Specific Setting

Download: Specific Setting

Everything I said about general settings goes for specific settings too.  It's all about showing, not telling, and showing only what you need to.  But specific settings are more challenging because you need to substantially involve them in your story.  Specific settings are the objects your characters interact with, so you need to include those details without being too obvious about it.

This is another place where my Inverse Coco Chanel Principle comes in handy.  As long as you're sticking to concrete sensory information, you should have no trouble writing vivid specific settings.

But here's some food for thought:

What Physical Attributes are important to the scene or scenes set here? Where is this setting located relative to other settings?  How did the characters get there?  What time is it?  Any relevant temperature or weather information?  Readers might want to know if it's cold and rainy, because that might affect your character's emotions.

How about architecture and design features?  What are the light sources?  Any confusing, maze-like hallways or immense, intimidating rooms?  Is the furniture expensive, or worn-out?  Any technology specific to this location, like the only phone in a small Western town, or the holographic televisions on the walls of the Martian sports bar?

What Human Attributes are important here?  Is there a well-defined social atmosphere, like a hippie hookah bar, or a tense legal office?

How about furniture characters?  Any clerks that work here, or people that perpetually loiter here?  How does their presence help define the location?

And once again, take a mental walk around this place, and describe every sight, sound, smell, taste, texture, and color you can think of.  You never know what you might use.

Again, remember that readers do not remember facts, they remember people doing things.  

To show your settings, show your characters interacting with them.  Don't just have the narrator look around a house and list the furniture, have them touch it, smell it, hear it creak as they sit on it.  That's how you bring a specific setting to life.

Don't say "There was a teak partner's desk in one corner, with a stack of papers on top.  Bob walked over to it and picked up the papers."  Say "Bob walked over to a teak partner's desk in the corner and grabbed the stack of papers that was on top."  Any time you catch yourself using any variant of the verb "to be" (was, is, are, etc.), that's a clue that there's room for improvement.  It's much easier for readers to visualize actions, and "to be" is not an action."

Setting development can be one of the toughest lessons to learn as a writer.  The temptation to use too much is always there, but if you cut too much you end up with talking mannequins in a white room.  Either way, be rigorous in your notes.  Sometimes a fact about the setting can open up an entire story.