For fantasy fans, setting is of particular importance. Two weeks ago, I wrote a post about why setting matters. Setting matters in all fiction, but is especially important in fantasy literature. While plot is, of course, important and nothing can replace well developed characters, fantasy fans choose the genre largely because of the setting. They like the magic. They want to escape the banality of their lives and escape to new and innovative worlds. Give them that world, or they leave and not come back. Lacking adequate description was once a weakness in my writing that I have worked hard to fix, so I want to share what I have learned and, hopefully, save you some time.
Writer’s Digest has a great post about Basic Elements of Setting that I highly recommend. In this post, I’m going to cover a specific technique of description that I call Big Picture/Specific Detail.
Big Picture
To feel oriented, the reader needs to see the big picture of the setting you are describing. When a character first enters a space, you should give a general description of what is there. As an example, see the description from The Goddess’s Choice of the princess’s room:
Carvings may have looked something like this
The princess gestured toward the huge portrait of the Princess Danu that covered one wall of her bedchamber. The long-dead princess was laughing as she galloped across the fields with her auburn hair flying out behind her in the wind. The stars on the forehead and chest of her horse shone against its gorgeous coat. Samantha loved this painting, which was just as well because it was bolted to the wall and couldn’t be removed without tearing her chambers apart. She’d decorated the rest of her bedroom to match. Tapestries of horses covered the walls. Her dressing table, armoire, and large four-poster bed had horses carved into the woodwork. A quilt, embroidered with horses and stars, was spread over the bed. The mantle over her fireplace sported figurines of horses in gold, silver, jade, crystal, and precious stones. Every new ambassador added to her collection.
Here we get the big picture of Samantha’s room, which is decorated all in a horse motif. This both orients the reader to the space and also gives the reader insight into Samantha’s character. She loves horses.
We see a similar big picture technique when Robrek, the peasant sorcerer, first enters the space in the first chapter of The Soul Stone. It also demonstrates how setting can reveal character. Although it is the same room, he describes it much differently.
A horse like this perhaps
For the first time, he looked around her room. One entire wall was covered by a painting of a princess, resembling Samantha, riding a Horsetad. Besides the painting, the room held two huge wardrobes, carved with horses and stars in intricate detail. He opened them and found them full to bursting with dresses in silk and satin, lace and velvet, so many she could wear a different one every day for an entire year. Robrek shook his head. Although his father had been considered wealthy by those in the Valley, Robrek had never had more than a couple changes of clothes. Figurines of horses in gold, silver, jade, crystal, and precious stones arrayed themselves on the mantle. Ten years’ proceeds from his father’s crops couldn’t have afforded one of them.
Readers need to see the big picture so that they feel as at home (or not) as the character does.
Specific Detail
The big picture orients the reader, but it is the specific detail that intrigues. You never want to give a catalog of everything that is in a room or even on a dresser, but picking out a few specific details to describe more thoroughly will make your setting come alive. In the first scene described above, Samantha later describes two specific items:
Not quite the same, but gives the idea
Samantha picked up her silver-backed brush from the dressing table, a gift from the Neaserian ambassador that was inlaid with an amber Horsetad; diamonds marked the stars at its forehead and chest.
Pausing in front of her favorite tapestry—a white mare at the edge of the forest, helping her newborn foal stand, she wished she were heading for the stables instead of the ballroom.
In the second scene, Robrek makes note of the same tapestry and one other specific detail.
A life-sized horse made of smoked crystal dominated one corner. It had a gold mane, tail, and hooves and wore a gold saddle studded with emeralds. On the wall was a huge tapestry of a white mare at the edge of the forest, helping her newborn foal stand. The mare reminded him of Roberta, the horse he’d helped Samantha choose at the horse fair where they first met.
The specific details make the setting real and vivid. In describing setting, make sure give your readers both the big picture and the specific details.
What are your thoughts about setting? What authors do you think do it well? Comment below.
When Sean Frazier was growing up, he never really paid attention to the written word. It wasn’t necessarily something he enjoyed at the time. Once he graduated college, however, the spark ignited and he decided to write something and try to get it published.
Exiled from his homeland, Cor’il Silvermoon was left to roam without direction. Bestowed with unimaginable power by the awakening Threads, he struggles to understand his purpose.
Badass Woman #1– I was born in 1967 and grew up in the 70s and 80s, so I wasn’t exactly inundated with strong, powerful female role models on Television. But Linda Carter as Wonder Woman comes on to the scene in 1975 and gave me a different view of women. She may hide her identity in that of a secretary, but she’s an Amazonian princess. In the Amazon, the women rule, and they never bow to male authority. Wonder Woman undoes her hair and twirls around, and she is a superhero with a magical golden lasso and bracelets which can deflect bullets. She fights with superhuman strength and ability and never needs to be rescued. As the theme song stated, “All the world is waiting for you, and the power you possess.” Wonder Woman taught me that women can be strong.
