Setting As Character

And A Couple Brief Notes On Craft

 

Setting As Character

 

If you're an aspiring novelist, and you've never read Robert McKee's STORY, all I can say is you're missing out on a golden opportunity to learn. And don't let the reference to "screenwriting" in the subtitle fool you! This masterpiece is just as relevant for novelists.

One thing that McKee hammers home, and something you've probably heard, is: Character is [the POV's] choice under pressure. Brief and accurate. You'll find at least 13,512 more gems like that one throughout STORY.

Expanding a bit on this idea with regard to setting: setting reflects society's choices under pressure. Setting is much more than that, of course, but when you watch a show like HBO's THE WIRE, or DEADWOOD, you see how much the setting shows us about the human beings who call it home.

Too often writers confuse character with characterization. The former concerns itself with the values and motives that define a person (example: why a corporate cog chooses to become a whistle-blower while his workmate with the same dirt chooses to kiss butt and ignore corruption); the latter with observable traits that don't change in the face of a dilemma (example: physical prowess, annoying habits, eye color, and the like). Likewise, setting can be dealt with on (at least) two levels: the when-where-what level (analogous to characterization), and the level of defining the character of a setting. To me, showing readers the character of your book's setting is a simple (but challenging) way to elevate the power of your prose and the impact of your story.

To give setting character requires the author to show how the choices made by society shaped the setting. When showing the character of a certain POV, this is somewhat easier to do, because as the POV faces conflict, the reader will form notions of their own as to what the POV will choose to do, and what the consequences of their actions will be. But setting is more static. It doesn't change on a dime. So what's a writer to do?

The key, I think, is to present different aspects of the same setting--to broaden the perspective of a particular scene to the larger world it occupies until you reach a "boundary" where the setting changes dramatically, and where this change is the result of a social policy, social ill, or the kinds of people who occupy this region of the setting. The obvious example is to be found in any major American city: on one block you may have hip urban condos, on the next block over, slums. But you can be far more subtle than that, and also, choose settings as small as an efficiency apartment, and still accomplish the same task.


Author: Jeremy James
Shelved In: WRITING: Craft
Main Topic: setting
Keywords: character •  characterization •  setting • 
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Comments:

  • Fascinating!  I love setting as character.  It’s challenging to do, though.  Who do you think does it best?  Do you have a favorite example?

    posted by: spyscribbler --

  • Thanks for commenting, spyscribbler. I’m a fan of your blog, and added it recently to my list of writing RSS feeds.

    To answer your question, I think HBO’s THE WIRE is the best at using setting as character. TV usually gets a (deservedly) bad wrap when it comes artistic merit, but this show, which is set in Baltimore, is amazingly well written and acted. As for the writers behind it, I have no idea (probably they have a team of writers). I do know that George Pelecanos is involved in the production and writing, however, a well-known and respected crime writer.

    If I had to pick a book or author who is great at using setting as character, I’d have to say Clive Barker overall (especially his early short stories in THE BOOKS OF BLOOD). And I’d vote Stephen King’s THE SHINING for the individual book that does it the best.

    posted by: Jeremy James -- San Diego, CA

  • Thank you, Jeremy!  You know, I knew there was a reason I should keep HBO after Sex and the City was done!  I’m going to check your suggestions out.  Such a difficult thing to do, especially to do it well!

    posted by: spyscribbler --

  • spyscribbler--If you have a subscription to Netflix, you can order all the episodes. Blockbuster probably has them, too. I would start with THE WIRE, 1st season. Although it starts a little slow (especially compared to most TV series), the reward for staying tuned until the finale is massive.

    posted by: Jeremy James -- San Diego, CA

  • Hi, Jeremy. Interesting post, and one on a neglected topic. Indeed, settings can be a character in a story, and can often be the most complex character in a book...though settings in most stories don’t evolve or make choices. Thus, they don’t tend to have much ‘character arc’--but nonetheless, their very existence is in some sense, as you say, a characterization of the choices a society has made in allowing the settings to flourish. (Well, at least in the case of human-dominated settings. The ocean, Antarctic, and jungle are another matter; more a relatonship of God and Man or Nature and Man or what-have-you and Man.)

    In some books, the setting is as large or larger than the protagonist. Right off hand, Lawrence Block’s wonderful “Eight Million Ways to Die” is as much a book about NYC as about Matthew Scudder; and who can imagine most of Chandler without the sprawling, churning, hedonistic mass of mid-century Los Angeles?

    Anna Quindlen--a writer whose “One True Thing” left me gasping with admiration--wrote a classy book called “Imagined London: A Tour of the World’s Greatest Fictional City,” in which she tours London from the perspective of us Yanks who know it primarily from Defoe, Dickens, and Doyle (and that’s just the “D’s"). Quindlen’s book doesn’t begin to come to grips with the problem; London is a bigger character than a slim volume like hers can handle.

    The only thing I would note in passing is that, to use Forester’s terms, settings are generally only ‘flat’ characters (like most of, say Dickens), while it is easier for humans to be ‘round’--complex, layered, and capable of change. It is an unusual work that makes a setting round...although, when I come to think of it, Woody Allen’s treatment of New York City, especially taken over several films, is very round indeed--by turns supportive, threatening, irritating, joyous…

    In any case, thanks for a stimulating post. Properly done, setting is indeed character, and important as more than a stage for protagonists and villains to stomp across. This is often forgotten today (London and Conrad always knew), but settings are a hell of a lot more than scenery.

    posted by: --


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