Writing Active Setting Book 1: Characterization and Sensory Detail Read Online Free PDF

it looked as if a convention of librarians had dropped by with armloads and joyously tossed it all up in the air and dumped everything, leaving us to sort through the detritus on our deliciously erratic quest for wisdom.
    – Confession – Nancy Pickard
     
    The passage continues on , but serves so well revealing who these characters are. It gives the reader a broad er understanding of who they are, as a couple, and individually by what they surround themselves wit h — t hese two are comfortable with themselves, casual and intelligent .
    What if Pickard chose to tell , not show? What if she wrote:
    Our home reflects the fact we are intelligent people comfortable with our lives and who we are.
     
    S ince this novel is part of a series, as the stories move forward Pickard does not necessarily need to describe this room in this much detail because the readers of the series will remember this room. In another book the author could choose to highlight a different room in the house — the kitchen, bedroom , or even the garage — so new readers to the series, as well as the series readers, can experience this home on a deeper level, see these characters by their environment and feel a part of the world of the story.
     
    I’ m not saying that in every story you want this much Setting description for every character, or that you have to reveal character every time , but I do want you to think in terms of how would this one specific POV character relate to this Setting versus a different character? It’s a great place to open up opportunities to reveal your character to the reader in different ways.
     
    Let’s examine another example of characterization being shown through Setting .
     
    “Ou t of the way, please. Sheriff investigator. Come on now. Out.”
    Merci Rayburn ducked under the ribbon and continued down the walk. Her heart was beating fast and her senses were jacked up high, registering all at once the cars hissing along Coast Highway to her left, waves breaking on the other side of the building, the citizens murmuring behind her, the moon hanging low over the eastern hills, the smell of ocean and exhaust, the night air cool against her cheeks, the walkway slats bending under her duty boots. She figured a place like this, ocean front in San Clemente , would run you two grand a month and you still got termites in your walkway and spider webs high in the porch corners.
    –Red Light – T. Jefferson Parker
     
    This one paragraph description opening the story shows a lot about the character through how she looks at the Setting . The reader is not introduced to the crime scene as a laundry list of narrative description — building, location, time of day. No, the author threads all of this information throughout the character’s description of the Setting in such a subtle way that the reader is pulled deeper into the story and the skin of the POV character while actively moving the story forward.
    We learn that Merci can multi-task and take in many different details at once, a good characteristic for an investigator to have, and something the author can use to slip in other important details later in the story without the reader feeling its strange for Merci to notice. The paragraph also lets us know that Merci covers her uncomfortable emotions with snarky thoughts — a place like this, ocean front in San Clemente , would run you two grand a month and you still got termites in your walkway and spider webs high in the porch corners. Later, if Merci does this again, the reader can assume she’s uncomfortable in some way.
     
    In the next example, the author uses Setting description to show the POV character’s thought process and where he’s coming from as well as filtering in insights about a secondar y character. T he POV character, Joe Pike, has been assigned to protect the life of a spoiled rich girl. Two attempts have already been made on her life, the latest one while she’s been in Pike’s custody, so