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Many thanks to Kourtney for inviting me to post and to discuss a bit of my writing process and my new book, The Vendetta, out now from Etopia Press. There are many, many ways to reveal character in writing, but one I like to explore—maybe because I am particularly drawn to exotic, luxurious locations in my stories—is SETTING.
Things we say about our characters:
“They just took over the page.”
“They surprised me when they…”
“I didn’t want to leave them when I was done writing.”
Things we say about our settings:
Erm…well. What do we say about our settings?
Setting is the most under-appreciated as a tool in a writer’s kit for delivering on character. “Oh, that’s just description,” we say, and we cast setting out with all that other wordy stuff in favor of an action sequence or an exchange of dialog. In all cases, however, we want our readers to connect emotionally with the characters. Setting, I think, knows all and reveals all about character. Setting concerns where the story takes place, but that “where” is only important as it relates directly to the story. And, as we know, the story is what happens to the characters.
mood, appearance, motivation, backstory, inner conflict, plot conflict
These are some of the elements of character, but how do we get them onto the page? How do we show a character’s mental landscape so the reader can react to what that character does?
1. It was a dark and stormy night… Setting the mood.
By mood I don’t just mean the tone of the scene, I mean the emotional state of the POV character. Is she grumpy, love-struck, embarrassed, weepy, determined, or something else? Is there a place you can put her that conveys this emotion? And what comes first, the mood or the setting. Can a dark castle intensify the character’s sense of apprehension? Does a beach scene relax your character, make her happy?
In this example from my recent release, The Vendetta, I am trying to convey my main character’s mood of isolation, but also a touch of wonder from her about her current situation:
He took her hand, sending a frisson of electricity up her arm. “Come into the living room. I’ll be back in just a second.”
Lisa followed him into the cavernous space. He disappeared into the other bedroom while she went over to the bank of floor to ceiling picture windows that faced the looming mountain. On the slopes she could see the tiny yellow headlights of the Caterpillar tractors that groomed the runs for the next day’s skiers. Nestled below, the ski village’s lights sparkled with nightlife. “Wow,” she whispered. “What a winter wonderland.”
2. The beard on his chin was as white as the snow. Appearance—working the metaphor.
There’s some debate in the fiction-writing realm about how much to describe the physical characteristics of your story people. Often there are genre expectations for more or less description, but in all cases the author needs to provide enough description so the reader can picture the character. Setting can help invoke what the character looks like by providing ample scope for figurative language, which is a literary umbrella-term covering such devices as simile (comparison using like or as), metaphor (direct comparison), hyperbole (exaggeration), and a few others.
Here my main character in The Vendetta confronts her desire for the romance character and likens his features to the surrounding buildings (using both simile and metaphor).
Her stomach did that now-familiar flip. God, she had to stop being so unreasonably happy to see this man. The irritating schoolgirl giddiness firmed her determination to find out more about him and to keep him at arm’s length.
He seemed perfectly suited to the location among the splendor of Rome’s architecture, as if he were a Roman god. His features, carved and beautiful, gave nothing away. If she dared admit it to herself, she desired him more than she’d desired any other man.
3. The butler did it… Motivation—why, why, why?
Real people do things for a reason, so it follows that story people do too. Where the story takes place can reveal something about why the character takes action (or not). In addition, setting carries powerful emotional imagery, giving the reader clues about the character’s motives. This imagery can be as simple as dark versus light or as subtle as the kitchen versus the car.
In this final example, the setting conveys the turbulence of Lisa’s inner thoughts as the reader gets a glimpse of WHY she needs to protect herself from this man she finds so attractive.
Pellets of ice smacked hard against the window, driven by the force of the wind. Deep, new snow had buried the winter wonderland she’d marveled at last night. She pressed her hand to the cold pane.
She spent a few moments wondering if she would inevitably succumb to Nick’s deep voice and sultry eyes if she saw him again. She pressed her fingers to her lips, remembering the wild taste of him…Shaking off the thought, she stared out at the swirling white landscape. The truth was, she had always found it difficult to protect her pitiful, vulnerable heart when a man whispered how much he wanted her.
How do you use setting in your stories? Do you think it’s a good way to convey character, or can it bring on too many cliches? What is the best way to describe a character?
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When she’s not spending ridiculous amounts of time at the computer dreaming up interesting characters and spicy conflicts for her fiction writing, Kecia Adams loves to ride her bike really fast and shop for shoes. The Vendetta, her first contemporary romance with Etopia Press, is available at your favorite e-book retailer, including Amazon and Barnes & Noble. You can find out more about Kecia and her writing at
website & blog: www.keciaadams.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/KeciaAdams
Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/KeciaAdamsAuthor
In The Vendetta, vengeance intersects the international world of fine art when ski town barista Lisa Schumacher serves up espresso—with a dollop of passion—for Italian businessman Nick Carnavale. Lured to Rome by family ties, Lisa must race to find a mysterious missing painting in time to convince Nick that love, and life, is worth more than his revenge.
Buy it here:
I hate hate HATE writing setting. I can imagine the scene unfolding in my head. See all the background and the details.
But they always feel like background. Window dressing.
Never the meat and potato of the scene.
And while revising, I’ve giggled at myself. Because I saw the entire scene in my head. Envisioned all the details of the blue sky with shredded cotton scattered across it. Of my protagonist in her seafoam chiffon dress.
And none of that was written down. Because I was focused on capturing the dialogue. the emotion. the moment.
And as usual, setting took a backseat with me.
Thank God for editing and revising. For beta readers. For the opportunity to paint in the setting to bring the scene to life.
Mind you, dialogue used to be the bane of my existence. But after months of practice. Dialogue is my new bff.
