Setting is where the
story’s at. Not just in the literal sense, but in that old Sam Cooke, 1960’s,
“this looks fun, let’s stay a while” way. A bland setting is Van Gogh’s starry
night painted all in beige. It’s cauliflower mashed potatoes. Maybe it can be overcome
by great dialogue, interesting characters, a fun premise, but a truly memorable
setting can elevate a story faster than any other element. After all, what are
characters without a world to live in? What’s a conflict without stakes that
matter? Isn’t that tender, romantic conversation made more special because
you’re transported into that mountain cabin where the fireplace is crackling
and the wood smoke fills the air?
Even the most
minimalist story builds a setting to transport the reader right into what’s
happening. Take Hemmingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” as an example. While
most of the story is reserved for dialogue, the whole opening is dedicated to
describing a setting that’s dry, hot, and exposed. It sets the tone for the
story and gives a frame of reference, a context, to the characters and
conflict.
“I Have No Mouth, and I
Must Scream,” Harlan Ellison’s gripping short story, takes longer to fully
describe the horrific post-apocalyptic nightmare in which the characters
languish. In many ways, the antagonist of the story is the setting as well as
an entity, tormenting those last few survivors.
Would the characters of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road be as impactful in, say, the
setting of Pat Frank’s Alas, Babylon?
Each setting forces characters to behave a certain way, to make decisions in a
logical manner depending on their circumstances. It is the basis of the story
itself, the bedrock upon which foundations are built. The claustrophobic,
paranoid themes of Michael Crichton’s Sphere
are a deliberate and direct result of his choice to have it take place at the
crushing depths of the ocean.
I really can’t think of
a single book in my top hundred that didn’t have a fantastic setting first and
foremost. Settings are what transport us to places we’ve never been, places
nobody’s ever been. Alone on mars, trapped in a time loop, hunting Civil
War-era vampires. So often, the entire premise of a story hinges on its
setting. What’s Harry Potter without
Hogwarts? Ringworld without…well,
without the Ring? We want a world built, word by word, so we can snuggle down
comfortablyand just be there. The better the setting, the less work it takes to
allow the story to transport you. A gripping conflict may keep you reading
until you hear the morning birds singing, but it’s the setting that got you
there in the first place.
So pick a fun setting.
(Dragonriders of Pern)
Pick a weird setting. (Day of the Triffids)
Pick a setting you’ve
never seen before, then populate it with the sorts of things you’d stay up
until five in the morning to read. (Discworld,
over and over again)
Just don’t pick a
boring setting. That’s not where the story’s at.
Excerpt
I guess there’s always been a Department of Intangible Assets, in some way or another, since humanity first banded together against the dark. Ancient orders of knights, sects of religions, monasteries and their like had been the first real organizations determined to hold off the things that bled into our world from other realities. Great and epic individuals did a lot of work in the past, though more often than not mere pawns as one ultra-powerful being played against another. Gilgamesh. Solomon. Miyamoto Musashi for a while even worked as a kind of Japanese defender against the supernatural. Things must have been easier back then. If somebody had a problem with a corpse rising from the ground and eating people, or with creatures slinking out of the mountains and taking children, they could talk openly about it, and people would fit it neatly into whatever cultural narrative they had. No press releases concerning carbon monoxide leaks, no awkward local police trying to stutter their way through an ogre rampage by blaming gang violence and drugs. If you were a 17th Century farmer in the Tajima Province of Japan and tengu started picking off your village one by one, Musashi would come by one day, cut down all those dark spirits, and then leave. You’d replant your fields, mourn your losses, and tell warning stories about warding off evil. And, probably, pay him whatever he wanted.
Modern times gave way to a general idea that reason and logic were enough to stop something from dragging you into the sewers and wearing your skin to protect itself from daylight. It’s easy to see why: it doesn’t happen to a lot of people, therefore it must not happen. I see it all the time, people who say things like “I’ve never seen a ghost, so they must not exist.”
Oh yeah? Because if spirits did exist, they’d all be tripping over their ghost dicks to haunt you? Do you understand the preternatural forces that conspire, the circumstances that line up, to create any kind of ghost? Let alone one that shows up in your room at night and moans about revenge or betrayal or rattles some chains and teaches you a valuable lesson about being selfish?“Well, there’s no such thing as Bigfoot. All those pictures are super blurry and grainy,” they say, their voices nasally and snobby, like all the knowledge of the world is pumped directly into their tiny brains through their tiny phones. I don’t care to get into whether or not any of the literally thousands of kinds of entities that flit in and out of forests would like to be called “Bigfoot,” but just because you haven’t left your couch in twenty years doesn’t mean there’s not something out there you don’t understand. Go stand out in a remote Colorado forest one night.
Turn off your phone, open your eyes and ears, and wait. When you feel those eyes watching, and when you know, deep in that primitive monkey brain, way, way down inside, that there’s more than just the animals you have names for sharing that clearing with you, then you can call me to tell me that there’s no such thing as Bigfoot.
That is, if you live to turn your phone back on again.
Today's the big day, and now the book's been let loose into the wild, but I wanted to be sure I came by and said how much I appreciated you having me here on your blog. Thank you so much, its really an honor.
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