, but make sure you’re working with updated information. In certain settings and fields, things change quickly.

Start With Research

Misplaced details stick out like a sore thumb. The easiest way to ferret out these types of mistakes before they end up in a published book is to get a few readers who can fact check for you. That’s not to say that fact checkers are a substitution for research. Fact checkers are your last line of defense, and like proofreading, they may not catch everything, especially if the gaffes are excessive.

So how much setting detail does a story need?

Whatever it takes to keep the reader grounded, interested, and reading!

Donna Jo Stone writes YA contemporary novels about tough issues but always ends the stories with a note of hope. She blogs at donnajostone.com.

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Guest Posts

7 Tips on Describing Surroundings in Your Novel

Guest posts

The story setting in literature describes the where and when of a character and action. The setting of a story establishes the fictional environment built in the reader’s mind while they read the novel. However, it is not easy to flesh out or describe your setting.

As a novel writer, it’s tempting to want to go straight to the plot and describe your character in detail. However, your story and the character news need to coexist within a space – the story’s setting. Being able to describe your story setting correctly adds vibrancy to your love and keeps the audience engaged.

Learning to describe the surroundings and setting of a story is, therefore, an essential skill that authors need to have. The descriptive words that you use are capable of showing character, mood, and appearance. A well-described setting will draw the readers in and keep their rapt attention inside the scene.

A good setting uses different elements to create a picture that’s clear in the readers’ minds. It also provides a good background for character and plot development. It is the framework for different narrative elements to come into play.

How to write a good setting or describe the surroundings in a novel?

With an understanding of what a good setting is and its role in writing a novel, we will now discuss how to write one.

In writing your setting, you’re descriptive, so you will use descriptive words that you can combine in different ways to create the vision for your story’s environment. However, there are several tips that you should use to make it more descriptive without boring your audience.

  1. Start early

You shouldn’t go too deep into your story without describing the setting. It would be best if you did it from the very beginning of the scene. Once you launch into the scene without describing the setting, it becomes too late when you need to do it later on in the action. You would have lost your readers at that point already. If you don’t describe the environment from the start, you will have characters talking and acting in space, and it becomes difficult to place it later on.

  1. Include specific details

In describing your setting, it’s not enough to start early: you need to be specific in your description. Using generic words will fail to engage the readers, and you will end up with a bland and unfocused description of your setting.

Including specific details adds some spice to the setting, makes it more exciting for the readers to flow along with, and helps you create a unique fictional environment.

  1. Incorporate sensory details

Your description will be more effective if you are able to use sensory details. You must be able to use the five senses when describing the environment or settings to your readers. This will help them to become more immersed in the fictional environment that you’ve created. Those seemingly small details about the smell of the wood in the old house, the chirping sound of the crickets at night, etc., all go a long way in making your setting more exciting and immersive for your readers. This will make it more straightforward for them and open them to the plot you’re building within the setting.

  1. Build your description with the story

Building on your descriptions gradually gives you more descriptive power. You can’t and shouldn’t take a whole page to describe the background. A paragraph is enough to introduce the setting and give the readers an idea of where they are, and then continue to build the story’s description.

If you mention that the character was outside a building that looks abandoned, don’t forget to build on that with more abandonment signs once they walk into the building. The setting description doesn’t stop at the start of the scene: you carry it along as you build the story in that scene.

  1. Show the setting, don’t just say it.

You have to do more than list off the description for the readers. You must show it to them. If the characters are in a hostile environment, make the readers see how the environment interacts with them. Be more descriptive. If the set includes a factory, show how the factory affects the environment. Show how it smells, the gas it emits, how it makes the sky look, etc. Rather than say there’s a factory around, show how it affects the story and its relevance in the setting. Or even better, show your setting through the viewpoint of your characters!

  1. Get inspiration from a real setting.

If you are looking for inspiration to describe your fictional setting, then you should look at the nonfictional world around you. You’re trying to describe an old church in your novel; while it might not be the same as the old church down your street, you should take a stroll to the church. You’re likely to see things in real-life locations that could trigger ideas and give you inspiration for your fictional environment. It’s the same way that you draw the behavior of your character from examples in real life. You can get inspiration from places that you visit in real life, too.

