–China Lake – Meg Gardiner
Notice the author uses contrast — between what the city — Santa Barbara, known to be one of the nicest and most exclusive of California coastal towns, (also known for its red tiled roofs which creates the red of the red sash imagery) — and the area surrounding the home to show the world the POV character came from to enter the world of the sister-in-law. Gardiner also doesn’t leave the reader to guess the POV character’s impressions or emotions surrounding her ex-sister-in-law, choosing words to describe her living place such as neglected, faded, humped, matted, Thriftshop and dingy. She even names the specific food stuff visible — creamed corn and SPAM.
One last point to notice is that Gardiner doesn’t stop the story to give a description; she filters in sensory details, movement — driving, looking — in with internalization (her internal thought process). This is a powerful use of description that places the reader in the Setting and gives insights into the POV character and the ex-sister-in-law.
Note: Notice the specific word choice of velvet — a tactile, luxurious, even glamorous fabric used to contrast with the rough and decidedly unglamorous house. A clever use of the sense of touch for something we wouldn’t ordinarily think of touching (the ocean, the city, the lawn, the house siding).
The next is a fascinating example — a little long though, which impacts the pacing of the story, but reveals so much about the protagonist Salander. In the first section the author shows almost a full page of Salander’s decision-making process as she contrasts her current apartment with where she might like to live. Notice what this decision-making process reveals about her character.
She had never thought about an alternative to the 500 square foot in Lundagatan, where she had spent her childhood. Through her trustee at the time, the lawyer Holger Palmgren, she had been granted permission of the apartment when she turned eighteen. She plopped down on the lumpy sofa in her combination office/living room and began to think.
The apartment on Lundagatan looked into a courtyard. It was cramped and not the least bit comfortable. The view from her bedroom was a firewall on a gable façade. The view from the kitchen was of the back of the building facing the street and the entrance to the basement storage area. She could see a streetlight from her living room, and a few branches of a birch tree.
The first requirement of her new home was that it should have some sort of view.
She did not have a balcony, and had always envied well-to-do neighbors higher up in the building who spent warm days with a cold beer under an awning on theirs. The second requirement was that her new home would have a balcony.
What should the apartment look like? She thought about Blomkvist’s apartment—700 square feet in one open space in a converted loft on Bellmansgatan with views of City Hall and the locks at Slussen. She liked it there. She wanted to have a pleasant, sparsely furnished apartment that was easy to take care of. That was third point on her list of requirements.
For years she had lived in cramped spaces. Her kitchen was a mere 100 square feet, with room for only a tiny table and two chairs. Her living room was 200 square feet. The bedroom was 120. Her fourth requirement was that the new apartment should have plenty of space and closets. She wanted to have a proper office and a big bedroom where she could spread herself out.
Her bathroom was a windowless cubbyhole with square cement slabs on the floor, an awkward half bath, and plastic wallpaper that never got really clean no matter how hard she scrubbed it. She wanted a washing machine in the apartment and not down in some basement. She wanted to have tiles and a big bath. She wanted the bathroom to smell fresh, and she wanted to be able to open a window.
— The Girl Who Played With Fire — Stieg Larsson
As I indicated this was a long passage, but the author consciously slowed the reading experience so that the reader could see how this young woman was metamorphosing. He showed where Salander was coming from to highlight where she was going. The above passage was on page 86-87. Salander encountered obstacles while finding a new place, but she persevered — which showed more characterization — and managed to acquire a new apartment. Later the author spends several more pages showing Salander making quite an extensive trip through IKEA to purchase new furniture to replace the marginal left overs. But the reader sees very little of the new apartment except that it does have a view and she bought furniture for a spare bedroom. We’re shown only what matters to Salander — that her apartment is large enough to have a spare room, all the furniture is new, and that’s about it.
Later, on page 623 in the same story, another character, Blomvist, is asked to describe the protagonist’s sofa as a means of verifying that he really did know her because the protagonist has a well-earned reputation of guarding her privacy, which includes her home space to an extreme degree.
“On the occasions I visited her she had a worn-out, extremely ugly piece of furniture with a certain curiosity value. I would guess it’s from the early fifties. It has two shapeless cushions covered in brown cloth with a yellow pattern of sorts on it. The cloth is torn in several places and the stuffing was coming out when I saw it last.”
– The Girl Who Played With Fire – Stieg Larsson
Doesn’t this description of one piece of furniture give you a unique perspective on who Salander is? The use of specific Setting details over the course of a book is used to symbolize change — the change in who Salander is from an earlier book and the start of the current story, what she values — or not — and reveals in small stages the growth of this character from totally isolated from others to one willing to live in a different way.
