rainy afternoon –
ducks gather
on roadside pond
Author: bryon
Pen to Paper: Setting
Setting can be a crucial part of your story. It doesn’t have to be; some stories get by on a bare minimum of “this is where and when we are.” For example, Accept Our Condolences does not tell the reader when or even where it takes place; other than the mention of an end table, leading one to understand the story takes place in a home, there is no setting. In Popgun, though, the setting is paramount to telling the tale. And in The Library Patron, I put more effort into describing the personnel and places than I generally do, simply because I felt it was valuable information. As with most things, give the reader whatever he needs to make sense of and enjoy the story, and withhold that which is merely window dressing.
So what goes into setting? You’ve got time, place, and the standard five senses, of course, plus the reactions of your characters to what they sense. The more you can deliver through the eyes of your characters, generally the better off you are. For example, you can baldly tell your readers, “It was a dark and stormy night.” Or you can have an exchange of dialogue between two characters:
“Oh! the lightning is so bright!” Gladys shrieked.
“Yes,” Rupert agreed, “and the thunder is about to shake that vase right off the mantelpiece.”
Okay, that doesn’t necessarily improve on Bulwer-Lytton’s original, but you get the idea.
In working with your setting, accuracy has to be a target, and you want to hit one of the inner rings. Except under carefully controlled conditions, a story about the Civil War will not include a scene in which President Lincoln radios instructions to General Lee. Or let’s say you set a story in the Greater Kansas City Metropolitan Area in which you describe the scenic view of the Missouri River from Shawnee Mission Parkway. You would perhaps achieve a perfectly acceptable verisimilitude for most of your readers, but the locals would howl either in outrage or derision or both. It pays to look up little details like that, and it has never been easier to do so than it is today.
Fiction: The Wrong Tool
Bijou lay in the middle of the living room, exercising the principle of center control as a chess player would. Her humans sat on the couch in front of her. They exchanged occasional words, but the cat did not recognize any of them, nor were they in tones that attracted her attention. She stretched her legs out a bit more for comfort and to take up more space.
“Okay, let’s just see what happens,” the male human, Seamus, said. The female human, Ruri, sighed.
Quotable 80
I went to college, but I learned to write by reading and writing.
– Daniel Pinkwater
haiku 191
warm November day –
can’t miss
with the flyswatter
Pen to Paper: Apostrophes
We all know what an apostrophe is, but I see them misused daily. Although I don’t imagine that most of my readers need it, here is a basic primer on how to use apostrophes. Send the link to someone you care about who needs it. (Or maybe to someone you despise who needs it.)
Fiction: Exposed
The problem in dealing with scum, Cable thought unhappily, is that they force you down to their nasty level. He looked at the former grocery store where he was to meet the informer. A neon sign announced that he had arrived at the Show-Off Gentleman’s Club.
Now there’s an oxymoron, he groused to himself. No gentleman would get within fifty feet of this place. But I have to go in; it’s my job.
Quotable 79
Sometimes a flat-footed sentence is what serves, so you don’t get all writerly: “He opened the door.” There, it’s open.
– Amy Hempel
haiku 190
truck’s bed piled high –
on the ground
pink plush bunny
Pen to Paper: Now, What Shall I Call This?
Titles: either they come to you in a flash or you struggle with them for perhaps longer than it took to write the story.
The title is the first point of contact with a potential reader, which makes it pretty important. It’s got to catch your attention sufficiently that you read the first paragraph. After that, the story has to sell itself.
B.W. Clough and David Steffen offer some helpful hints on giving your story just the right title with examples of things that work and things that don’t.
Even the best writers have title trouble. Some of Shakespeare’s titles wouldn’t leap off the shelf at me: Two Gentlemen of Verona, As You Like It, All’s Well that Ends Well (why bother, then?), Much Ado About Nothing (ditto). He did much better with The Tempest and The Taming of the Shrew.
Other top writers have also had difficulty creating titles to match their works. Here’s a list, compiled by Emily Temple, of famous books that began life with different names than we know them by. One she missed for Gone With the Wind was Mules in Horses’ Harnesses.