3 question answering

On Setting

What is setting?

When we talk about setting in literature, we’re talking about the time and the place that the world of work is set in.

Writers establish setting in fiction and poetry in many different ways. Sometimes writers establish very rich, complex, fully-realized worlds for their fiction/poetry, and sometimes they are sketched in just enough so that we understand what kind of world the work is set in. The setting for Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings is famous for its complexity. It’s set in Middle Earth, in a specific range of time in Middle Earth’s history. Both within and beyond that stretch of time, Tolkien created a world complete with complete with a detailed history, races of humans, dwarves, elves, and other creatures, and even invented unique languages for each race. Reading through Tolkien’s trilogy (not to mention the ancillary books he wrote about Middle Earth), we encounter more specific places, beings, and histories.

In contrast, the setting for Carver’s story, “Cathedral,” is the narrator’s home on a single night. We don’t know where the home is located, or what historical time period the story is set in. We don’t know very much about what’s going on in the neighborhood, city, country, or world at the time the story takes place. However, Carver does provide us some context clues about the setting through his characters. Through the characters, we can safely assume that the story is not set in a well-to-do gated community, for example. They seem more middle-class or blue-collar than that. And through the characters’ actions and the plot, we can safely assume that the story is set in Carver’s modern-day America.

Poetry sometimes takes this even further, especially when its main focus is not a person or place, but an idea. While Valvis (“Here in America”) and Hughes (“The Negro Speaks of Rivers”) set their work around specific places and times, e.e. cummings’ “A Leaf Falls” doesn’t establish a very detailed setting.

Whether the setting is a “major player” in the work or not, setting is always important in literature. Writers make choices about setting as carefully as they make choices about every other craft element of fiction/poetry.

Setting as a craft element for writers

With the above in mind, there are a few things for writers to think about in establishing a setting for their work:

Setting is not just a stage.

Especially in fiction, writers never provide a place and time for their stories simply to help readers see the physical world around the characters. Setting is not merely a visual for readers. Setting is not just ground for characters to walk on, or something for readers to look at. Setting is an integral part of the creative work. It creates the world that readers step into and inhabit along with characters.

Writer’s Tip: Create “a world outside the window”

Beginning writers often focus on developing characters and plot, or in poetry, developing a speaker’s voice and imagery, and they often ignore the importance of creating a world for their readers to step into. In fiction, let your characters “look out the window” once in a while—that is, show them glancing at a newspaper headline, or chatting with someone about a local event that’s important the community, or literally looking out the window to observe what the neighbors are up to. In poetry, consider how descriptive details and context clues can ground readers in a specific place and time.

Setting can provide information on characters’ thoughts, emotions

If you’ve taken previous creative writing classes, you’ve probably heard the mantra, “show, don’t tell.” The basic idea behind show-don’t-tell is that readers don’t want to be informed of what’s going on in a story/poem by a narrator/speaker who provides information, they want to experience it. The best way to accomplish that is to show readers what’s going on—show action and reaction, keep things moving in real-time, rather than reporting information you want your readers to understand.

In other words, writing “Bob missed his ex-girlfriend tremendously” is not as effective as “Bob switched off the light on the nightstand, pulled the comforter up over his head, rolled over on his side and caressed the photo of Karen that he kept nestled in the pillow where she used to lay her head.” The first sentence provides abstract information. The second one places the reader in Bob’s bedroom (the setting), witnessing his actions, which show readers what Bob is feeling.

The “Showing v Telling” section below for more on this.

There are other ways to use setting to show rather than tell what’s going on in a character’s head, too. One way is to use what poet T.S. Eliot called the “objective correlative.” (He didn’t come up with this term himself, contrary to popular opinion.) Here’s how Eliot defines “objective correlative”:

“The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an 'objective correlative'; in

other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that

particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience,

are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.”

