In my recent post about setting and how you should treat it like a character in order to have it count as part of a scene, someone asked if I could explain how to work such setting into the story. I figured that was a good way to follow up the series about scenes, so here are some thoughts. I will not claim that this is anything other than a discussion, since there are thousands of ways to work things into the story in a natural way. So don’t treat this as the see-all, end-all way of doing such things. But here are some things to avoid, and some things that I find work well for me.
How Did We Get Here?
Setting is not only a place, but should be treated as a character as well, especially for science fiction and fantasy, when you are dealing with a strange, new world. But a reader asked the following question: How do you work that setting into the scene?
It’s a great question, one that I’ve thought about for the last week. It’s also a hard question to answer, because there is no one hard and fast rule for how to do this. And there is no one way that will work for everyone. I personally write my scene with setting in mind from the get-go, and generally know the setting without much work on my part. But I know of other writers who specifically leave the setting out of the first draft and then in the revisions go back and work that setting in. They sometimes leave notes about things that need to be included in the setting during the first draft, but the fine-tuning isn’t done until after the book is finished. So it’s personal. You have to figure out how to work the setting in effectively for yourself.
So for this post, I’m going to explain some techniques that I use and one thing in particular to avoid. I suggest you try a few of these, and see if they work for you. They might not. But if they do, great!
First, the one thing you must avoid at all costs: the infodump. This happens a lot in fantasy and science fiction because the writer needs to introduce the reader to a ton of information about the new world as quickly as possible so that everyone has a frame of reference for what the characters are doing and why. We need to know where the character live in order to understand why they behave the way that they do. And in frustration, the writer usually falls into the trap of dumping all of that info on the reader in one long paragraph (or a string of long paragraphs) of pure exposition. Pure BORING exposition. Now, some people *coughTomClancycough* can get away with this. But in general, it will kill your book. Because the reader generally isn’t interested in that kind of thing. They want the story. They want to see the characters and get involved. An infodump does not involve the characters or the reader in anything. But you still need to get that info across.
One of the common misconceptions/mistakes writers make is that they think they have to get all the information across RIGHT AWAY. That’s not true. You’re writing a novel. There are literally hundreds of pages you can use, thousands upon thousands of words, where you can slip in the needed information. So don’t feel that you have to deal with the entire world setup in the first 5 pages. You don’t. In fact, you should restrict the information you impart to only that which is necessary for the current scene, or necessary for setup for a future (but relatively close) future scene. In fact, you should restrict your info to only the material that the current POV character would actually know at that point. If your character is living in the slums of the city (let’s say), she’s not going to know that there are 5 major port cities along the coast, that the southern cities trade in wine and olive oil and spices, while the northern cities deal in grain and wool. She’s not going to know that the farthest city to the south is thinking about breaking the ties with the coast and allying themselves with the island nation in the southern ocean. She’s in the slums! She doesn’t care! All she’s concerned about is her immediate surroundings, how she’s going to survive, what she’s going to eat. So none of that should be included in your settings UNLESS it’s going to be important for later on in the story for this character. So focus on the character. Only give us what’s important for that character and/or plot at that particular time. It’s great that you know all of that extra information about your world, because it’s what gives your world its life, but it isn’t necessary at the moment, so leave it out. Work it in when and IF it becomes necessary for that character or the plot at that point.
OK, so now you know what not to do and what to leave out when it comes to setting. How do you work in what’s necessary? I use a few techniques. But after thinking about all of the techniques, I realized they all have one thing in common: I always have my character INTERACTING with the world. I almost never have my characters just standing around looking at things and describing them. That’s boring. Remember, the reader and characters are there to DO something. So in all of these techniques, you’ll notice that my characters are interacting with the setting in some way, and that’s how I work the setting into the scene. I describe the setting as the characters interact with it. In this way, I get the setting across without any blanket descriptions and/or infodumping.
The obvious thing to do in each scene is to start with a description of where the characters are. This is what most writers do in the beginning, because we all feel like we need to be placed somewhere. We like the idea of being in a solid setting first, before the action takes place. It makes us comfortable. BUT, it’s also boring. And usually it’s a weak way to begin the scene. You want a strong beginning and a strong end to every scene. I start many scene with a description of setting, but I try to do it by having the character interact with the scene in some small, subtle way. For example, here’s the beginning of The Vacant Throne, the third book in my series:
I stood in the middle of a field of wheat, the bristly heads of grain pattering against my outstretched hands. The breeze that rippled through the stalks tugged at my hair, at the folds of my sweat-stained shirt. In the moment before dawn, the world was quiet, expectant.
