The Challenge of Writing Setting

One of the aspects of writing I have the most trouble with is writing setting. Pretty much everything about it. I have a hard time imagining all the details around a character, beyond their interactions with it.

My writing is heavily focused on the visual. My writing reads like anime or a graphic novel, where all things are shown through visual elements. Don’t even get me started on non-visual aspects of setting. I’m extraordinarily adept at not using the sense of smell in what I write.

Source

I took a writing class this winter and one of the days we talked about setting. How setting should be a living and breathing aspect of our writing. The story as a whole and the setting should be fused, to the point where the story and the setting couldn’t be separated. Or if the setting were changed, the meaning of the story would change.

That finally struck me that I need to think more about the setting of the stories. Sometimes, I can’t really help where a scene would be. A space battle can’t take place in a garden. But I could control where my character is at a certain point, during a certain discussion, and what the location will impart on the meaning of a conversation or plot event.

And there is more to setting. Setting is not just where a story is, but its environment. The culture around an event and character (Thanks to Inkette Jessica Corra’s talk at ARWA, I finally put that together!). The types of a food a person eats? All part of setting and atmosphere.

I think it’s finally sticking how I can make that aspect of my writing stronger. Bringing elements around a character to life and weaving it into the events to either complement or contrast.

The post The Challenge of Writing Setting appeared first on Anxiety Ink.