Today I was preparing a lesson for my students in my dual enrollment literature class on setting in literature. For years, I have kept different journals where I write down quotes and passages from books I read that I enjoy or have some impact on me and many of them are on setting. 

In Wired For Story, Lisa Cron quotes Elmore Leonard: “Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.” Yes, some readers will skip over paragraphs about the scenery. In fact, I found myself doing that with The Hobbit. 

Here are a few that have touched me in some way about the scenery, the weather, or the historical content. 

It begins to rain. The first harsh, sparse, swift drops rush through the leaves and across the ground in a long sigh, as though of relief from intolerable suspense. They are big as buckshot, warm as though fired from a gun; they sweep across the lantern in a vicious hissing.  As I Lay Dying Faulkner

The sun, an hour above the horizon, is poised like a bloody egg upon a crest of thunderheads; the light has turned copper; in the eye portentous, in the nose sulphurous, smelling of lightning. As I Lay Dying Faulkner

How could anyone skip over those lines? Right? Buckshot, bloody egg, sulphurous.

Here’s another from The Wednesday Wars by Gary Schmidt:

I walked home under gray clouds whose undersides had been shredded. They hung in tatters, and a cold mist leaked out of them. The cold got colder, and the mist got mistier all through the afternoon, so that by suppertime a drizzle was making everything wet and everyone miserable—especially my sister, who believed that she had hair that belonged in southern California, where it would be springy and bouncy all the time, instead of gray, cold, misty Long Island, where it just hung. 

Lying in bed that night, I listened as the drizzle turned to a rain, and then the rain started to spatter thickly on the window, and then all sounds of it faded away, and my room began to grow cold. I got up and looked out, but the glass was covered with a sheet of thin ice, and the only thing I could see was the crazed pattern of the streetlight outside.

In the morning, ice covered the town. If the sun had been shining, it would have been a spectacle, like something Prospero might conjure up. But as it was, the tattered gray clouds hung even lower, and the mist was leaking out of them again, and the town looked more like the kind of foul heath where Macbeth’s Three Weird Sisters lived.

Lesson #1

The first lesson here is for writers. If you are a writer, then your descriptions should reveal something about the person who lives in that setting or a hint of something he/she is going through.  

Not too much backstory. Make sure that each sensory detail gives insight into the character, the story, or the theme of the story. Lisa Cron points out “Scenery without subtext is a travelogue.”

If your readers have to reread a paragraph twice to figure out what it means or the scene you are creating, then you need to revise. 

Lesson #2

The second lesson is for my students. How can setting help the reader?

Setting can bring us closer to the central themes, ideas, and conflicts of the stories we love.

Here is a good example from A White Heron: A Story of Maine Sarah Orne Jewitt

Half a mile from home, at the farther edge of the woods, where the and was highest, a great pine-tree stood, the last of its generation. Whether it was left for a boundary mark, or for what reason, no one could say; the woodchoppers who had felled its mates were dead and gone long ago, and a whole forest of sturdy trees, pines and oaks and maples, had grown again. But the stately head of this old pine towered above them all and made a landmark for sea and shore miles and miles away. Sylvia knew it well.

I love looking at the macro and micro settings of novels, too, like Hunger Games. We have this macro setting of a post-apocalyptic North America, maybe from a nuclear war or something. 

Then, we have the micro settings: The Capital, where readers see the wealth, the outfits, the clothes, the makeup, against the backdrop of District 13, which is dreary, dark, mining town. The scenes in the book help the reader understand the themes of power, violence, and survival. 

I watched an interview with Lauren Wolk who wrote Wolf Hollow. She said that she camped out in the woods for a couple of weeks to understand her setting. She wanted to experience the sounds, the feeling of the wind, the temperature. Now that is doing some serious research on setting. 

Here is a writing activity that one of my first professors had us do with a scene. He wanted us to focus on one object, the setting, and sensory imagery. 

The Mailbox

I can see my mailbox sitting from my living room window. The previous owner of my house took an aging black tire, filled the middle with cement, stuck a three foot tall pole in the cement, and then attached the box on top. Aesthetically, it’s not very pleasing. Like a buoy in a murky marina with a stingy pelican standing on it looking for food of some sort, it sits at the end of our driveway. The chipped white paint, with the red “flag” is sadly drooping to one side. The black lettering has long since faded, and the lid doesn’t entirely shut anymore. Situated firmly, my mailbox has observed dreary winter days, muddy springs, stifling hot summers, and windy gray falls. At 10:30 a.m., the monotonous mailman drives past our house. Dread fills my stomach. I nervously walk out to see if the letter is there.

Here is the second attempt, a more cheerful setting and tone.

The Mailbox

As I sit in my living room, I can see my mailbox. Previous owners filled a black tire with cement, stuck a three-foot tall square pole in the middle of the cement, and then attached a white metal mailbox on the top of the pole. It has a red metal “flag” on its right side. Located at the end of our blacktop driveway near the grass, the big leafy tree shades it for part of the day. Standing erect with its red flag, it is like an English soldier guarding a castle.

Situated firmly, my mailbox experienced crisp winter mornings, fresh spring rain, newly cut lawn, and yellow gold leaves of fall. At 10:30 a.m., every day, except holidays and Sundays, the meticulous mailman opens the mailbox lid and fills the insides with exciting things. I merrily walk outside to see what has been delivered. I pull out a “thank you” card from a friend, a letter from Mom, my favorite magazine, and a lovely wedding invitation. This all comes from a box that stands outside my home.

Your Writing Prompt: Write a scene of a city street through the eyes of a homeless veteran. Set the scene in the summer, and then rewrite the scene in the winter. 

Happy writing!