The sun is out, but the cold March wind is blowing - rattling the windows and sending ripples down the canal that threads its way through our back yard then out to the bay. Who ever thought I'd wind up near the ocean, so far from the industrial reaches of Detroit? But this is where I live and eventually this place will probably find its way into a picture book manuscript, a short story or a novel. Setting is often one of the most overlooked elements of the writing process - especially among novice writers - yet it's so important.
Why so important? Setting grounds us and helps us to better understand the main character's motivation and actions. A well developed setting lends a story authenticity (especially an historical novel or a fantasy) and often mirrors the theme while developing the mood.
A few years back I attended the Writers Workshop at Chautauqua. One of the workshops I sat in on concerned setting. The setting is almost like another character, said the speaker. You must give the reader a sense of place and make it palpable. She was right of course. Who can forget Beverly Cleary's Klickitat Street home of some of my favorite characters from children's literature - Ramona Quimby, Henry Huggins and Ribsy? Klickitat Street was much like the suburban block I grew up on. In Elizabeth Bunce's YA novel, A Curse Dark As Gold, the old mill has an ominous presence that sends shivers down the reader's spine. It seems to live and breathe as it keeps a surreptitious eye on the characters. More importantly, it plays a critical role in the plot. When I read Catherine Murdock's The Dairy Queen, I could smell those cow piles, see the stacks of hay and the muddy fields stretching in every direction around the farm. Palpable? Yes. In fact, every good book I can think of has a well developed setting that finds its way inside the reader's imagination.
When writing a fantasy, it's even more important to pay attention to setting. After all, the author is crafting a unique world. Think of Harry Potter without Hogwarts, The Hobbit without Middle Earth or Winnie the Pooh without the Hundred Acre Wood. They just wouldn't be the same. When I taught the elements of fiction to my students, I often had them take a famous novel and create a map of the setting showing where all the characters lived and where critical scenes took place. It was a great exercise for them and made them think about nearly all the elements of fiction - the characters, the plot, the climax, the resolution etc.
The fantasy I'm revising has a woods in it drawn heavily from the woods I cut through on my way to school. There I paused to pick pussy willows for my teacher, to watch a fox or a skunk scurry through the underbrush or to pretend I was Little Red Riding Hood with a wolf trailing after me. Those woods are gone now - cleared away years ago to make way for a housing development - but in my novel and in some of the picture books I write, the woods spring back in all their leafy greenness.
