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by Jack M Bickham (mobi)

  LEARNING TO OBSERVE

  First-hand observation will help you clarify some of these stylistic techniques for yourself once you are aware of them. I encourage you to look at parts of the real setting-world around you, and think about how you would portray them. Look at the tree in your yard or nearby park—really look at it, for a change. How could you place that in your story setting and make it real and vibrant for your reader? Really look at that city bus as it approaches your stop. How could you put that bus into your story and make it practically leap off the page for your reader, so that it becomes a tremendously vital and real part of the setting?

  Make notes as you hone your observation-description skills, write practice paragraphs. Make sure they're not long, static paragraphs, but brief, evocative ones, centered on a mood. If you don't like a description you've produced, go back and rewrite it using stronger verbs and more specific nouns, or using a different feeling as the focus point, or putting something different into the setting for useful contrast.

  Such accurate observation, creative thought and careful verbal revision will soon result in surer and more skillful use of all the other techniques we have covered in this book. In handling setting, the use of precise language is mandatory, because your words are the conveyance of everything you know and your reader needs to know. Nothing else will work unless your verbal arsenal is on target.

  So important is verbal technique in setting, as a matter of fact, that we cannot leave the subject with the discussion given in this chapter. In chapter fifteen we will pursue the subject a bit more, with a number of highly specific exercises and work suggestions.

  CHAPTER 15

  EXERCISES TO SHARPEN YOUR SETTINGS

  Be warned in advance: This chapter is designed to make you practice some of the things you've learned in earlier chapters. None of it will be especially difficult for you now, but doing the suggested exercises correctly will require some investment of time as well as effort—and there's even a requirement for that aspect of fiction-writing which all amateurs dread and all selling professionals do: rewriting.

  FACTUAL DATA IN A SETTING

  Let's suppose you have the following information in your notebook after visiting a small town and making observations and then doing other factual research at the library.

  The name of the town is Elk City, and it's in the western part of Montana. In a valley in the Sapphire Mountains. Population is 3,000. County Seat of Morgan County. Courthouse on town square downtown, old brick building, two stories, with a dome. City hall, a small stucco structure, is nearby on Main Street. The town is quiet, but sometimes trucks going by on the nearby highway make a big racket. A bell in the tower at the First Presbyterian Church tolls the hour. Elk City has a city manager and city commission, five commissioners elected at large. Small police department and fire department, antiquated equipment. Sheriff's

  department in the basement of the courthouse is old and grungy. Sheriff has four deputies. It's cold in Elk City in the winters, cool in the summers. The surrounding mountains are tall, jagged and beautiful. No other town of any size nearby —people drive ninety miles to Missoula for major shopping expeditions. It's an easygoing place with a population on the elderly side, and hunters and fishermen visit a lot. Nothing much ever seems to happen. Some of the side streets are dirt only, and in the summers they're dusty. An old, open-pit copper quarry nearby, now abandoned, has water in it which sometimes smells bad on the hottest summer days. During the long, snowy winters, of course, this is no problem. It was a pleasant summer day, seventy degrees, when you visited last July 7 and 8.

  Elk City was founded by a man named John Jergens in the 1880s. He found a small vein of silver nearby, and for a few years the town boomed with silver mining. When the silver played out in the 1890s, copper was discovered and the big quarry, now an abandoned pit, provided steady work and income for about a hundred families. As copper production decreased, the town declined steadily, and by the 1920s it was about the size it is today. Old-timers still yearn for the good old days. Every year they have a Frontier Days celebration on September 1. Parade, community picnic, band performance in old Jergens City Park. People are proud of sticking it out in Elk City, and think one day the town will come back. They've been saying that for more than fifty years now.

  The town's five churches provide the center of social activity. There's also a Moose Lodge. People often gather for coffee at the Chicken Shack Cafe on Main Street or the Big Sky Motel's coffee shop on the edge of town, on Highway 16. The local paper, a weekly, is called The Bugle.

  Elk City used to be on a railroad passenger line, but that's long since closed. The old rock station is falling down. Once a day, about 4 p.m., a Montana Rail Link freight train pulls through on its way north, not stopping. The diesel engine usually blows its whistle at the Main Street crossing and farther north, at Bryson Road. The train comes back

  through, headed south, about midnight, and blows its horn again. It's a mournful sound at night.

  Movie theater, the Ritz is closed permanently and boarded up. Major street names other than Main, which runs east-west: High Street, Bluff Street, Sapphire Ave., Higgins Street, Selby Ave. The grade and high schools are on Selby. Sometimes in the winter, deer and even elk wander down out of the aspens and lodgepole pines on the mountainsides and walk right down Main Street. There are black bear nearby, too, and sometimes a mountain lion is reported. Area ranchers and sheepmen are bitter about federal and state laws protecting wolves and the occasional mountain lion.

  Study the above information, then duplicate Nancy Berland's Setting Research Form (Appendix 2), and fill in a copy of the form from the facts given.