Then, far ahead over the fields, near the road that snaked down from the city of Venitte into the hills, a flare of light lit the darkness. Harsh and orange, the fire arched up into the sky and I felt a tug of grief, a pain that bit deeper every time I felt it, still new and raw and fresh. It twisted in my chest, burned at the edges of my eyes, but I clenched my jaw as I watched the fire crest, begin a long descent, fall down and down—
And explode amongst the trunks of olive trees. In the burst of light when it struck I saw an army marching through the fields. A moment later I heard screams, faint with distance.
I placed my character in the middle of the setting, had him actually TOUCH the grain. This makes the setting more active and real. I could have simply said he was in a field, waiting for the beginning of the attack. And when the attack starts, he doesn’t just stand there and watch it, he has an emotional reaction to it. Again, he is interacting with the setting itself. He isn’t part of it yet in any real sense, but he still acts and reacts to it.
Another standard technique is to do the opposite: start the scene immediately with dialogue or action, and then work the setting in as you go. This has the advantage that the scene starts or active and strong, dragging the reader into the story willing or not. I use this technique a lot. The problem is that you do have to place the action in a setting rather quickly, so you need to work the setting in rather fast near the beginning somehow. And when you work that setting in, it tends to slow down the action that you’ve just started. In this case, think of the setting as a “breather” for the reader. Basically you’ve just punched them in the stomach with the action and the placement of the setting is giving them a short time to recover from that punch. But that’s all it should be: a short moment for them to recover. Don’t drag the setting out too long, because then you’ve deflated the action and ruined that strong beginning you were going for. Here’s another example from The Vacant Throne:
“No, no! Take the reusable stone over there. The rest pile up on the side street so that we can cart it off later.” Avrell shook his head, one hand on his hip. The other arm was tied up in a sling across his chest, his shoulder hurt during the attack on the walls. The First of the Mistress, Avrell oversaw the administrative details of Amenkor, which included its rebuilding.
He turned as he heard my escort’s approach, his posture stiffening, becoming more formal as he raised one eyebrow in question. He would have folded his hands inside the sleeves of his dark blue robes if he could have, but the sling wouldn’t allow it. “Mistress? How may I help you?”
“Actually,” I said, “I came to help you.” I reached down and picked up a chunk of shattered stone, what had once been part of the outermost wall of the palace. We stood where the gates had held the Chorl at bay . . . for approximately ten minutes. Weighing the stone in one hand, I glanced around at the jagged edges of the wall to either side, at the debris that lay in a fan spread outwards from where we stood into the outer ward. I could see how much force had been behind the explosion in the pattern of stone, could see where the stone arch over the gates had collapsed in upon itself once the wall had been breached. Buildings to either side of the wide street leading up to the palace had been shattered in the blast, walls caved in, windows and doors nothing but gaping, empty holes. One entire building had sagged inwards, on the verge of imploding. It reminded me of the Dredge. Except this damage was new, fresh. The pall of dust still hung in the air, the broken stone sharp with edges. On the Dredge, everything would have been coated with the slick ruin of age, would have reeked of decay, would be worn smooth with defeat.
A narrow corridor had been cleared through the debris immediately after the attack, to allow access between the city and the palace, but other than that, everything lay where it had fallen.
The dialogue drags you into the scene. I actually start introducing the setting IN the dialogue. Only after I’ve started the action do I get around to a serious description of the setting. And then notice that my characters actually interact with the setting itself: Varis picks up a rock from the pile before she describes where she’s going to put it. I used the setting itself to give me the opportunity to describe the setting. In this particular piece, I’ve also managed to work in some of the back story from the first 2 books (which is another whole post in and of itself: how do you insert the necessary back story without infodumping).
This are the two techniques I use most often to incorporate setting into the scene without being boring. And again, they all boil down to the same thing: get your characters to interact with the setting itself. Don’t just leave the setting static. It’s going to affect the characters in some way, whether that with some type of action (leaning over to pick up a rock; touching the bristly heads of grain) or whether it’s emotional (a manifestation of grief; a memory of the character’s previous life on the Dredge). Characters don’t just look at setting. They react to it. Use that reaction to give yourself the opportunity to work the setting into the story and build your world. But do it slowly. You don’t have to give us the atlas of your world in the first 5 pages. Give us only what we need at that moment. If you do this, the reader won’t even notice your worldbuilding.