  1. Select the details to describe

One thing about describing a setting is that there are more things that you would not mention than the ones you’ll tell. Don’t be tempted to mention every detail. Be selective about what you share. Describe only details that are relevant to the story or help make the setting clearer. You could give accurate descriptions while sharing many unnecessary details. Being accurate doesn’t make it necessary or exciting. You could end up with a very bland description of the setting that doesn’t win over the readers. The fact is, your readers don’t care about the information. They want the mood and the atmosphere.

Conclusion

Writing a good setting description is essential to creating the story, plot, and character within that scene. So if your setting description is bland, it will affect the story that you are creating altogether. It also determines if the readers go on with reading the novel or they close the book. So knowing how to write your setting is of utmost importance as an author.

Leon Collier is a blogger from the UK, and assignment writer at dissertation service the UK. He loves to write about everything: pop-culture, history, travel, self-development, education, and marketing. When not writing, you can find him behind a book or playing tabletop games with his friends. Follow him on Twitter @LeonCollier12.

Categories
Storyworld

War of Worldcraft: Two approaches to World Creation

So you want to create a storyworld, eh? Well, it took God six days to complete the one you’re living in, so don’t expect to make yours in one day. Worlds are complicated things, and in order to make one believable, you’ll need to take into consideration a whole host of things from politics to geography. But first, let’s approach the philosophy of world creation. There are two extremes, but most authors approach the task with a little give and take from both.

[bctt tweet=”So you want to create a world, eh? #storyworld #scifi” via=”no”]

From the story, arises the world…

In this approach, you start with a story idea and create the world as the story progresses. You haven’t mapped out the flora or fauna and you may have no idea what the planet’s political structure looks like, but you’ll figure everything out as you write. The principle advantage to this method is speed. Specifically, you can start writing immediately and fill in details later as you figure them out.

But before you get started, you’ll need at least a general idea of the storyworld’s outlook. Even something simple like knowing your universe is similar to Star Wars, or that magic and technology are used like Final Fantasy VII, that can help a lot. You can’t copy the intellectual property, but a general idea can help.

A word of caution: when you use this process, you MUST go back and examine your manuscript for consistency. If you flippantly mention the protagonist grew up climbing trees, you can’t later say his hometown was a desert. Similarly, if you realize midway into your book that you’d like to populate the earth with elves or cyborgs (or cyborg elves, whatever), you’re going to have to go back and add details to that effect earlier in the novel unless you intend to completely catch the reader off guard.

From the world, arises the story…

With this style, you design maps, ideologies, technology, and fantastic creatures early. Your characters are crafted within the realm of this fictitious land, and as a result, they feel genuine. Why? Because their motivations are drawn from the rich history you’ve created. In fact, the main advantage to this method is that the world will feel alive, because you’ve already considered how its inhabitants fare in their daily routines.

One problem I’ve seen with this approach is when a proud author frontloads his manuscript with world-details instead of the actual story. It’s understandable, right? I mean he’s created an entire ecosystem in his head. But the result is a lengthy prologue that belongs in a reference manual for a roleplaying game. Boring! Instead, display the richness of your universe in the way your characters interact with it. Subtlety is the key.

The other drawback is “analysis paralysis.” If you worry too much about the way your world will hold together, you may never get around to actually writing your story. If you want to be an author, you know you eventually have to write a book, right?

[bctt tweet=”If you want to be an author, you know you eventually have to write a book, right? #author #writer” via=”no”]

Finding middle ground…

As I said, most authors approach world creation with a hybrid of the two methods. As they write a couple chapters, their heads are filled with ideas for international drama. As that grand-scale conflict solidifies, new incentives are born into their characters. And so it goes. Most importantly, understand the advantages and disadvantages of the two philosophies and pick a method that works for you.

