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 Posted: Thu Mar 24, 2011 7:39 pm
Setting is one of the most important things about a story, drawing your reader in, yada yada yada. At times it seems like anyone I talk to about writing always mentions setting.
Therefore, it's rather embarrassing for me to admit setting is one my worst weaknesses. I don't know what it is - sometimes I might never mention where my characters are at all, or I'll give apparently too few details. Setting is not "the most important end all if you don't have a hundred details about it in your story it'll suck" thing with me.
But I do realize it's important and I really need to work on it.
So any ideas about setting? What to mention? How to mention it so it doesn't clunk up your story too much? First paragraph or after, if early? How important is your setting to you?
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Posted: Thu Mar 24, 2011 10:24 pm
I hate paragraphs of description. I hate them. I hate writing them and I hate reading them. Therefore, I prefer the more subtle approach of sliding in details throughout the narrative as they're needed. I'll mention their general surroundings to start off with, such as if they're in San Francisco, or on a space ship, or in Lucky Wench Tavern, and then fill in the finer details as it goes, such as if they're on the wharf, or what the bridge looks like, or how the room is set up, mostly using characters' perspectives, dialog, and observations. Occasionally I'll throw in a full, honest to goodness paragraph describing the setting, but only if it's necessary to the function of my story.
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Posted: Fri Mar 25, 2011 1:54 pm
This does seem to be a good idea. It's generally what I tend to do, putting in details not in a paragraph format, but maybe I'm not concrete with the details enough yet? Too abstract? I don't know. I'll probably have to give my writing that "write it and then don't look at it for a week or so" treatment, then come back to it.
Another question occurred to me that is probably more to my problem: the length of the story I'm trying to write. Specifically a short story. I don't know if that effects what I feel as enough details of a setting to be considered not enough because a short story is very much a concise thing, where I always feel like I have more room to work these things in gradually if I'm writing something longer.
Am I making sense?
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