Later — on page 664 — Blomkvist has finally found Salander’s current apartment and here’s his description of where she lives:
Blomkvist was standing at that moment by a window looking out at a magnificent view that stretched far from Gamla Stan towards Saltsjon. He felt numb. There was a kitchen off the hall to the right of the front door. Then there was a living room, an office, a bedroom, and even a guest room that seemed not to have been used. The mattress was still in its plastic wrapper and there were no sheets. All the furniture was brand-new, straight from IKEA.
What floored Blomkvist was that Salander had bought the pied-a-terre that had belonged to Percy Barnevik, a captain of industry. The apartment was about 3,800 square feet and worth twenty-five million kroner.
Blomkvist wandered through deserted, almost eerily empty corridors and rooms with patterned parquet floors of different kinds of woods, and Tricia Guild wallpaper of the type that Berger had once coveted. At the center of the apartment was a wonderfully bright living room with an open fireplace, but Salander seemed never to have had a fire. There was an enormous balcony with a fantastic view. There was a laundry room, a sauna, a gym, storage rooms and a bathroom with a king-size bath. There was even a wine cellar, which was empty except for an unopened bottle of Quinta do Noval port – Nacional! from 1976. Blomkvist struggled to imagine Salander with a glass of port in her hand. An elegant card indicated that it had been a moving-in present from the estate agent.
The kitchen contained all manner of equipment, with a shiny French gourmet stove with a gas oven as the focus. Blomkvist had never before set eyes on a Cornue Chateau 120. Salander probably used it for boiling tea.
[The description goes on for another page until the author wraps up with the following paragraph.]
The arrangement was all out of proportion. Salander had stolen several billion kroner and bought herself an apartment with space for an entire court. But she only needed the three rooms she had furnished. The other eighteen rooms were empty.
Blomkvist ended his tour in her office. There were no flowers anywhere. There were no paintings or even posters on the wall. There were no rugs or wall hangings. He could not see a single decorative bowl, candlestick, or even a knick-knack that had been saved for sentimental reasons.
Blomkvist felt as if someone were squeezing his heart. He felt that he had to find Sal
ander and hold her close.
She would probably bite him if he tried.
–The Girl Who Played With Fire – Stieg Larsson
I’m not advocating using so much word space to describe the living space of every character, or even using such long descriptions of Setting in every kind of story, but in this 724-page story the author chose to show much of Salander’s personality via her personal space.
The reader saw only three rooms, and only the furnishings of those rooms because that’s what mattered to Salander. These rooms made her appear as if her life was full and positively changing. But because we were able to get a different perspective on Salander’s private space, from another character, Blomkvist, it allowed the reader to see Salander in a very different light and to feel, much like Blomkvist felt, that this young woman was very isolated and alone. By allocating enough words in his descriptions, he brought home the shock of the contrast of those descriptions.
Here’s another example from mystery author Walter Mosley. The POV character, Easy Rawlins, has tracked down a lead on a missing person he is seeking. Instead of describing his impressions of the missing person directly, Mosley reveals the character through what he sees of the man’s home environment.
It was a studio apartment. A Murphy bed had been pulled down from the wall. It was unmade and jumbled with dirty clothes and dishes. A black-and-white portable TV with bent-up rabbit-ear antennas sat on a maple chair at the foot of the bed. There was no sofa, but three big chairs, upholstered with green carpeting, were set in a circle facing each other at the center of the room.
The room smelled strongly of perfumes and body odors. This scent of sex and sensuality was off-putting on a Saturday afternoon.
–Cinnamon Kiss – Walter Mosley
What if Mosley had decided to short change the reader here and go for a more abbreviated room description:
It was a messy studio apartment. The man must have been a low-life loser to live in such a place.
Sometimes that’s all a reader needs, but that is telling, not showing. With a few more lines, the author brought the reader deeper into the missing man’s character by showing who he was via Setting.
Note: The important element to remember is that place can and should be filtered through a specific character’s emotions, impressions, viewpoint, and focus. How one character sees a Setting can be more important than the Setting itself.
Ignoring the powerful use of characterization and Setting decreases the subtext of your story and also decreases the immediacy a character feels in your story world.
ASSIGNMENT
Using Setting to reveal character:
If you are not currently working on a manuscript or feel more comfortable working on a generic situation try Part 1 of this assignment. If you have a WIP [Work In Progress] feel free to try Part 2. Do whichever part works for you to understand the power of Setting to show characterization.
PART 1:
Choose a room in your home. Look for a more private or personal room — a bedroom, writing area, kitchen, etc. — vs. a public space — living room, bathroom, anywhere you’d feel comfortable having strangers come in and walk through. Now describe this room in 2-4 sentences maximum from the following POVs:
1) Yours.
2) An acquaintance or relative you think may disapprove of you or your life choices.
3) Your POV [1st or 3rd person] while giving an impression of you to the reader.