 

Categories
Storyworld

Acquiring Things of Value

ThingsOfValue
Acquiring Things of Value

When writing a speculative fiction novel, determine what the things of value are in your world. Water, food, shelter-building resources, fuel: these are essential to survival and can create primal conflicts in a story. Sometimes wars are fought over precious metals and rare elements with powerful properties either for magic or technology. Maybe your characters aren’t directly involved in your storyworld’s economy, but they’ll definitely feel its effects somehow.

goldbars

If precious commodities have anything in common, it’s that they are rare. Additionally, there are only five ways to acquire them: force, theft, trade, harvesting, or begging. The things of valuable in your novel, as well as the manner in which your characters (and their authorities) acquire them, will shape your fictitious world. Here are a handful of examples from various works of fiction.

Frank Herbert’s Dune portrays the relative need of two different substances, one native to the desert planet of Arrakis, the other quite rare. The rare commodity, water, was used as a form of currency, despite also being a necessary consumable. On the flip side, Arrakis’s primary export was its spice, an addictive drug used for its life-extending and prescience-granting purposes. Interstellar trades (and wars) were made to ensure the exchange of these two commodities, and such is the socio-economic and political stage for the epic saga in Dune.

The TV show Firefly also showed an interesting perspective on things of value. In the opening scene of the first episode, a crew of space pirates scavenge what looks to be a crate of precious metals from a derelict vessel. The entire episode leads you to believe that what Mal and his crew have stolen is something of incredible value. But by the show’s end, you discover the blocks of gold are essentially just foil-wrapped Powerbars. This causes some confusion until you realize just how desperate the border worlds are for food. Nevertheless, we get a glimpse of how the border folk survive – namely by trade and theft.

moonSimilarly, Robert Heinlein’s book, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, briefly alludes to the commodity of air and the complicated manner in which colonists pay for that utility on a lunar base. Certainly not something we think of here on earth, where the air is free.

In these three examples, water, food, and air are all valuable commodities, despite each being common on earth. On the other hand, the fictional resource in the preceding examples, Dune’s “spice,” is unique and fundamental to Herbert’s amazing world – it literally wouldn’t function without it. If you’re writing a speculative fiction novel, what sort of unique resource needs exist in your storyworld? If you’ve read something with some interesting things of value or ways of obtaining them, consider leaving a comment below so you can pique the imaginations of fellow authors.

Categories
Storyworld

Food for your Storyworld

Food for your Storyworld
Even Heroes need to Eat

Regardless how fantastic the setting, the people in your book must treat their environment as commonplace. A character who regularly interacts with something will spend little thought on (and the author should spend little time describing) its method of operation. This is true whether writing about food or magic. But how do you describe the common occurrences of a believable system? It’s best done with sparse descriptions of characters interacting with their world, but to write convincingly, you need to think things through. To get your creative juices flowing, let’s look at the energy that fuels your characters.

No, not their motivations, their breakfast.

Food Production

Unless your world breaks the laws of mass conservation (such as a cleric’s “Create Food” spell or the Enterprise’s replicator), your protagonist’s lunch came from somewhere. If survival isn’t one of your story’s tension hooks, you don’t need to describe the origin of each meal, but in a long enough adventure, your reader may wonder where the lone hero gets his food, and you’ll need to consider it as well.

greenhouse

In our world, all food can be traced back to plants, which require soil, sun, water, and carbon dioxide. This obviously applies to vegetables, fruits, and grains, but grasses inedible to humans are the sustenance of livestock, and from them we get a myriad of consumables. In fact, animal feed can often grow in climates hostile to farming, which is why residents of colder regions historically had more meat in their diets.

Other hostile climates, such as a post-apocalyptic future, may have a similar increase in dietary protein, or they may rely on food production and preservation of ages past (until it runs out!). Alternatively, space stations may house hydroponics facilities, or elven crop growth may depend on the blessings of the local druid. Nevertheless, before food is eaten, it must first be produced.

Food Preservation

spamUnless your protagonists are survivalist hunters or part of the agricultural industry, the food they bring on their adventures must be stored. Portable storage falls into five main categories: canned, frozen, dried, pickled, and salted. Even a high-tech future will have some variation of these methods (e.g. cryo-frozen meats, canned nutrient-paste, etc.).

Preservation only delays the process of rotting as long as possible, but decay is inevitable. You can’t have a character wake from stasis a million years after humanity’s destruction and have her forage for canned food, because by then it will all have spoiled. Exceptions are made for Spam and Christmas fruitcake.

