Sometimes I wonder if maybe all setting when viewed through POV isn’t personal symbolism for the character. I mean think about walking through your own house for a moment and describing what you find inside. Sure, some writers are going to tell me that they have a house with four bay windows, the rooms inside are painted white, and three people live inside…factual detail. They are going to argue with me that these details are simply that–details, something that is unchangeable, immutable, unemotional truth.

Maybe so. Does it make for a good  story though?

Maybe this same house, where the rooms are painted all in white, is on the market. The rooms have just been recently repainted. This family of three is breaking up–the fresh white paint, the empty rooms, the house for sale–everything trying to cover up a failed attempt at marriage. But even that doesn’t work  for the POV character who tells the story, even the new smell and fresh color is a constant and painful reminder. Fresh paint, fresh pain.

Facts or personal symbols?

Seriously. How hard can this be to understand? Nothing in fiction is accidental–or shouldn’t be. If you don’t see it when you write it–then pick it out when you do the redraft. Find the subtext. Create the symbol. Not everything of importance runs directly through the thoughts of the character. It doesn’t have to be specifically said in dialog to be true.

The wife doesn’t have to cry into her cornflakes at breakfast and scream at her husband who is sitting across from her for the reader to get it. The vase of wilted half dead flowers on the table will suffice–and that’s shouting it to the rooftops. It could be far more subtle. If you write it, it’s looked at as significant. Readers are always “reading in” to your words. They are looking for meaning. Don’t waste that by just writing anything–don’t use non-specific detail because it hurts your brain to get up close and personal to the setting–make it work for your story–make it extremely relevant.

Want to argue with me that setting is dead facts, a still photograph? Show me that same photograph and I’ll find a story in there. No people or dialog needed. Complete with guaranteed conflict of the life and death sort.

I think at heart, I’m a fantasy purest of the most awful kind. A topic for an upcoming post.

Right now setting and character. Some people seem to have the mistaken idea that writing is just about the emotional journey of the characters and that setting is irrelevant: put them on a beach, in space ship, in the desert south west, in a fantasy world—it’s all the same.

No. It’s not. Say this to me, and I will think that you don’t write well–or haven’t written much. Remember this little piece of advice:

Place, more than anything else, helps to explain who the characters are and why they are different. The Universality of human emotion is what draws us to them, but it is place that keeps us reading. It is place, that if done well enough, will stay with us after the book is closed.

Never forget, we are in this particular place, at this particular time, to experience the story through this particular character. Place can only be experienced through POV, point of view. It’s not like a photograph, some kind of still objective picture of facts–no, this is a reality colored through the character’s perceptions, biases, fears, hopes and dreams. Many, many writers fail to understand that the detail you put into your setting can only be the detail that matters to your character. Setting is not props. Setting is a reflection of your character. Don’t believe it? Write the very same scene from two different POV characters. Things change meaning, depending on who is telling the story.

Writers who don’t understand that setting isn’t just props are missing a critical tool, especially in learning how to describe  effectively. You can describe and at the same time, reveal subtext, underlying theme, and important personal symbolism through simple word choice.

I wonder sometimes if anyone even pays attention to craft anymore. It takes time to write something well. Frustrated that there are so many mediocre books out there? Book that out right fail? Books that have everything and still don’t satisfy? This is why. It takes time and it takes care, and maybe it takes insight too–something people don’t have, and don’t seek out, and then take as invalid if it doesn’t fit into their poorly constructed stories.

Learn to listen writers….take everything you hear as seriously as you can–flattering or not. Stop worrying about getting published. Start worrying about what you are writing. Focus on the now. Focus on the small things. Don’t throw out another inferior work–try to write something of lasting meaning. Please.