Again only 2–4 sentences max. What do you focus on? What do they focus on? What words do you choose to describe your space? What are their word choices that show you are in a different POV? What do your word choices reveal about the character viewing the room and the character that lives in the room?
PART 2 – YOUR WIP:
Choose a Setting description of less than a paragraph from your story. In a maximum of 2 – 4 sentences, show this Setting through the following POVs, even if you do not use all three in your manuscript:
1) The protagonist’s POV.
2) A secondary character’s POV, especially one who is very different from the protagonist.
3) Your protagonist’s POV again, but this time giving an impression of another character through describing that character’s relationship with the Setting.
Again, only 2–4 sentences maximum. What does the protagonist focus on? What does the secondary character [antagonist or villain] focus on? What are his or her word choices to describe the Setting? How do these word choices change the feel of the Setting and what the reader sees?
Intention: The purpose of this exercise is to start to show you the power of POV as it related to Setting. Change the POV, and though the Setting might remain the same, the impressions the reader receives of that Setting can vary wildly. If those impressions don’t change you probably are showing the Setting through your POV as opposed to your characters.
RECAP
* Remember that place can and should be filtered through a specific character’s emotions, impressions, viewpoint, and focus. How one character sees a Setting can be more important than the Setting itself.
* Do not stop or slow your story flow to show a Setting or details of a Setting unless that Setting reveals something important about the story or characters.
* Consider showing the same setting through two different characters to reveal information about the POV character or information about another character that they may not know about themselves. For example if a young woman thinks of herself as independent and self-contained and the reader is shown from her personal space how she has saved mementos of her childhood or of the people who have cared for her in the past, you are showing the reader something about her the character that she herself does not realize.
Part 3
USING SETTING DETAIL TO ENHANCE SETTING
Sensory detail is one of the most underrated tools in a writer’s toolbox and can make a world of difference in creating novels that stand out in a reader’s mind. Not every Setting needs all five senses described in detail — that approach is overkill and can have a major impact on your story pacing. But when introducing the reader to a character, or changing the location of the story, or focusing a reader in on a place that’s going to play a larger role in the story, then by all means dig deeper to create a strong Setting image. And a key way to do this is via sensory details.
Use sensory details in your Setting when you first change a location or open a chapter or to indicate a shift in the emotional state of the POV character. Think in terms of which sensory details a POV character would notice at that particular time. Change the time and emotional state of the POV character and you should notice a difference in which sensory details are being noticed. An example might be listening to specific music at the opening of the scene. What can be soft and relaxing at the beginning of the scene can be lonely and low-energy at the end of the scene. Have you ever entered a favorite store and found the music upbeat and fun only to discover that the person with you finds the same music annoying and dated? Each person’s description of the music would create a different feel for a reader about the store Setting.
Texture is so often overlooked in a story, but can act as a metaphor rich in symbolism for the POV character. One character standing in an Iowa cornfield, feeling the wind and the sun enveloping them, feels nurtured and can taste the richness of the soil, the expanse of the Setting. Another character in the very same Setting can feel the dirt coating their tongue, the sun beating against them, drying their skin, sucking the very life out of them with its relentless sameness.
Think of the feel of different times of the day during different seasons. I moved from a four-season climate to a two-season climate and am still waiting for certain sensory cues as to what season it is based on daily temperatures.
But think beyond simple hot, warm, cold. One character who is very athletic or runs on a warmer body core temperature [many men, especially young men, can fall into this category] may find an environment just to their liking whereas a
nother character in the same environment is shivering. [I’m always that other character!]. Also think of other tactile experiences — what does wind feel like? Or fog? Or dry dust in the air vs. humidity?
Smell is a wealth of communication. Were you aware that after three months we retain only 30% of our visual memory, but even after a year we retain 100% of smell memory? Smell activates our primordial or the oldest part of our brains, so if you are missing scents on the page, you’re missing a very subtle but powerful element of sensory detail.
The following descriptions come from an interview with a Norwegian Scent Researcher. She is describing some of the locations she has visited to collect samples of scent.
Havana. It smells sensual, of Cuba Libre [a rum, cola, and lime cocktail], coffee, dogs, and freshly washed laundry fluttering on endless balconies. The streets smell like they are crumbling, decaying, rotting. But unlike cities in the United States, Havana has been doing this for centuries. It rots in style. Berlin’s Neukӧlln neighborhood is the closest you can get to Istanbul: sunflower oil, bread, dry cleaning, laundry detergent, tobacco, cheap aftershave, and kebabs. The outlying Colonia Hacienda de Echegaray district in Mexico City smells of fake leather boots, corn, dust, concrete, cocoa, burnt and moldy earth, plastic, sweat, chili peppers, and hot straw.
Writing Active Setting Book 1: Characterization and Sensory Detail Page 4