Food Preparation

Anyone who has eaten Cheerios in the car knows not all food needs preparation, but a good meal requires heat. Why? Partly because warm food is pleasant (ever tried cold French fries?), but also because higher temperatures kill harmful bacteria (ranging from 140F for rare beef to 180F for poultry).

microwaveBut no matter how bizarre your world’s heating methods are, your characters won’t think twice about them. Suppose you were an author writing about food two hundred years ago and conceived of a “Microwave Oven.” Should the microwave’s operator need to consider the details of particle physics and wavelengths? Not if you wanted to describe the way we typically use it. Even those who understand microwave technology seldom consider it when they put their leftovers in and walk away. The denizens of your creation should similarly spend little time thinking about something so common, even if it would be unimaginable to those living in a different world or time.

In a fantasy setting, maybe fire sprites heat your villagers’ meals in exchange for precious stones, but don’t revel in the occurrence if it’s commonplace. Or consider a future in which all single-use rations have a self-heating mechanism, making them especially useful on the galactic frontier. At any rate, a method of heating must be considered unless your people eat all their food cold (which limits the kinds of food that can be eaten).

 

Food Disposal

trashcan

Disposal of waste is not of great concern unless your characters inhabit a world of extremely limited resources. Some examples are desert worlds, post-apocalyptic settings, or space stations (Hugh Howey’s Wool Omnibus come to mind). For the most part though, trash isn’t noteworthy. Even a short-range starship will probably jettison its refuse.

 

When writing about food, you don’t need to spell out every detail, but you should ponder how and what your characters are eating. A genuine environment will connect with the reader because it feels like you’ve considered how people survive in it, and food is very much a part of daily survival.

Much of this information comes from my own 2,500 square foot garden and from The Encyclopedia of Country Living, a 900+ page tome by Carla Emery that details everything our agrarian ancestors did.

Categories
Storyworld

Storyworld Governance: A Necessary Evil

Governance
Good Governance

The people in your world need governance. I’m sorry. I wish I could make it untrue, but a believable ruling system exists in virtually every fantastic world. The elven child in your young adult novel will eventually run into an elder or deputy. The four-man crew of an isolated space station will require a leadership structure. And even the lone hero occasionally needs to visit civilization to stock up on supplies.

So how do you craft a government? First of all, don’t get too overwhelmed, since you can craft it as you go as I wrote a few months ago. But the first principle to remember is this: Governments exist to ensure the interests of the governing bodies, not the governed. This has been true throughout all of human history.

[bctt tweet=” Governments exist to ensure the interests of the governing bodies, not the governed. #sadbuttrue #amwriting” via=”no”]

Good Governance – A rarity of the modern era

If you’re allowed to read this website and have the freedom to even consider writing a book, you may think my statement is overreaching. After all, you’ve been taught that governments exist to secure the rights of the governed, right?

Wrong.

In most western countries, we are privileged with brilliantly crafted documents called constitutions. In essence, they limit the power of politicians and hold them accountable to the people on a regular basis. Rulers continue to act in self-interest, but those interests (namely, power) rely on popularity and benevolence. In other words, good governments constrain the self-interest of the ruler to the well-being of the public.

[bctt tweet=”Good governments constrain the self-interest of the ruler to the well-being of the public #wisdom #takeitforgranted” via=”no”]

So if you want to create a realistic and stable society, or if you want a world in which the government plays little role in the daily lives of your characters, your fictitious country will need something to limit the power of those in charge. This doesn’t mean you need to go into details about the nation’s founding documents. In fact, if it isn’t relevant to the story, please don’t! But keep it in mind as you craft your world, because eventually your characters will interact with the laws of the land.

Note: A small group of people (e.g. a settlement, a space station) can sometimes get around this formalized power-limitation because the man in charge has a much more visceral threat before him. Specifically, if he doesn’t allow others to do their job well, his own living conditions worsen. Plus if he overextends his power, the populace may just kill him off, so good governance remains in his best interest.

Declining Governance – A violent transition

On a long enough timeline, even the best republic will eventually be found in the hands of a power-hungry zealot with enough popularity to bypass normal rules. You see this in Rome’s transition from republic to empire, Germany’s Third Reich, and of course, the end of the Republic in Star Wars.

