Setting the Scene

August 21, 2009

Mary Rosenblum:  Well, I wanted to talk about setting the scene tonight. Mainly because I've been seeing a lot of novice manuscripts where we have action and I have no clue where the action is taking place. On a bare stage, I guess. It's easy when nothing much is happening, but when you have action going on, a high level of dramatic tension, it's hard to add details without slowing down the scene or violating a limited third or first person POV .  You really have to give the readers key details and let them fill in the blanks themselves.  But they do need those key details. Mostly it's a matter of using reader assumptions. Readers are going to make some common assumptions and they can bite you in the butt if you don't pay attention to them. If they expect your POV to be male, and you don't reveal that your first person POV is female early on, you're going to shock and upset a whole lot of readers.
But in terms of scene setting, those assumptions and automatic associations can work for you.
Who has not seen a gas station?  Your car chase can zoom through a Chevron station, narrowly missing a battered pickup at the pumps, bounce over the sidewalk and down the side street and readers are going to pretty much see the same thing. If your character has time to look around or is doing things in the scene, you can add plenty of specific details at your leisure. But if your character is in a rush, self preoccupied, or under pressure, you don't have that luxury. That's when you ask yourself 'what key detail will make my readers see what I want them to?'
You can usually squeeze in at least two details, even in a life and death scene. Say you're setting a chase scene through the heating tunnels underneath some old city buildings. What two details do you think will make your readers see what you see? Visualize those heating tunnels and then think about what will evoke the most scene for readers.
Echoing hallways of rattling pipes
color height
Dripping water?
dim light
Mary Rosenblum:  Echoes are good, Charie. This isn't very visual though. You really want specific visauls.
what are the walls made of
Mary Rosenblum:  Whatever you want, Claryce  Generally, when detail time is at a premium, stick to visuals unless your POV is in the dark. When you have more 'look around time' add other senses in. Let's add to the walls.  Scabby concrete walls.
unlit side passageways. gaping black rectangles.