Ah setting, you remain my one true nemesis.
Firstoff, huge thanks to MWA NE and SinCNE for making Crimebake 2010 a fabulous conference!
Friday at Crimebake started off with an amazing welcome for Sisters in Crime New England. They had coffee and cookies and the perfect ice breaker–a scavenger hunt to find people with different abilities–like Agatha Winner or Writer of Paranormals. Immediately, we all had a conversation breaker and it make the conference kick off the best ever!
I signed up for the master classes and soon made my way to Writing the Traditional Mystery with Roberta Isleib. She’s a great public speaker and I highly recommend taking any workshop she does on writing mysteries.
She started by explaining that all cozies are traditional mysteries but all traditional mysteries are not cozies.
Typical traits of a cozy include:
- Amateur Sleuth
- Violence and sex happen off-screen (if they happen)
- A closed/contained setting
- Emphasis on deduction
- Victim and murderer know each other and the sleuth has to figure out the relationship between the two
- Being a comfort read
- Not jarring
Traditional mysteries can be darker than cozies. Cozies are a subset of traditional mysteries and usually include a craft/cooking/gardening.
She stressed the importance of knowing your genre. If a book can’t be labelled, it can’t be sold.
The killer must be in the book in enough detail so that the writer plays fair with the reader. At the end of the book, the reader should think, I should have seen it coming.
The three most important things in a Traditional Mystery are:
- Character Development
- Stakes
- Setting
In the past, characters weren’t expected to change much in a series. Now readers expect growth and change within the book and over the course of the series. There must be a character arc–what she learns and how she changes. The arc of the character can be: character realizes she’s obsessed with an outer goal/desire but needs x to be whole/fulfilled. You have to have an idea of where you wants the character to end up.
Nathan Bransford blog talks about how every protagonist wants something and the novel is about them trying to get it. The antagonist is in conflict with the protagonist.
The character’s stakes are also crucial. Here are the things you should ask yourself to get a better grasp of the character’s stakes. (BTW, this was my favorite part of the workshop–very interactive and thought-provoking).
- What brings character into story now?
- What is her goal?
- Will her goal change?
- How will the character change by the end of novel?
- What makes your character unique?
- Central strength of your character?
- What weakness should she have?
Think about your characters history and from that make the stakes feel more real. Convince reader why they got involved. Can’t sell plot until sell character.
Setting is the third key part of a mystery. Change has to be underway–a place in turmoil and something happening in bigger world. Setting has its own value system.Something new to reader.
Setting has to intersect with character and plot. We were now asked to write a two sentence setting. Go ahead and write yours.
Okay now take that same setting and view it through the protagonist’s eyes. Description should do double duty by showing and telling character’s feelings. You can use description of setting to convey stuff about the character.
Audience members also got up and read their responses to parts of the workshop to illustrate how to use her teachings. Overall an awesome workshop–Thank you Roberta!
One of my beta readers (okay, my dad, but he’s a tough critic 
) was giving me feedback on the first fifty pages of my new paranormal romance and he asked, “What about the setting?”
My response: What do you mean?
“Your dialogue is tight. The scenes are fun, but you don’t give much description of the house.”
To which I responded. “Ah. I hate writing setting.”
He paused. “But don’t you think it’s important?”
I got quiet. Well, of course, I know it’s important but frankly, the part I hate most in books is those long paragraphs describing the building or the room. I flip right by them to get to the dialogue, the action, and especially the sex scenes.
But he got me thinking about setting. In my first book, the castle is almost like a character in the story. I spend days plotting out the layout of the rooms and the furniture within the rooms. But this book, the main setting is a house. It could be any house. It wasn’t that important to the story or me. But to the reader, it was. I needed to balance my hatred of long drawn out setting descriptions with the readers need to create a picture in their head.
I gave in to good advice. Last night I sketched out the house. I went back and added details to the scenes to give the reader an image for the room. And I now know one of my weaknesses is setting. I either get too into the details or don’t give enough. No happy medium here yet.
Which got me wondering, what do you think about setting? Do you like the 1-2 page description of a place or would you prefer that it be revealed within the dialogue tags as the scene unfolds? What is the happy medium?
So this summer, I have plans to head to the midwest for a few days to get a better feel for the location of my new story, TSTTW. Why did I pick the midwest since I’ve never lived there? Because I could only imagine my character’s horror at being transplanted from the big city. I wanted a place completely outside her comfort zone and mine. Sure, I could write about living in the city with rush hour commutes and the flow of tourists into and out of my daily life. But it gets boring writing what you know, and I prefer to get lost in my stories. To get out of my life and into someone else’s for a little while.
In The Curse of the Radcliffe Rubies, I created a fictitious college campus for Eldridge University. But since most of the story takes place off campus, I based the campus on a place I already knew. Lazy? I prefer to call it an efficient and creative way to revisit my college years, plucking the best parts out and plunking them down in Eldridge University. At the other end of the spectrum is the castle where most of the story takes place. I spend weeks painstakingly sketching out the layout of the entire building right down to the arrangement of the furniture. You have no idea how many times I referred to that map in the actual drafting of the novel. It was a godsend. An amalgamation of castles, chateaus, and mansions all swirled together in my head and Castle Creighton was born.
What about each character’s hometown? For me, it depends on the character and the story. Usually, characters are from a place I’ve been or lived or have some basic familiarity with. Or someone close to me does. It makes it feel more authentic to me. But there are times the story requires the character be from somewhere I’ve never been or heard of. Then I plan a trip or rely on my imagination. That is the beauty of fiction I guess. You have to have a foot in reality and another in the make-believe.
