fiction world, does it? So let’s see how Aguirre ratchets up her worldbuilding, which makes it easier to see the rest of the ship based on this one private space:
With a jaunty wave, I leave the cockpit and head to my quarters. I share space with March. Despite cohabitation, it’s still an austere environment: plain berth, terminal, lighting fortified with solar stimulators to compensate for lack of nutrient D3 if you spend too much time on board.
—Ann Aguirre,
Killbox
One sentence of details is all that is needed to go from bland to something very different. Does it matter whether we know what all the details mean? Not really. What we get is a stronger sense of the larger world of the story without miring the pacing.
Here’s another example from mystery author Walter Mosley. The POV character, Easy Rawlins, has tracked down a lead on a missing person he is seeking. Instead of describing his impressions of the missing person directly, Mosley reveals the character through what he sees of the man’s home environment.
It was a studio apartment. A Murphy bed had been pulled down from the wall. It was unmade and jumbled with dirty clothes and dishes. A black-and-white portable TV with bent-up rabbit-ear antennas sat on a maple chair at the foot of the bed. There was no sofa, but three big chairs, upholstered with green carpeting, were set in a circle facing each other at the center of the room.
The room smelled strongly of perfumes and body odors. This scent of sex and sensuality was off-putting on a Saturday afternoon.
—Walter Mosley,
Cinnamon Kiss
What if Mosley had decided to shortchange the reader here and go for a more abbreviated room description?
ROUGH DRAFT: It was a messy studio apartment. The man must have been a low-life loser to live in such a place. Plus it stunk.
Sometimes that’s all a reader needs, but that is telling, not showing. With a few more lines of Setting, the author brings the reader deeper into the missing man’s character by showing who he is.
Let’s look at the approach of another mystery author, Sara Paretsky, whose novels about private investigator V.I. Warshawski are classics for understanding the power of Setting in an ongoing series. Here the author reveals a great deal about a secondary character, a man who might have known something about an insurance scam the character may be involved in. Look at the specific details the protagonist hones in on when visiting this man’s office for the first time. See how long it takes you to determine the financial status, success, and even the personality of the man by what Warshawski notes.
Midway Insurance was wedged between a dentist and a gynecologist. The black letters on the door, telling me they insured life, home, and auto, had been there a long time: part of the H in Home had peeled away, so that it looked like Midway insured nome.
—Sara Paretsky,
Total Recall
And a paragraph or two later:
Four large filing cabinets took up most of the remaining space. A curling poster of the Chinese national table-tennis team provided the only decorations. A large pot hung from a chain above the window but the plant within had withered down to a few drying leaves.
—Sara Paretsky,
Total Recall
Is this man up and coming in his chosen field? Comfortably well off? On his way down? Never once does the author come out and tell the reader this man had financial motives for the insurance crime, didn’t care a whit about his business, or was one step away from possible bankruptcy. She didn’t have to, as she showed the reader through two well-crafted and specific detail-loaded paragraphs.
NOTE: The important element to remember is that place can and should be filtered through a specific character’s emotions, impressions, viewpoint, and focus. How one character sees a Setting can be more important than the Setting itself.
Ignoring the powerful use of characterization and Setting can decrease the subtext of your story and diminish the
With a jaunty wave, I leave the cockpit and head to my quarters. I share space with March. Despite cohabitation, it’s still an austere environment: plain berth, terminal, lighting fortified with solar stimulators to compensate for lack of nutrient D3 if you spend too much time on board.
—Ann Aguirre,
Killbox
One sentence of details is all that is needed to go from bland to something very different. Does it matter whether we know what all the details mean? Not really. What we get is a stronger sense of the larger world of the story without miring the pacing.
Here’s another example from mystery author Walter Mosley. The POV character, Easy Rawlins, has tracked down a lead on a missing person he is seeking. Instead of describing his impressions of the missing person directly, Mosley reveals the character through what he sees of the man’s home environment.
It was a studio apartment. A Murphy bed had been pulled down from the wall. It was unmade and jumbled with dirty clothes and dishes. A black-and-white portable TV with bent-up rabbit-ear antennas sat on a maple chair at the foot of the bed. There was no sofa, but three big chairs, upholstered with green carpeting, were set in a circle facing each other at the center of the room.
The room smelled strongly of perfumes and body odors. This scent of sex and sensuality was off-putting on a Saturday afternoon.
—Walter Mosley,
Cinnamon Kiss
What if Mosley had decided to shortchange the reader here and go for a more abbreviated room description?
ROUGH DRAFT: It was a messy studio apartment. The man must have been a low-life loser to live in such a place. Plus it stunk.
Sometimes that’s all a reader needs, but that is telling, not showing. With a few more lines of Setting, the author brings the reader deeper into the missing man’s character by showing who he is.
Let’s look at the approach of another mystery author, Sara Paretsky, whose novels about private investigator V.I. Warshawski are classics for understanding the power of Setting in an ongoing series. Here the author reveals a great deal about a secondary character, a man who might have known something about an insurance scam the character may be involved in. Look at the specific details the protagonist hones in on when visiting this man’s office for the first time. See how long it takes you to determine the financial status, success, and even the personality of the man by what Warshawski notes.
Midway Insurance was wedged between a dentist and a gynecologist. The black letters on the door, telling me they insured life, home, and auto, had been there a long time: part of the H in Home had peeled away, so that it looked like Midway insured nome.
—Sara Paretsky,
Total Recall
And a paragraph or two later:
Four large filing cabinets took up most of the remaining space. A curling poster of the Chinese national table-tennis team provided the only decorations. A large pot hung from a chain above the window but the plant within had withered down to a few drying leaves.
—Sara Paretsky,
Total Recall
Is this man up and coming in his chosen field? Comfortably well off? On his way down? Never once does the author come out and tell the reader this man had financial motives for the insurance crime, didn’t care a whit about his business, or was one step away from possible bankruptcy. She didn’t have to, as she showed the reader through two well-crafted and specific detail-loaded paragraphs.
NOTE: The important element to remember is that place can and should be filtered through a specific character’s emotions, impressions, viewpoint, and focus. How one character sees a Setting can be more important than the Setting itself.
Ignoring the powerful use of characterization and Setting can decrease the subtext of your story and diminish the
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