  After doing this work, think about the kind of characters and plots that might be used in this general setting. For example, you might write about members of the local political scene, suddenly thrust into a crisis when it is discovered that pollution from the old copper mine has poisoned all local sources of water. Or you might put a romance in this setting, with the conflict stemming from the fact that the heroine is a native who loves the place, and her lover is a visitor intent on buying up property and changing everything by turning it into a gaudy gambling oasis.

  Think a bit, too, about some of the stories that might not work well, or at all, in this setting: a grim, police-method murder investigation might never work because the town's law enforcement is small and primitive; a plot involving members of a large juvenile gang would probably be out of the question because the town does not have large numbers of juveniles on the loose, and no stated crime problem. (I suggest that you think of these "impossibles" briefly just to further clarify your understanding of how setting enables —or precludes —certain kinds of stories.)

  Having done all this work, take another step. Select the bare bones of a plot and a cast of your own that you believe might work in this setting. Then, on another sheet of paper or two, make a preliminary list of other general aspects of the setting which you believe you would have to learn about if you were actually going to write this imagined book. This list might include "ethnic makeup of population," "voting record in general elections," or even something like "worst drouth in area history." This will be your list, growing out of your ideas about what your story plot should be in the given setting.

  Having done this, if you can hone your list into one or more specific questions —about anything at all that you think you might need to know —be sure to do so, making them as detailed and lengthy as possible. Then ponder a bit where you might get all this additional information if you were really getting ready to write the book.

  Finally, write a 300-word description of the setting as you would use it in terms of mood and viewpoint. If you were planning a romance, for example, your selection of sensory details might be generally sunny, summery, ruggedly inviting. And your selection of factual material would tend to emphasize the positive and upbeat. If you were planning a gothic terror story, on the other hand, you would be shooting for quite a
different tone, and your selected details probably would tend more toward the dark, the isolated and the bizarre.

  If you worked conscientiously on this assignment, you went through the essential process for checking out, analyzing, and using information in order to present a credible and effective story setting. In addition, although no stress was placed on the fact at the time, you also produced a lengthy piece of writing about setting.

  Going through the process in this way is its own reward; nothing teaches better than practice. To assist you further, however, here is a suggested list of questions which might help you analyze how well you did on the job.

  • What viewpoint did you select to describe this setting? Why?

  • What mood did you select? Does the mood grow directly out of your perception of the given facts about the setting,

  from your idea about a plot problem to put in that setting, from your conception of the kind of character you would use as the viewpoint in such a setting, or on some other factor?

  • Did you find or imaginatively add some salient setting aspect which might recur in your story as a central point of focus or symbol? What is it? Why did you choose it?

  • What single, dominant impression about this setting did you identify as a centralizing point for your treatment of it?

  • Did you identify anything in the history of the setting which would contribute to a prevailing cultural attitude which might be useful in your story?

  • What kind of central character would work best for you in this setting?

  • Did you introduce that character in your 300 words? If not, should you have done so?

  • Was your description of setting static, a "stop-action" picture, or was there movement of some kind? Does consideration of this question suggest possible revision to you?

  • Could this setting unify an otherwise fragmentary plot? How?

  • Could this setting possibly become virtually a character itself?

  • What contrasts if any did you use in describing this setting?

  • Did you avoid weak passives in your writing?

  • Did you use strong action verbs and specific nouns?

  • Do you find a lot of adjectives and adverbs that ought to be "killed?"

  • Do you habitually do this much work on setting for your stories?

  In thinking back over previous chapters, you may come up with other self-check questions you want to ask. My list is, as stated, only suggestive. We learn our writing craft from trial and error, from failure, from praise, from teachers, from studying other writers, and from analyzing our own work in a critical (but not negative) manner. It's not enough to read about technique.

  Practice —and thoughtful self-analysis —are mandatory if you are to grow in the craft.

  For these reasons, it's never wise to rush through an assignment like the one above. Even if some of the work seems unnecessary, you never know where it might lead you. Work that may seem like drudgery at times may provide an insight that will vastly improve your fiction.

  OBSERVATION IN THE FIELD

  Find a local site that's outside your usual haunts. This may be a park you've never visited, a courtroom downtown, a cafe down the road somewhere, or a church or school you've noticed but never visited. Taking a notebook (and small recorder, if you have one), go to that unfamiliar place and spend at least an hour. Observe details. Make notes. Record sounds if possible. Try to identify the feel of the place. If there are people there, note how they look, how they dress, how they talk, their ages, their general demeanor, what they talk about, how they seem to feel, and what they are doing. Think about using this place in a setting.

  Upon returning home —and within twenty-four hours while your memory is fresh —write a 300-word description of this site as if you planned to use it as the setting for a story.

  After completing the setting description, use the questions listed for the first exercise to analyze this story setting.

