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Stow

Stow

Posted October 30, 2022

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The many jobs that the setting of your story can d

The many jobs that the setting of your story can do

Tip 4/14

Cultural context: The setting provides essential cultural information that shapes characters' behaviours and choices. Take this passage from Arnold Bennett’s Anna of the Five Towns, set in the pottery-producing heartland of Staffordshire:

“Everywhere the view was bounded by furnaces and chimneys; they were innumerable, of all shapes, heights, and colours, and each had behind it a mountain of earth and slag, its own excretion. The narrow strip of black sky was cut by hundreds of vertical steam-jets and the black silhouettes of pitheads.”

Throughout the novel, this industrial setting shapes Anna's life and choices. It influences her father's business, her social status, her romantic prospects, and her outlook on life. The oppressive yet familiar environment of the Potteries becomes almost a character in itself, embodying both the opportunities and limitations that define Anna's world.

Consider how the setting of your story – whether it be the kitchen of a large hotel, the working stopes of a gold mine in South Africa, or the workshop of your Venetian mask-maker – will affect your protagonist.

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Writing Wisdom from Venice 4/16 Once you’ve map

Writing Wisdom from Venice 4/16

Once you’ve mapped out the time for writing, make it a habit simply to sit down - without thinking.

Because, yes, your mind will tell you that you can’t write today, you have no ideas, no inspiration.

Just do it.

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Getting ready for a day of writing. Best way to st

Getting ready for a day of writing. Best way to start the day. #earlymorningwalk #venicewritingretreat

The many jobs that the setting of your story can d

The many jobs that the setting of your story can do

Tip 3/14

Personification: The place itself becomes a character, with its own personality and influence on the plot. Think of The Overlook Hotel in King’s The Shining. It’s much more than a setting – it’s a malevolent character with its own desires and agency.

"The Overlook faced it as it had for nearly three-quarters of a century, its darkened windows now bearded with snow, indifferent to the fact that it was now cut off from the world.... Or was it?"

The Overlook is depicted as a grand, isolated structure in the Colorado Rockies. King describes it as an imposing presence with a long and troubled history. The hotel is portrayed as more than just a building - it seems to have an evil consciousness of its own. Its corridors are maze-like, its rooms full of dark memories, and its very walls seem to breathe with sinister intent.

Whether you’re writing the most frivolous of romances, or something as dark and malignant as King’s Overlook, you can use your setting to galvanise and animate your story.
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Writing Wisdom from Venice 3/16 Time for your wri

Writing Wisdom from Venice 3/16

Time for your writing will not magically appear. Don’t wait till ‘next year, when I’ll have less on my plate’. Carve out time for your creativity and guard it fiercely. Lie, if necessary – if those around you don’t respect your creative time.

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The many jobs that the setting of your story can d

The many jobs that the setting of your story can do

Tip 2/14

The place can reflect the character.

The environment mirrors or contrasts with a character's internal state. A bleak, winter landscape might reflect a character's depression, for instance.

In The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt’s character, Theo, is sent to live with his estranged sister in Las Vegas. Tartt describes the landscape as follows: "Desert, empty as the surface of the moon... Apartments and shopping centers and residential neighborhoods wholly indistinguishable from one another... Terero was a treeless place of temperature extremes, where dust devils danced in a constant slow whirl."

This bleak, monotonous environment mirrors Theo's sense of loss, isolation, and emotional barrenness following his mother's death. There’s no need to say as much; after all, the landscape in which he is trapped, says it all.
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What can your setting say about your characters?

Morning walk #venicewritersretreat

Morning walk #venicewritersretreat

This morning we did our 'Rialto Walk'. An hour and

This morning we did our 'Rialto Walk'. An hour and a half soaking up all that Venice has to offer as it wakes and gets ready for another day. For a writer it's most definitely time used well. It sets us up for the day.

Writing Wisdom from Venice 2/16

Time is like money: we value it more if we have less of it. That means you need never despair if you don’t have swathes of writing time. An hour, used well, can be just as productive as a five-hour stretch, in which we make six cups of tea and tidy the linen cupboard until inspiration strikes.
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The many jobs that the setting of your story can d

The many jobs that the setting of your story can do

Tip 1/14

Create instant atmosphere with the weather:

You can use the setting of your story to create a mood or atmosphere to enhance the story's themes. Dickens did this superbly. He opens Bleak House with a description of a London fog:

"Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city..."

It’s at one and the same time a literal description of the city, a metaphor for the opacity and confusion of the legal system; it creates a mood of gloom and claustrophobia; it foreshadows the moral and social obnscurity that the characters will have to navigate; and it immerses the reader in a sensory miasma…
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The power of ‘show, don’t tell’
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