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Writing A Novel - Setting by Anthony White
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Writing A Novel - Setting |
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Education
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Your novel needs a setting. The setting must be strong and suitable for your story. However, it must not overwhelm the story. Sprinkle it in as you go. Do not write travelogues. If you do research, as hard as it might be, don't use it all in the book. I have a manuscript set in France just before the Revolution. It's a great heap of a manuscript with pages and pages and pages of all the fascinating things I found in researching what they ate and drank and wore and said and did. My punishment for not being discerning in choosing what bits to use is that I have to go back and rewrite it, slashing out pages of description. Sigh! Wisdom holds that we should write what we know. This is especially true in choosing your setting. Blockbuster novels tend to be set in places like New York. I have never been to New York so if I were to set a story there, I'd have to rely on what other writers have said about New York. I believe this would make my story weaker because part of it would be filtered through another writer's view of the big city. So did I write a novel set in Paris? Well, I wanted to. And it's historical so no one knows for absolute certain what the air smelled like or how life felt then so any writer writing about it would have to rely on research. Still, it took me nearly a year just to do the in depth research on daily life in the 1780s. (Now you know why I wanted to use that research.) And I may point out, that darned novel has set its own record for fast rejections. Setting should be like good wallpaper. It enhances the story, fits perfectly and does not overwhelm the people in the room. If your setting does not come naturally out of your story, then you may have a problem. How people are and what they do varies according to their surroundings. I am writing this mystery novel set on Prince Edward Island. I tried writing it set in a city but it didn't work because the whole point of the novel is the insular, isolated, cloying aspect of small town/village life. It also helps that I grew up there and know the Island from tip to tip and know the way people are there. The setting of a novel can have nearly as much impact on the story as the main character. Consider Stephen King's The Shining and that great big old isolated hotel. Or the setting can be any where or everywhere. Mary Higgins Clark's books tend to have non-specific settings, or so it seems to me. They could be set in New England or just outside Winnipeg. Both work and work very well. Setting also covers more than geography. When in time is the novel set? What's the weather like. What special problems, if any, does the setting cause the hero? Exercise - Setting 1. Where is your novel set? 2. Is the setting important to the novel? 3. If not, why are you using that setting. thesis service
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