To oversimplify what Eliot is talking about: he’s talking about symbolism. Writers can use an object, or a setting, to convey complex emotions rather than explaining/informing readers of characters’ thoughts/emotions. Hollywood is often great at oversimplifying things for viewers, so here’s an example from film: If a good-guy character has just died, and his good-guy friends are attending his funeral, what’s the weather like? It’s cloudy, rainy, or cold. The weather is an objective correlative; it shows us what the characters are thinking/feeling, and no one needs to explain their sadness to us. If two good-guy characters are getting married in a happy/triumphant event, what’s the weather like? It’s bright, sunny, and warm. Again, the weather does the work of conveying emotion, with no need for explicit explanation. Of course, writers and film makers could be ironic, and set a funeral in warm sunshine, or a wedding in rain, too.

Setting provides mood, tone, atmosphere

If you’ve followed along so far, you probably already have an idea of how setting provides mood, tone, and atmosphere in fiction/poetry. Not only can you convey Bob’s sadness by describing his immediate surroundings and Bob’s actions, but you can use setting to set the tone for your whole story/poem.

Think Edgar Allan Poe’s “Fall of the House of Usher.” Desolate swampland, giant, dark, crumbling mansion, raging thunderstorm. Not only does that setting create a strong atmosphere and world for readers to step into and experience, but it provides readers with information—by showing—how to approach the story, and what to expect from it.

Writer’s Tip

Think of ways to use the immediate surroundings of a character, or the immediate setting, to show the reader what’s going on emotionally and psychologically, rather than simply writing “Bob was sad.”

DO NOT focus solely on what to describe about setting. Focus also on how to describe it. If you’re sitting on a park bench beside a pond full of happy ducks on a warm sunny, you would describe that setting very differently depending on your mood at the time. Find the right words to describe the setting and establish mood, atmosphere, and tone.

On Imagery, Word Choice, and Description

William Faulkner spoke of the “eternal verities,” lasting principles found consistently in human experience, such as love, hope, hate, fear, and compassion. Through the ages, these fundamental aspects of humanity have drawn the attention of writers and other artists. In fiction and poetry, such abstract concepts are often rendered through imagery. Images are comparisons--they help us understand an abstract concept by comparing it to a vivid, concrete, sensory thing. They offer a way for writers to capture the important intangibles that inform and shape our lives.

Two examples:

1. “Love” is a very big, abstract concept that means many different things--there are many kinds of love. To convey a specific kind of love (romance, passion, pain, etc.) in a story or poem, a concrete image is much more effective than simply using the word “love.” Love could be expressed in the image of a red, red rose (captures the sweet, passionate romance of love), an open book (captures the vulnerability, honesty in true love), or a jagged cut (captures the pain of love).

2. “Hope” cannot be touched or quantified--it’s an abstract concept. But a toy windmill symbolizing hope can be experienced tangibly.

Images also capture our imagination and help us see our familiar, everyday world from new, imaginative angles. This reawakens us to the wonder and complexity of things we thought were so ordinary we stopped paying attention to them. Consider the following poem by Ezra Pound:

In A Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd

Petals on a wet, black bough.

Pound could have written this poem like this:

Flower-Faces in the Subway Station

All these faces in this subway station look like

flower petals on a dark, wet tree limb.

This version is much easier to “get,” isn’t it? We know what the speaker of the poem is looking at, and we know what’s being compared to what. But we read this version and say, “The guy saw some faces that looked like flower petals. So what?” And there really isn’t an answer. Everything has been explained to us already. It’s an unimpressive poem because it doesn’t invite us to do anything with it. It simply relates a piece of information, like a newspaper article. That’s not what imagery or poetry are about. When we read an image in a poem, mundane objects take on special meaning:

A red balloon, bobbing uncertainly

On a string tied to the wrist

Of a weary boy

Breaks free, and floats hopefully skyward

Fading rapidly into a tiny blood spot.

Kids lose balloons, and it’s not tragic--unless you’re the kid! The hopefulness of the balloon, free at last, contrasts with the implied loss that the boy must feel. He is tired, perhaps worn out from a fair. Tragedy on a small scale (it’s a tiny blood spot, not a bloodbath) smarts nevertheless, and can happen quickly. All of these ideas are packed into a single, relatively simple image. More importantly, we “get” the image’s meaning, and it invites us to investigate the meaning further, make personal connections, cultural connections, etc. It doesn’t limit itself to explaining one, single point to the reader, and cutting the reader off from any further engagement.

