I noticed that I had only one piece about settings, and that one was about imaginary places. This didn't really surprise me because I am not a big fan of descriptions of setting. Elmore Leonard famously advised us to leave out the parts people don't read, and that is how I tend to feel about those descriptions. But I admit they have their place - sometimes.
You can find some excellent essays on setting here at the SleuthSayers website. In one of them I found this comment from O'Neil DeNoux: "Setting is not just the name of a place or time period, it is the feeling of the place and time period. It includes all conditions – region, geography, neighborhood, buildings, interiors, climate, time of day, season of year."
Good starting place. I began thinking about descriptions of setting that really stood out for me and a few came to mind:
* The beginnings of Chandler's novels.
* Elizabeth Peters' descriptions of Luxor and the Valley of the Kings in various Amelia Peabody novels.
* Doyle's descriptions of Dartmoor in Hound of the Baskervilles.
* Tony Hillerman's description of the Navaho Reservation.
* Hong Bay in William Marshall's Yellowthread Street novels.
Personally I am much more interested in interior settings: descriptions of houses and rooms. How many full size reproductions have been made of 221B Baker Street? Rex Stout provided a detailed plan of Nero Wolfe's famous office but that doesn't prevent people from arguing with it or (very common) picturing it in mirror image.
If you want a real master class in describing interiors in an interesting manner open any of Mick Herron's Slow Horse novels. Near the beginning of each one you will find a description of Slough House; each version is different, and each is intriguing.All this came to mind because I have a story in the current issue of Black Cat Weekly and setting is important in it. All the tales in my "Bad Day" series take place in Brune County, which is fictional, but "A Bad Day For Good Samaritans" centers on a park which is very much based on a real one in my city.
Well, here is a little report I wrote on Facebook in 2020 about something that happened to me:
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| The pond this week |
My story begins with a similar situation except the mother is nasty (conflict is the kernel of fiction). So I went to some trouble to describe the place. But the other scenes in the story are afterthoughts, with hardly more than a few words of description.
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| The pond in 2020 |
I suppose the point I am making is that you don't go deep into setting unless it is crucial to the story. That could mean it is part of the plot (as in mine) or part of the mood. But as always in short stories, the rule is not one word should be included that doesn't move the story forward.
Now over to you: what are your favorite fictional settings?
You mention my favorite setting here, Rob: Nero Wolfe's brownstone. 221B may be more famous, but for my money nobody's ever brought a building more fully to life through simple language. Over the course of the novels you get to know every inch of the place intimately, and it becomes inseparable from the characters of Wolfe and Archie.
ReplyDeleteOn the fantasy front, I'd suggest Terry Pratchett's Discworld, and specifically the sprawling city of Ankh-Morpork. Another location fleshed out over dozens of novels, to the point where it's essentially a character itself.
"Anonymous" here being Joe Walker. No idea why the thing doesn't know that.
DeleteOh, yes! Ankh-Morpork. Remember the bridge with the statues of hippos? And the Tower of Art? I could go on... BTW, I am one of the many who mirror-image Wolfe's office in his mind, thinking it is on the other side of the house.
DeleteCrow Woman's Path and Dark Hollow (from my own Crow Woman's series and Laskin, SD) - what can I say? I've spent a lot of time there.
ReplyDeleteNero Wolfe's brownstone.
The Land of "Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There".
The Fastness of the Handdarata in Gethen - "The Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula LeGuin
All fascinating places. Except I admit I don't recall the landscapes of "Darkness." I remember more from LeGuin's The Dispossessed, which I liked better.
DeleteOne of the strengths of the fantasy genre is that "setting" becomes world-building, which at its best is sheer genius. I love Lois McMaster Bujold's Barrayar and Robert Jackson Bennett's City of Stairs. And how about Tolkien's Middle Earth? But in mystery, I'm with Elmore Leonard. I tried to start a story with setting, a writers' retreat based loosely on the Atlantic Center for the Arts in North Florida, and after one paragraph my protagonist burst out fully developed like Athena from the brow of Zeus, saying, "At least the little literette could write." The "little literette" was sleeping with her husband, and the story took off from there. (It was called "A Work in Progress" and appeared in AHMM.)
ReplyDeleteHave you read Bennett's Leviathan books? Talk about world-building!
ReplyDeleteJanet Hutchings said she used my description of the primative Everglades in Swamped as an example of setting. Very flattering, to a noobee like me.
ReplyDeleteThinking about your stories, I recall diners and cars and … a warehouse, was it? But you're right. Just a brushstroke or two and a reader's mind fills in the blanks.
Rob here: Big compliment indeed. I like that word: brushstroke. Don't use a roller!
ReplyDeleteMy favorite setting is John Grisham's Ford County, especially how it's depicted in "The Last Juror." It was my favorite part of the book.
ReplyDeleteI actually read "A Time to Kill" because I fell in love with the setting (the two books both take place in Ford County, MS.)
Interesting. Thanks!
DeleteJust wanted to say I enjoyed the story of the Good Samaritan and the Bad Day!
ReplyDeleteThanks! It was fun to write.
DeleteA writer friend from Arizona visited Boston, and I provided a tour. The one place she had to see -- the only place she had to see -- was Spencer's office on the corner of Boylston and Berkeley. The next day she was off to find Susan's home in Cambridge. I walk down Boylston St. regularly and often look up at the building and think, "That's Spenser's office and across the street used to be Dorothy Muriel's." When I told John Floyd this, he said, "That's what I did when I was in Boston." Setting can become something of a character.
ReplyDeleteThe first time I visited New Orleans O'Neil DeNoux gave us a tour (his family has lived there like five generations). When we got to the house where his '40s detective had his office and I saw the park where the P.I. had spotted a woman in one of the stories I felt absolute shivers!
DeleteRobert, I missed this yesterday. Nice article. Thanks for putting up a quote by me.
ReplyDeleteHa, and I just mentioned you in the comments too.
DeleteExcellent piece! Since all my stories are based in Paris, I have to convey setting without leaning too heavily on it. Here's one example, from the beginning of my story "The Wheels on the Bus," which ran in Noir Nation.
ReplyDeleteThe bus had just pulled away from Gambetta, the first stop of the 69 line, heading west.
He checked on the passengers in the rear-view mirror. People were reading Paris Match
magazine, clutching shopping bags, gazing out the window at the leafy trees lining the stone walls of Père Lachaise cemetery.
But three teenage girls were sitting in the handicapped seats, the low ones in the center of
the bus. He had known they were trouble as soon as they failed to say “Bonjour” when they got on. It was his habit to give every entering passenger a greeting, and he expected the same in return.