  Additionally, this exercise provides a good self-analysis of your writing style in handling setting material. Consider the following questions, and others like them:

  • How many different senses are represented in your writing? (To facilitate analysis, you may wish to go through your copy and underline sight impressions in red, let's say, sounds in blue, odors in green, and so on.) Does one sense predominate? Did you overlook something that you might have usefully said about the setting if you had remembered another sense?

  • How many adverbs and adjectives do you find? Can you kill any?

  • Look for weak passive constructions. Repair them.

  • Can you strengthen any verbs? Make any nouns more specific and concrete?

  • Does your writing here evoke a specific feeling or mood in the reader? (Did you think about that while writing?)

  • How many words of three or more syllables do you find? There shouldn't be many—big words usually hint at obscurity, and you want clarity.

  • Write down what conclusions you can draw about your own writing tendencies at this point. For example, do you tend to use weak passives? Do you tend to adopt an omniscient viewpoint without thinking about it? Do you enrich your copy with multiple sense impressions, or do you tend to concentrate only on sight, for example?

  Finally, rewrite the segment you prepared for this exercise. Improve it, knowing what you now see more clearly following your self-analysis.

  LEARNING FROM A WRITER YOU LIKE

  Seek to become a more consciously aware critic at the same time you read for pleasure or relaxation.

  For this assignment, study a few pages of a story by a writer you admire. Find a section in the work which clearly deals with story setting. Mark up this copy —photocopy pages from the magazine or book, and work from the copies, if you can't bear to mark on the original.

  Try to note, look for, question, and mark as many aspects as possible of this writer's handling of setting. Marginally annotate mood. Underline strong verbs.

  Repeat the process outlined in the first two exercises. Again, try to write down some conclusions, even if the work seems only to verify things you knew before. Noting them again will deepen your understanding and retention of principles.

  LEARNING FROM YOUR OWN COPY

  Go back into your own story files and pull out a chapter or section dealing with setting. Go through the entire process of analysis outlined on earlier pages of this chapter.

  Then, rigorously analyze any mistakes or slips you may have uncovered and ask yourself how you would handle this setting problem differently today. Are there gaps in your factual base? Does the setting lack feeling? Is the prose "purple" at times?

  Rewrite the segment if you are now dissatisfied with it — even if it's part of something you previously sold. (The day you can't improve is the day you stop having a future as a writer.)

  KNOWING YOUR OWN TENDENCIES

  With regard to most of the work done for this chapter, you should seriously consider a fact mentioned fleetingly at an earlier point. That is: In going through the exercises, you may have exhibited previously unexamined creative tendencies of your own in dealing with setting. Having done this work and thought about it, you can perhaps see yourself more clearly. Did you let yourself get impatient? (I always do, and have to struggle against this known tendency in myself.) In the sample of your earlier work that you looked at, did you perhaps discover a previously unnoticed tendency toward purple prose or weak passive constructions in your writing style when describing setting? Did you discover that you always tend to adopt the same kind of story viewpoint in dealing with setting, and had never realized before that you did this?

  Some of your ingrained creative tendencies are probably excellent. Others may be counterproductive or even destructive. Study yourself as well as others, and try to see your own work in a clearer, more objective light.

  Such self-analysis of your tendencies as a writer not only

  makes you more aware of what kind of writer you are at the moment,
it may reveal to you new directions . . . new tasks to be undertaken . . . new possibilities for growth. In this way, the truth will truly set you free to become a far better writer than you ever imagined you might be.

  CHAPTER 16

  A PROGRAM FOR FURTHER STUDY AND GROWTH

  If we have accomplished anything in this study, I hope it has made you more aware of the importance of your fiction settings, and how setting interacts with so many other story factors. Setting, as you now see clearly, is far more than a painted physical backdrop behind the stage of your story's action; its effects ripple into all other aspects of your storytelling.

  The observations and brief assignments included in this book were designed to increase both your awareness and technical agility in working with setting. You may already feel better qualified than ever before to handle setting problems. But work in this area, like most aspects of writing fiction, is never entirely done. All of us must continue to strive to sharpen our perceptions, our skills, and our ability to observe our own work as well as that of others.

  Having finished this book, you are now just at the beginning of continuing work. How you proceed from this point will depend on many factors, including available time, the kind of fiction you want to write, and your discovered strengths and weaknesses. However you work to grow from this point forward, there are a few things you can do, and a few questions you can keep in mind, that will provide focus for the days ahead.

  KEEPING TRACK

  First and foremost, you need to develop a repository for your ongoing study of setting. You may already have one, in the form

  of a daily journal or one or more notebooks in which you make notations about the writing craft. Or perhaps you have a series of file folders where you collect notes, newspaper and magazine pieces or photos that might be useful one day in depicting a setting. If you have such a system for regularly making notes or keeping research material, I urge you to expand your use of it in ways to be mentioned shortly. If you do not have a journal or any kind of file for observations and general writing data, then consider starting one immediately.