How Did We Get Here?
Setting is not only a place, but should be treated as a character as well, especially for science fiction and fantasy, when you are dealing with a strange, new world. But a reader asked the following question: How do you work that setting into the scene?
It’s a great question, one that I’ve thought about for the last week. It’s also a hard question to answer, because there is no one hard and fast rule for how to do this. And there is no one way that will work for everyone. I personally write my scene with setting in mind from the get-go, and generally know the setting without much work on my part. But I know of other writers who specifically leave the setting out of the first draft and then in the revisions go back and work that setting in. They sometimes leave notes about things that need to be included in the setting during the first draft, but the fine-tuning isn’t done until after the book is finished. So it’s personal. You have to figure out how to work the setting in effectively for yourself.
So for this post, I’m going to explain some techniques that I use and one thing in particular to avoid. I suggest you try a few of these, and see if they work for you. They might not. But if they do, great!
First, the one thing you must avoid at all costs: the infodump. This happens a lot in fantasy and science fiction because the writer needs to introduce the reader to a ton of information about the new world as quickly as possible so that everyone has a frame of reference for what the characters are doing and why. We need to know where the character live in order to understand why they behave the way that they do. And in frustration, the writer usually falls into the trap of dumping all of that info on the reader in one long paragraph (or a string of long paragraphs) of pure exposition. Pure BORING exposition. Now, some people *coughTomClancycough* can get away with this. But in general, it will kill your book. Because the reader generally isn’t interested in that kind of thing. They want the story. They want to see the characters and get involved. An infodump does not involve the characters or the reader in anything. But you still need to get that info across.
One of the common misconceptions/mistakes writers make is that they think they have to get all the information across RIGHT AWAY. That’s not true. You’re writing a novel. There are literally hundreds of pages you can use, thousands upon thousands of words, where you can slip in the needed information. So don’t feel that you have to deal with the entire world setup in the first 5 pages. You don’t. In fact, you should restrict the information you impart to only that which is necessary for the current scene, or necessary for setup for a future (but relatively close) future scene. In fact, you should restrict your info to only the material that the current POV character would actually know at that point. If your character is living in the slums of the city (let’s say), she’s not going to know that there are 5 major port cities along the coast, that the southern cities trade in wine and olive oil and spices, while the northern cities deal in grain and wool. She’s not going to know that the farthest city to the south is thinking about breaking the ties with the coast and allying themselves with the island nation in the southern ocean. She’s in the slums! She doesn’t care! All she’s concerned about is her immediate surroundings, how she’s going to survive, what she’s going to eat. So none of that should be included in your settings UNLESS it’s going to be important for later on in the story for this character. So focus on the character. Only give us what’s important for that character and/or plot at that particular time. It’s great that you know all of that extra information about your world, because it’s what gives your world its life, but it isn’t necessary at the moment, so leave it out. Work it in when and IF it becomes necessary for that character or the plot at that point.
OK, so now you know what not to do and what to leave out when it comes to setting. How do you work in what’s necessary? I use a few techniques. But after thinking about all of the techniques, I realized they all have one thing in common: I always have my character INTERACTING with the world. I almost never have my characters just standing around looking at things and describing them. That’s boring. Remember, the reader and characters are there to DO something. So in all of these techniques, you’ll notice that my characters are interacting with the setting in some way, and that’s how I work the setting into the scene. I describe the setting as the characters interact with it. In this way, I get the setting across without any blanket descriptions and/or infodumping.
The obvious thing to do in each scene is to start with a description of where the characters are. This is what most writers do in the beginning, because we all feel like we need to be placed somewhere. We like the idea of being in a solid setting first, before the action takes place. It makes us comfortable. BUT, it’s also boring. And usually it’s a weak way to begin the scene. You want a strong beginning and a strong end to every scene. I start many scene with a description of setting, but I try to do it by having the character interact with the scene in some small, subtle way. For example, here’s the beginning of The Vacant Throne, the third book in my series:
I stood in the middle of a field of wheat, the bristly heads of grain pattering against my outstretched hands. The breeze that rippled through the stalks tugged at my hair, at the folds of my sweat-stained shirt. In the moment before dawn, the world was quiet, expectant.