You Try It

From the list below, select two or three of the abstract terms, then think of at least three concrete images a writer might use to capture specific aspects of the abstract term in a story or poem. Write the concrete images below the list.

· Hope

· Regret

· Faith

· Treachery

· Compassion

· Hate

· Desire

Try it another way

Images often carry multiple meanings in stories and poems. For example, a simple lamp, if worked into a story or poem appropriately, might signify knowledge, personal warmth, and hope all at once. The lamp might also function literally as a lamp—perhaps as something bought at a yard sale. This multiple layering of meaning is what gives many images their artistic and symbolic power. Select two or three images from the list below, and for each item, indicate at least three different meanings that it might carry in a story or poem.

· A pair of worn shoes

· A pet rabbit

· A tube of lipstick

· A fountain pen

How to Spoil Your Writing

It might sound strange, but one way to learn how to use effective imagery in your own work is to play with spoiling it—ruining your work on purpose. When you see how your work looks when it’s written ineffectively, you can better understand how to write it more effectively.

Below you’ll find two poems. One is “The Eagle,” written by Alfred Lord Tennyson in the 19th century. The other is the same poem rewritten, but with “spoiled” imagery—imagery that is not nearly as effective and compelling as Tennyson’s original version. Which version of “The Eagle” is the original, and which is spoiled? How can you tell? Look at the words/images that change from one version to the other, and discuss which is more effective, and why. Bear in mind that the purpose of a poem is to communicate not just information, but the whole effect of an experience, which requires, among other things, that the experience should seem fresh and new.

The Eagle--Version One

He clasps the crag with crooked hands; Close to the sun in lonely lands, Ringed with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls: He watches from his mountain walls, And like a thunderbolt, he falls.

The Eagle--Version Two

He clings to the cliff with clawing hands; High in the hills in empty lands, Encircled with blue sky, he stands.

The furrowed sea beneath him sprawls: He looks below from the mountain walls, And quick as lightning, down he falls.

You Try It

Below is a famous poem by Robert Frost. Rewrite it line by line, ruining the imagery as much as you can. What exactly makes your ruined version so awful? Why does Frost make the word choices he does?

Nothing Gold Can Stay, by Robert Frost

Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.

Showing v. Telling

An extremely important concept related to description, imagery, and word choice is “showing v. telling.” When writers tell readers something, they’re simply conveying information: “My roommate is very inconsiderate.” That’s pure information, pure abstraction—what newspaper articles give us. When writers show readers something, they take us inside the experience: “My roommate left his dirty underwear in the living room again. I didn’t see it when I walked in the door, but I could smell it, and I knew exactly where I’d find it: on the coffee table, keeping a cold beer bottle from sweating on the glass. He’s real considerate like that.”

Both showing and telling are important, but a story needs to balance the two. Beginning writers often rely solely on telling a plot, that is, summarizing all of the major events for the reader, rather than allowing readers to inhabit and experience the world and characters of the story. Beginning poets often attempt to convey abstractions to the reader, forgetting that a poem needs to be grounded in a physical place, event, person, etc.

Don’t ever, ever do that.

Each of these sentences has two versions. One version relates information vaguely (tells), and therefore lacks the visual clarity that a reader needs to fully understand what the writer is talking about. The other version of the same sentence uses specific details and makes the image the writer is presenting much more vivid and alive (shows).

Telling: She went home in a bad mood. [What kind of a bad mood? How did she act or look?] Showing: She stomped home, hands jammed in her pockets, angrily kicking rocks, dogs, small children, and anything else that crossed her path.

Telling: My neighbor bought a really nice old desk. [Why nice? How old? What kind of desk?] Showing: My neighbor bought a solid oak, roll-top desk made in 1885 that contains a secret drawer triggered by a hidden spring.

Telling: He was an attractive man. [Attractive in what ways - his appearance, personality, or both? Can you picture him from reading this sentence?] Showing: He had Paul Newman's eyes, Robert Redford's smile, Sylvester Stallone's body, and Bill Gates's money.

After reading the sentences above, rewrite the telling sentences below using your own specific details.

1. My boyfriend/girlfriend acted like a jerk.

2. She wears really strange outfits.

3. The scenery in the mountains was beautiful.

4. My roommate is very (in)considerate.