The other option is complete economic collapse due to decadence and ignorance. Asimov’s famous Foundation trilogy shows this in sad detail, but it was seen earlier when the Roman Empire imploded from financial and military strains.

If your storyworld persists long enough, remember this other principle: no government lasts forever.

[bctt tweet=”No government lasts forever #whatarelief #scary” via=”no”]

Generally Speaking

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, don’t worry too much. Regardless of the setting, most western readers assume a western culture, 20th century rule of governance unless you say otherwise. Taxes are mandatory, theft and murder are prohibited, and the average citizen can expect a degree of protection from powers foreign and domestic. If this is not the case in your world, chances are likely you’ve already given governance a great deal of thought because it plays a larger role in your story. We’ll look at that more in detail next time.

 

Categories
Storyworld

Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy: Alien Nature

Atheists believe all creatures evolved over countless millennia of bloodshed, allowing only the fittest members of a species to breed. They therefore imagine all sentient life with the same violent nature as humanity, and the same basic need for governance.

But the writer of Christian science fiction and fantasy has a unique perspective on mankind, and therefore also a unique way to imagine inhuman races. That comes from a biblical understanding of the nature of man.

But the first question the Christian needs to ask when writing a work of Christian science fiction or fantasy is this: Does your world even take place in our universe? If so, you have to take certain things into account. Specifically …

[bctt tweet=”Does your world even take place in our universe? #storyworld #scifi #fantasy” via=”no”]

God is in charge and has a purpose

If the God we know from the Bible exists in your fiction, then we know certain things are true. Specifically: God created man intentionally (not accidentally) to have a relationship with him, man rebelled against God, and God allows man to be forgiven.

Understanding these fundamental aspects of humanity will guide you when writing about non-humans in a biblical universe. Why? Because although God gave all creatures a purpose, an alien’s purpose may be very different from our own. Maybe God didn’t create the space-fairies to worship him, but to punish humanity. Scary thought, but it wouldn’t be unprecedented based on the way He used Cyrus in Isaiah’s prophecies.

God so loved [humans] that he gave his only begotten son

Sin and redemption are so intrinsic to humanity that we forget that mankind may be unique in this regard. But have aliens even rebelled against God like humans? Perhaps they had a test like the one in Eden but passed. Obviously their relationship with the Lord would look very different. A great pair of novels that deal with this theoretical issue are Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra, both Christian science fiction novels by C.S. Lewis.

[bctt tweet=”have aliens even rebelled against God like humans? #storyworld #scifi” via=”no”]

Even if aliens did fall from grace, redemption may look different. God chose a very awesome way to reconcile man to himself, but a different method could be employed to bring otherworldly people to himself. For example, Ted Dekker’s Circle series (Quadrilogy?) had an unusual redemption story for the characters in his alternate reality/ future/ past/ whatever it was.

A sad possibility is that there is no hope for redemption for an alien race. It sounds cruel, but we know of one sentient alien species in our own reality that has fallen members with no hope for salvation. No, not the Rock People from the Noah Movie. Sigh. Angels and Demons. Angels were created for purposes similar to man’s (worshipping God), but somewhere along the line, a third of the angels rebelled against God (just like Adam rebelled). To our knowledge though, their species has not been offered forgiveness. The mercy He grants humanity gives us a unique and humbling position.

 

Before I completely overwhelm you, not all sci-fi and fantasy needs to have aliens or other species. Examples: The Battletech series by Michael A. Stackpole and others, Joss Whedon’s Firefly (ok it’s a TV show, not a book), and Isaac Asimov’s Foundation. But if you’re writing Christian science fiction in our biblical universe and describing fictitious species , you’ll need to consider which aspects of man’s story are unique and which aren’t. Maybe heaven in your book will contain many different species, or maybe not. You don’t have to describe this heavenly display, but you should keep it in mind as an end-goal for your protagonists. At any rate, God’s eternal plan is of supreme importance in human lives, so it at least bears consideration for nonhumans. And a better understanding of humanity’s own (possibly) unique story will help you craft your own.