Then, far ahead over the fields, near the road that snaked down from the city of Venitte into the hills, a flare of light lit the darkness. Harsh and orange, the fire arched up into the sky and I felt a tug of grief, a pain that bit deeper every time I felt it, still new and raw and fresh. It twisted in my chest, burned at the edges of my eyes, but I clenched my jaw as I watched the fire crest, begin a long descent, fall down and down—
And explode amongst the trunks of olive trees. In the burst of light when it struck I saw an army marching through the fields. A moment later I heard screams, faint with distance.
I placed my character in the middle of the setting, had him actually TOUCH the grain. This makes the setting more active and real. I could have simply said he was in a field, waiting for the beginning of the attack. And when the attack starts, he doesn’t just stand there and watch it, he has an emotional reaction to it. Again, he is interacting with the setting itself. He isn’t part of it yet in any real sense, but he still acts and reacts to it.
Another standard technique is to do the opposite: start the scene immediately with dialogue or action, and then work the setting in as you go. This has the advantage that the scene starts or active and strong, dragging the reader into the story willing or not. I use this technique a lot. The problem is that you do have to place the action in a setting rather quickly, so you need to work the setting in rather fast near the beginning somehow. And when you work that setting in, it tends to slow down the action that you’ve just started. In this case, think of the setting as a “breather” for the reader. Basically you’ve just punched them in the stomach with the action and the placement of the setting is giving them a short time to recover from that punch. But that’s all it should be: a short moment for them to recover. Don’t drag the setting out too long, because then you’ve deflated the action and ruined that strong beginning you were going for. Here’s another example from The Vacant Throne:
“No, no! Take the reusable stone over there. The rest pile up on the side street so that we can cart it off later.” Avrell shook his head, one hand on his hip. The other arm was tied up in a sling across his chest, his shoulder hurt during the attack on the walls. The First of the Mistress, Avrell oversaw the administrative details of Amenkor, which included its rebuilding.
He turned as he heard my escort’s approach, his posture stiffening, becoming more formal as he raised one eyebrow in question. He would have folded his hands inside the sleeves of his dark blue robes if he could have, but the sling wouldn’t allow it. “Mistress? How may I help you?”
“Actually,” I said, “I came to help you.” I reached down and picked up a chunk of shattered stone, what had once been part of the outermost wall of the palace. We stood where the gates had held the Chorl at bay . . . for approximately ten minutes. Weighing the stone in one hand, I glanced around at the jagged edges of the wall to either side, at the debris that lay in a fan spread outwards from where we stood into the outer ward. I could see how much force had been behind the explosion in the pattern of stone, could see where the stone arch over the gates had collapsed in upon itself once the wall had been breached. Buildings to either side of the wide street leading up to the palace had been shattered in the blast, walls caved in, windows and doors nothing but gaping, empty holes. One entire building had sagged inwards, on the verge of imploding. It reminded me of the Dredge. Except this damage was new, fresh. The pall of dust still hung in the air, the broken stone sharp with edges. On the Dredge, everything would have been coated with the slick ruin of age, would have reeked of decay, would be worn smooth with defeat.
A narrow corridor had been cleared through the debris immediately after the attack, to allow access between the city and the palace, but other than that, everything lay where it had fallen.
The dialogue drags you into the scene. I actually start introducing the setting IN the dialogue. Only after I’ve started the action do I get around to a serious description of the setting. And then notice that my characters actually interact with the setting itself: Varis picks up a rock from the pile before she describes where she’s going to put it. I used the setting itself to give me the opportunity to describe the setting. In this particular piece, I’ve also managed to work in some of the back story from the first 2 books (which is another whole post in and of itself: how do you insert the necessary back story without infodumping).
This are the two techniques I use most often to incorporate setting into the scene without being boring. And again, they all boil down to the same thing: get your characters to interact with the setting itself. Don’t just leave the setting static. It’s going to affect the characters in some way, whether that with some type of action (leaning over to pick up a rock; touching the bristly heads of grain) or whether it’s emotional (a manifestation of grief; a memory of the character’s previous life on the Dredge). Characters don’t just look at setting. They react to it. Use that reaction to give yourself the opportunity to work the setting into the story and build your world. But do it slowly. You don’t have to give us the atlas of your world in the first 5 pages. Give us only what we need at that moment. If you do this, the reader won’t even notice your worldbuilding.
)
