5 Fatal Setting Mistakes

Of all the story elements, there is one that is often overlooked, ignored, downplayed, forgotten about, mistreated, degraded and discredited.

It also happens to be the hidden rocket-fuel to launch your book to bestseller status.


The Hidden Powerhouse of Setting

Think about it: setting frames, shapes and backdrops the action in your story. Without setting you have a time-less, place-less series of actions. Imagine a movie without scenery, a blank canvas upon which characters interact. Setting is the vehicle that moves, highlights, and focuses action, that brings meaning, that adds realism, and that draws the reader into the fictional world of your novel.

The 5 Fatal Mistakes

1. Choosing settings at random. Some authors take the "Quick and Easy" approach to setting. They simply use the first setting that comes to mind, or use the city they live in as a default setting for every novel. This approach is actually the "Quick and Easy" way to rejection and floundering in the wasteland of the unpublished author. This fatal flaw is often revealed when the setting either distracts from the story, or doesn't add anything to it. When choosing a setting, be as selective as choosing a life partner. Ask many questions of your potential setting, challenge it, see how it feels in the story, test it out and be extra picky. When choosing the setting for your story, or for an individual scene, consider how the setting relates to character, plot, conflict, theme, symbolism and the overall story goal or question.
   
2. Only Using Setting in One Way. The second common fatal flaw is a temptation even for the most practiced writer. To be sure, this flaw is a step up from the first, but not very far. In this flaw, the author carefully selects a setting that somehow adds to the story - but only in a single, limited way. Instead of pumping the setting for all its worth, the author parks the setting after it has been used only once. To avoid this fatal flaw, try to find at least three ways to use the setting in your story. Consider how your setting can reveal something about the characters that live in it. Ask yourself how your setting can challenge the characters. Perhaps your setting can trap the characters and force them to stay in the narrative fight of your story. The possibilities are endless. Repeat this process with each setting in your story, as well as the overall setting.
   
3. Not establishing setting early enough in the story or scene. If you wait too long to describe setting, you risk reader confusion, and confusion is an easy transition to closing your book and never coming back. Readers want to be mystified and intrigued, not confused. There is a difference. A significant one. Confusion is often the result of a writer poorly guiding readers through the story with few, if any, details. The balance of which details to reveal and which to withhold separates novices from pros. Read bestselling novels and pay attention to how they handle this important topic of writing. You'll soon discover a pattern that works for you. A good rule of thumb is to give your reader at least three details about setting in the first few paragraphs of a story or scene. The earlier usually the better. Once a reader is grounded in the "place" and "time" of a story, they are free to release their imagination to your loving care.
   
4. Dumping Setting on Readers all at once. This fourth fatal flaw is really the opposite extreme of fatal flaw number three. In an effort to reveal setting, some authors spend pages cataloging every nuance and pinpoint of light in a their setting. This "setting dump" is an easy way to alienate, frustrate and bore readers. Boredom is confusion's uglier cousin, and both lead to the reader walking away - sometimes for good. Instead of dumping all the setting details in at once, take a more patient (and longer) approach of dribbling details in here and there, just enough to fend off confusion, but not enough to make readers think your story suddenly turned into a thesis on architecture. Setting should be subtlety felt, but not overtly noticed.
5. Not Evoking Emotion with Settings. Settings in bestsellers heighten emotion and deepen feelings, both for the characters in the story and the readers, too. This fatal flaw leaves readers disappointed, even if they don't know why. Committing this fatal flaw is akin to fighting with swords when an arsenal of guns hang unused on the wall. Why not use the firepower you have available to you? Setting underscores emotion when both the conflict in the scene and the setting both elicit the same type of feelings (i.e., two soldiers argue during a firefight or an abandoned child is lost in the woods at night).
   

Knowing these fatal flaws, and avoiding them in your fiction, puts you on the path to bestsellerdom.

The Sound-Secrets of a Bestseller

What does "sound" have to do with writing bestsellers?

Maybe everything. Before I stumbled upon this sneaky little writing secret, I wrote "OK" stories. My writing was sub par, good but not great, trapped in that thorny cage of perfect sentence structure and grammatical correctness. Not until I read about these "sound secrets" did I truly understand the depth and complexity of the art of storytelling, the hidden byways that transformed mundane writing into mesmerizing fiction (or non-fiction, as it may be).

If you'd like to make that same transformation in your writing, if you find yourself unable to move forward in your writing ability, if you regularly (like I did) bang your head up against the brick wall of rules and instructions about what makes a good sentence, then this is for you. Listen closely, fellow writer, and discover something I think is remarkable and perhaps life-changing.


You may never read another story the same way again.

Here, then, are the "sound secrets" of bestseller writing:

1. Good writing is as much (and maybe more) about how the writing "sounds" than if it is technically correct.
2. After you write a sentence or a paragraph or you whole story, come back and read it out loud. Really, it's not a bad practice. You may "hear" your writing differently when it's brought up from the page or screen into the life of the verbal world. If it sounds choppy (and that's not your goal), fix it. If it sounds strange in any way (and that's not your goal), make some changes.
3. Writing for "sound" is part science and part art. Over time, you will develop better writing "ears." Be gentle with yourself and keep practicing. Compare your work to bestselling writers. Notice the cadence of their sentences, the musical quality to their paragraphs. Read good poetry and fiction.Dean Koontz is a good author to read for "sound." So is Stephen Hunter, author of the Bob Lee Swagger novel series. A recent author I discovered is Micheal Williams, author of Trajan's arch. (You can find this book at http://www.blackwyrm.com)
4. When editing your writing for "sound," consider combining sentences, or separating them, changing the structure or changing the length. Each sentence should flow naturally into the next, like waves rolling to the shore, or a current tugging your reader along. It is a subtle art of nuances, background shadows playing on the wall,unseen and unnoticed, but imminently important. It often makes the difference between clunky fiction and catapulting success.
5. Remember, as a general rule, vary your sentences structure and length. This is the start of "sound." Of course, at times you may want to write a string of short, choppy sentences. That creates mood. Tone. Atmosphere. You may also want to write a very long sentence, unbroken by the mind-stopping presence of a period, punctuated only by the occasional comma, a dance of words on the page to draw the reader further and further into the iron grip of your story. The point is to write on purpose, controlling the pace of the story. A slow Waltz here, a Quick-step there.
6. Word choice also matters. This will probably be the focus of a future article, but suffice it to say that poor word choices can ruin a perfectly good sentence. Choose your words wisely. Use a thesaurus. Steal cool words from other authors (just don't plagiarize, please!)

With these tools, you have what you need to "re-tune" your writing. Work on the sound, the cadence, the music of your stories, and watch them hypnotize readers, editors, literary agents and publishers alike.