Setting

I think about my stories’ setting often, and I normally tend to deal with Setting/World in my stories via scattering hopefully-pertinent clues around the plotline. However, after reading Mary Buckham’s How Writers Can Craft an Effective Setting, I better understand how, even though the picture in my head may be crystal-clear, it may not be as clear in the reader’s mind through ink letters on paper. This is particularly true if the reader must resort to attempt filling the gaps on her/his own—as Buckham writes “The reader will be mentally asking these questions, and the longer you keep the information from them, the less they will focus on what you want them to focus on. The reader will become removed from the story and the characters, and instead be trying to figure out the where, when, who, or why.” (Buckham, 2016)

I will do my best to follow Buckham’s advice in this paragraph, and it will hopefully help the story at large by grounding the reader in a concrete location and leaving just enough to the imagination: I yanked the elastic out and shook out my dark-brown sticks to aerate in the Rhode Island leftover-summer air before tying them back into a bunch that practiced acupuncture on my thoracic vertebrae. Dear reader, you know that feeling when it’s the first day of middle school and it’s perfect beach weather? Yeah, I hate the evil incongruence too, don’t worry. If a magic lamp materialized before me, I’d say this: I, Sarah Wyatt, of sound mind and body, hereby wish to exchange this pile of bricks called “New Haven Secondary” into Newport Beach! Rolling my eyes, I trudged my tall, bulky (read: non-obese) body into the execution chamber. A voice in my head informed me that this may be the year the homework monster chews me up and spits me out, but I prayed the HW monster would choke on me, then marched into the brick-and-mortar will all the relish I could muster. My friend Katie Roberts, tanned like summer-baked bread, waited for me catch up. Maybe there’d be pizza as a 1^st-day-of-school lunch special…

Reference List:

Buckham, M. (2016, January 14). How Writers Can Craft an Effective Setting. Jane Friedman. https://www.janefriedman.com/effective-setting/