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Bringing Story Settings to LifeIf you followed the advice in Getting to Know Story Settings, you will now know your setting like you know your own neighborhood. You will be able to close your eyes and take a mental stroll around it - seeing the sights and hearing the sounds. You will also have carried out any necessary research - on the central character's occupation, perhaps, or the local weather patterns or whatever aspects of the novel's setting you were not sufficiently knowledgeable about. Now it is time to take all those notes you have made and work them into your novel so that the readers can get to know the setting as well as you now do. In particular, you need to work out how you are going to portray the setting in Chapter One, how you will portray it in Chapter Two, and so on, so that the readers can get to know the setting gradually and not be hit with a mass of information all at once. Before getting started, a quick word on how this two-step approach fits into the overall Novel Writing Process... Getting to know your setting by fleshing it out on paper happens during the fifth stage of the Novel Writing Process, the one in which you create a Detailed Plan. Working out what aspects of the setting you will reveal in each chapter of the novel - which is what this article is about - is best tackled when you put together the Final Plan in the sixth stage of the Novel Writing Process. However, if you are simply not a "planning" kind of person and would prefer to crack on with the writing as soon as possible, you can equally use the information in this article when you check for the portrayal of setting during the revision process. I wouldn't recommend trying to think about the information presented here when you write the first draft. Then, you will want to concentrate on the storytelling, not the pattern on the wallpaper or the color of the leading character's car. That is the idea of working out these things in advance in the form of the Final Plan. That way, all of the information you require for each chapter will be right there in front of you when you write it. You will be free to concentrate on the creative act of writing. But, like I say, if you are not a planning kind of person and prefer to work out the mechanics of bringing story settings to life during the revision process, that is fine too. Back to bringing story settings to life...In this article, I want to look at three areas:
One last thing: Please note that this article is not about how to write descriptively - that happens later in the material covering the Art of Descriptive Writing. The aim here is simply to show you how to take a pile of setting notes and work them into the novel's overall plan in the correct way. Okay, enough talk. It's time to get down to business and tackle the order of revelation of story settings...
You can read this article in full, and loads more besides, in my 500-page eBook. Follow this link to discover more about the Ultimate Guide to Novel Writing.
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