Metal pipes.
Mary Rosenblum:  What else? Puddles on the floor? A scuttling rat?
Wire cages over bare bulbs spaced a little too far apart for good lighting.
Mary Rosenblum:  Gaping black side tunnels. Nice. Good charie! Caged bulbs.
Can you use smells, and sounds to describe an action scene?
Mary Rosenblum:  If you can, DLB. It depends on the nature of the scene. Let's take our heating tunnel. In this scenario, our hero...or heroine...is searching for a missing girl. She has found her way down here without a flashlight and is simply exploring.  So what's she doing? Really looking at things, right?
listening, feeling
Checking to see if there are footprints in the dirt of the tunnel.
whimpering
Mary Rosenblum:  You can go to town with details. Rat scuttle in the darkness, smell of mildew and a faint stink of something dead. Whimpering! Dripping water.
steam hiss
Mary Rosenblum:  You can really creep the readers out.
Spiderwebs
Mary Rosenblum:  All of the above.  It is not a problem to bring these steam tunnels alive for the readers. You can make them long for a flashlight and be brushing off invisible spiders by the time you're done! :-)
Okay. Let's change things. Now, our heroine has found the kidnapped girl and is fleeing with her through these tunnels with the bad guys hot on her tail.  Think about her: What is she doing?
Looking over her shoulder.
running FAST trying to remember which side tunnel to take back out
no time to think
Mary Rosenblum:  Yep. Exactly.
listening to every sound
Trying to listen over the sound of her breathing hard.
She's hanging onto the girl who's injured.
Mary Rosenblum:  All of this. Which leaves her no time or interest in the details she noticed when she was searching, listeinging, noticing things: This is where scene setting falls down for novice writers. This is what I see a lot.
[] 6:21 pm: Begin with the action?
Our heroine sneaks into the building where she thinks our girl is being held. She finds the girl and then the author tells us "The door opened into the steam tunnels that connected the buildings. She dragged the girl after her, racing down tunnel after tunnel, her heart pounding: So what do you see here?
A lot of telling.
Some generic empty tunnels.
Mary Rosenblum:  I don't see anything. Just 'tunnel after tunnel'.  What happens is that it's easy to focus on the intense action and to forget that readers cannot see what you are seeing as you write 'she raced down tunnel after tunnel'.
There's no sensory detail at all
Mary Rosenblum:  There isn't Dale. But she's not going to notice a lot.  She's mostly interested in not falling down and finding a way out. When you write a scene like that, try putting yourself into that person's head.
Only the most significant details-basically, she's in survival mode?
jumping over a dead rat
Mary Rosenblum:  You're there. What do you notice? What are you thinking about.  Exactly, Dale. I'm not sure that a dead rat would register when she's afraid of getting shot. Later, maybe, when the stakes are lower! :-)
So this is what makes scene setting a challenge. You want to put the readers in a real place, but in a high-drama scene like this it's hard. You can slip in very few details so they have to count and most importantly, they can't violate your POV. There's no right or wrong choice of what to include. It's mostly a matter of what is the most evocative detail you can think of.
An exercise I routinely give to people at workshops is this: Go somewhere that is not familiar to you -- a public restroom, a shop you've never been into, whatever. Walk in, walk out, go sit down. Now write down every detail you remember. These are the details that you noticed first, most clearly. You'll start to get a feel for what we notice. And you'll get a sense of how to set a scene with a few key details.
When my kids were little, they loved to visit the local mall. So we'd go and I'd just walk into stores with them, walk out. Then we'd go to the food court and while they had a snack, I wrote down details. It's good practice.
I like that! Sounds like fun, too.
Mary Rosenblum:  It is fun. :-) Although the sales help give you funny looks.  It's very good practice. Much of what you do as a writer is to bring your world to life for readers ....without slowing down the story. And you have to do it unobtrusively. The flip side of the 'no visible setting' story is the one where the author rigorously describes everything down to the last leaf.  And meanwhile, the main characters are trying to have a dramatic moment. Only it gets lost in the scene details. I see this in writers doing fantasy and romance quite often, just to pick on a couple of genres. :-) Although some of my SF students are just about as bad. The details are lovely, the description is lyrical, and the action and characters drown in a sea of flowers.
You cannot be a control freak. Your readers are never going to see exactly what you do. But as long as it's close, that's fine. And that's what makes prose fiction, IMHO, stronger than video. You get to play, too. You cannot create when you watch a movie. When you read a book, you share in the creation of that world.  So you, the author, has to direct, and give the readers seeds so that they can grow the same scene you see, more or less.
But you have to let them do it. Everything is a balance in writing.  For the most part, less is more in scene setting. Work on using fewer details but details that are more evocative.
And not only are a few specific, significant detail evocative, but they can help the reader be on the same page, visualization wise, as the writer?
Mary Rosenblum:  Exactly, Dale. So we want to show a reader a formal living room. What are three details that will evoke that formal, somewhat Victorian living room.
doilies
Legs with skirts would be one I'd choose.
Mary Rosenblum:  Each of you will see a different living room, but you want raeders to see something similar.
luxurious drapes
Spindly legged settee and chair with doilies on the back.
fireplace
Tons of bric a brac
heavy, dark wallpaper
Mary Rosenblum:  Doilies, yes, be more specific, Claryce...brocade draperies?
oriental rug
lots of dark wood
crown molding
Brocade or velvet curtains
Mary Rosenblum:  All of these are great and they're exactly the things I see when I think Viictorian living room.
flowers lots of flowers
high ceilings
A fireplace with a portrait hung above the mantel.
Portraits of ladies with white blouses ruffled collars, black skirts and hair styled Victorian style
Mary Rosenblum:  : So you list all these details and as you write the scene, you slip in the ones that work without overloading the action.
The large detective eyeing the furniture, not certain it would hold his large frame.
Mary Rosenblum:  If you have those details listed ahead of time, you have that palette to choose from. AS you write the action of the scene....or as you look over the scene in revision....you can find places to slip in those details. The POV sits down to wait, runs his hand over the silk brocade upholstery. The scent of lilies from the massive arrangement on the hearth gives him a headache.
Very good, charie.
He eyes the doilies and chooses to stand.
Where novice writers fall down is that they try to describe the room all at once. That creates a fat expository lump of author telling.
Rock in the story stream!  But our detective can be ushered in by the butler. He can eye the doilies and the spindly legs, finally perch gingerly on a settee. The lady in the ruffles in the painting over the mantel seems to be staring at him disapprovingly. He eyes his watch. The scent of the lilies in the huge vase on the hearth is giving him a headache.
The arrival of another person can make him look a different direction.
Mary Rosenblum:  Exactly, DLB.
Are action tags a good place to put snippets of setting?
Mary Rosenblum:  Lady Chamberlain clears here throat in the doorway and he gets awkwardly to his feet, wishign for that glass of water and the aspirin.   They are indeed, Gail. Action tags are a gift to scene setting.  "My lady." Comorant rose, wincing as the settee groaned. "I apologize for the awkward time." You can have our Lady serve tea. We'll see lots as our detective fumbles his way though that.
Now that is not to say that you can't do a scene from a distanced POV, the author as narrator, and use exactly that sort of description.  Limited third and narrative third both have their roles in fiction.
Can you give us an example of when you might use that in this setting?
Mary Rosenblum:  If it's more a plot driven story, then you can stand back and we can observe. Character-reader engagement is not carrying the weight of the story. (i,e, it's not character driven) Say I was doing a story where I want my readers to watch my characters engage and make mistakes. They're going to come away with something from watching that dance, but I don't think my readers really want to become intimate with either of my rather unlikeable characters. So they'll watch the tea party from a distance, watch the elderly aunt try to manipulate the young niece and watch how the young niece neatly turns Auntie's prurient curiosity back on itself, and they'll be amused by the nieces' deftness and her affection for the aunt.
But we won't really care deeply about either character.
O'Henry's stories are a good example of that. You're always at a literary distance, the characters are vivid, but it's not THEM that moves us it's what they do, learn, or do not learn that carries the story.
He does it VERY well.