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| A story of mine was criticized for 'Not having
a sense of place.' Can you help me deal with this? |
Setting and exposition are two elements that ground your fiction
in reality.
Setting creates a sense of place:
When she walked into the room, she felt as though she’d
walked straight into a photo-shoot for House Beautiful. This
wasn’t a room people lived in, it was a movie set. Red
lacquered walls, a deep brown leather sofa that could easily
sit seven adults, a Tiffany lamp on every table…genuine
or knock-off, she couldn’t tell. A beige and crimson room-sized
Oriental deep-piled enough to almost make you lose your footing,
and flowers…flowers everywhere.
Across the bay, on the small island the locals called The Rock,
the wind was bending the trees nearly to the ground. To my left,
the dinghies moored at the weathered gray dock strained at their
painters and I bowed my head and kept moving toward the only
shelter I could see.
Exposition consists of descriptive phrases that describe actions
or things:
He pushed the curtain aside and watched her leave.
When she handed him the salt, their hands touched.
The moon cast her shadow on the snow.
He made a low humming sound under his breath.
The only furniture in the room was a deep brown leather sofa.
Skill at writing setting and exposition enriches fiction, allowing
your reader to draw an accurate mental picture of the experience
you’re presenting on the page. Too few setting and exposition
cues can cause a fiction to feel unsatisfactory… uninteresting
or poorly drawn. Too many can have the effect of distracting
or boring the reader. In situations where the setting has significant
impact on the characters and their situation, you would include
more description than if the setting were neutral. Reading your
work aloud can help you decide if you’re handling setting
and exposition well.
EXERCISE:
A husband and wife are driving in a snowstorm. The storm is
far worse than predicted and conditions are rapidly deteriorating.
Write several pages of this situation, including dialogue, setting,
and exposition, but concentrate especially on the surroundings
and on what your characters are doing in this situation. |
