Write Up North: Setting Scenes

 In this post we look at how to set scenes in stories.

Everyone’s story must start somewhere. Some start with a hook, some start straight into a bit of action – or at least – something exciting. All well and good.

However you start your story, you must think about setting the scene as soon as you can to allow your readers to picture it and settle in before the main action starts (indeed, some stories simply start with a description of where the story begins). We need to remember that readers could be anywhere: a bus, in their home, on holiday or simply in a library. It could be sunny, rainy, warm, or freezing.  They could feel happy or sad, relaxed or worried. Setting the scene can take their imagination away from wherever they are, whatever their feelings and get them prepared for your story.

When people read books they, through their imagination and memory, create a home film / movie of the story. Setting scenes can be an excellent way of starting this (and you want to keep the film going in their heads as they read right through to the end).

You can certainly add a hook to your story, and we look at this in a later post (and we advise you to always finish your story before you add that killer first sentence).

Let’s think about setting scenes.

How about this first paragraph from A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway? Can you picture it? What words stand out to help you do so?

Literary Example One: In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels. Troops went by the house and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the trees.

Show Not Tell

This is a literary device where you must show something to your reader, rather than just tell them. For example do not just tell people it was a sunny day but show them by stating how the sun affects the scene.

As a beginner, you should not be too worried about this and some of the literary examples we will show you during the sessions use either show and tell to describe things.

Using this technique however allows your readers to experience the story through action, thoughts, senses and feelings rather than just by an explanation by the author with the intention that the reader can draw their own conclusions and is attributed to the playwright Anton Chekhov.

It can also enhance the home movie readers see in their imaginations.

One of the best ways to show rather than tell is to create the sense of setting by thinking of the following: ·      What is the weather like and how it affects the location of the setting; ·      Use colour to describe things in the scene; ·      Use other senses to help trigger people’s imagination into the scene, for example: smells; noises; tastes and touch; ·      Mention any movement in the scene; ·      Show how humans (or animals etc) interact with the scene, if any.

 

Example: It was an autumn morning, and the stiff wind scattered the red and yellow leaves across the road.

Everyone should be able to picture this scene and so you are beginning to draw them into your story.

Quick question: Did I need to mention it was Autumn?

How about this example from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Literary Example Two: We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-coloured space, fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-coloured rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.

Note: every time you switch scenes you should spend some time describing it for your readers.

What about this example from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix?

Literary Example Three: The hottest day of the summer so far was drawing to a close and a drowsy silence lay over the large, square houses of Privet Drive. Cars that were usually gleaming stood dusty in their drives and lawns that were once emerald-green lay parched and yellowing – for the use of hosepipes had been banned due to drought. Deprived of their usual car-washing and lawn mowing pursuits, the inhabitants of Privet Drive had retreated into the shade of their cool houses, windows thrown wide in the hope of tempting in a non-existent breeze.

Can you see how authors set scenes differently to one another but, at the same time, they also use the points in the above box to show readers the scene.

Setting the scene can also help your reader identify things about your characters. This example is from The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. Do you think the narrator, Esther, likes New York?

Literary Example Four: New York was bad enough. By nine in the morning the fake, country wet freshness that somehow seeped in overnight evaporated like the tail end of a sweet dream. Mirage-grey at the bottom of their granite canyons, the hot streets wavered in the sun, the car tops sizzled and glittered, and the dry, cindery dust blew into my eyes and down my throat.

 

Top Tip

You do not need to be exact or give every little detail - you could be here until kingdom come if you did - but you want to give your readers enough that they can not only picture the scene but feel that they are there too.

Always remember that your readers will see their own version of your setting based on their imagination and what is stored in their memory.

For this purpose, you should mention things which, hopefully, trigger their imaginations. For example, certain smells or noises can stir someone’s memories to help them create a scene.  

Always, always remember there is no right or wrong way to do this. What do you think of this example?

One helpful tool to remember is Chekhov’s Gun. Here, the playwright, advises that everything mentioned in your story must have a purpose within it. In his example, a gun is mentioned when setting a scene. If that gun is not used later in the story, what is the point of mentioning it in the first place?