Badass Woman #5: Karrin Murphy from Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files. I loved Karrin Murphy from the moment I first met her racing Dresden to the door so that he won’t open it for her. I hate men opening the door for me. Not only does she stand up for herself as a woman, but she’s intelligent and completely badass. She can handle any weapon and hold her own in a fight. She’s loyal, and Butcher resists turning her into Dresden’s girl friend. She will only have men on her own terms.
Although I couldn’t have articulated it at such a young age, the book taught me to indulge my imagination. Max is sent to his room, but rather than pouting or being bored, he has a forest grow around him until it completely overtakes the space. He gets on a boat and voyages to land of beasts with scaly legs, horns on their noses, and rooster beaks. With these creatures, he instigates a “wild rumpus” that begins with stomping and chanting under the moonlight and continues with swinging from trees in the light of day. To me, Max and the Wild Things’ wild rumpus seemed the pinnacle of excitement. Sendak’s book showed me that the imagination is a wonderful place where the strangest and most delightful things can happen at any moment and in any place.
The book also nurtured the belief that this flight into the unknown is nothing for a girl to fear because she can return to normality whenever she pleases. When Max tires of the wild rumpus, he gets on his boat and sail back to his own room where his supper, a symbol of his mother’s love, is waiting for him. I learned that we can travel to the farthest reaches of the world and back again before our supper gets cold.
indulged my love of books and would ultimately give me time to write them. On his advice, I pursed a bachelor’s and, ultimately, a PhD in literature. For homework, I got to read books that covered the history of much of the world, and in class, we talked about these books. I could imagine no better career than getting paid to talk to students about books. I didn’t think about the grading papers part of the job at the time, but even with this inconvenience, I can’t imagine a job, with the exception of being a full time writer, I’d like more than teaching others my love of books.
When my son was born, it was only natural that I read to him. I started doing so when he was an infant in my arms and could understand nothing more than the soothing sound of his mother’s voice. As he grew older, he learned the one sure fire way to get mom’s attention was to ask me to read to him. I almost never said no to this request because I loved it as much as he did. We graduated quickly from picture books into chapter books. We used the magical tree house to travel throughout time together, morphed into various animals with the animoprhs, and spend a magically long time at Hogwarts. I dreaded the day when he would no longer want me to read to him, but that day was long in coming. I began to read my own stories to him, and when he reached high school, we traded Harry Potter for Harry Dresden. Although the frequency of our readings decreased over time, it wasn’t until he left for college that they stopped completely.
someone who doesn’t like to read. It’s almost as bizarre as someone saying they don’t like to eat. In writing my own books, I hope to give others some of the joy that other authors have given me. I can imagine no greater gift to the world than a story well told.
Next time you go to a restaurant or any other public place watch what the people do as they enter. Nearly everyone will quickly scan the entire area with their eyes to orient themselves before they proceed to the hosting station. In other words, they orient themselves to the restaurant. As humans, we need to feel comfortable in our surroundings. Whether or not this is an evolutionary trait left over from a more dangerous past, I won’t speculate. Just as in the real world, a person needs to know where they are to feel comfortable, a reader can’t get comfortable in your story until they are oriented to their surroundings. Invite the reader into your world. Offer them a seat and a cup of tea, so to speak. They’ll thank you for it.
with the odor of rotting flesh. Confused, I examined my surroundings. Hanging on the wall facing me was a portrait of a huge bull with its head down and its heels kicked high into the air, and the words “Tough Enough” written across the top in bold letters. Incredibly, a man, holding onto a rope with only one hand, sat on the bull’s back. Why would anyone ride a bull? Bulls were dangerous and impossible to control. Piled high on the bedside table were plates covered with the remains of several meals, bowls with a few dregs of sour milk, and empty bottles. The sheet I laid on was stained with various substances I didn’t want to identify.
Setting can be used as an external manifestation of inner mood or emotion. Consider the difference between a Batman and a Superman movie. Superman movies are shot primarily in the day in a clean city; everything is bright and sunny. They have an optimistic feel to them in which you are never seriously concerned about the outcome and no one is really going to get hurt. Batman, on the other hand, takes place mostly at night in a gritty and poorly lit city. There’s a greater scene of fear and unease. Things might work out all right in the end, but not for everyone. Someone’s going to get hurt, and it isn’t going to be pretty.
Raymond Walker is well known for his very unusual, almost homely, romantic fantasy tales such as “The River Girls Torment” and “A Shiver” as well as the award winning Moonchild and Other Tales, which have been hugely successful. In 2005 he published his first Ghost Story “A Pale Shadow Creeps” which has a more adult theme and followed it up with the horror novel; The Secret Inside to great critical acclaim. His restlessly original and imaginative stories may be unusual and darkly romantic, but he considers himself very ordinary. He loves the countryside, the forests and the relics of his native Scotland. He loves that he rose from a land steeped in history, myth and fantasy. It can be seen in almost every tale that he has ever told or written.