Characters as Setting
This post is somewhat technical in terms of how characters are used as setting. I'll try not to lose anyone in the following paragraphs.
We all know that setting is where a story takes place. We also know that characters are who the story takes place around. Setting is constructed in different ways. Clues are used to target the senses: sight, scent, taste, touch, and hearing. These are obvious setting indicators, easily determined and conjured based on a particular place in a story. We can see a red barn and its hayloft, smell the hay and manure, hearing the animals, feel the texture of the wood. That is where setting reaches its simplest design, the design centered on the senses.
But what I want to talk about is more complicated. When you want to deliver a world setting, a cultural setting, it's difficult (and boring) to bring that about with long drawn out passages of exposition. There's a far more skillful way of gleaning information about peoples and nations other than a history overview. This comes in the form of characters.
People inhabit our stories, not just those directly on-screen, and not even just those mentioned in passing. There are thousands of other characters out there, living their lives behind the scenes of our stories, and they are a gold mine for presenting a broad worldview.
I'm going to use the prologue from my novel, "The Lonely Man: The Witch's Price" as an example. For those of you who haven't read it yet, I have it posted HERE. So take a quick read and rejoin me as I discuss a few of the intricacies I employed to bring Mhets' world to life.
Done reading? If not, then follow at your peril.
Setting gives us a place for the story, and provides an overall mood. In the opening of my novel, we find ourselves in an underground chamber filled with dead bodies and the men who'd killed them. That is the moment when the reader is supposed to understand the nature of the story: it is not a pretty thing, and it is not a soft thing. The setting gives an indication of how the rest of the novel will proceed. It's a grim and dark world where men slaughter men. But then I do something else, something very different from what would be expected: I describe the men in detail, even though they aren't going to be reoccurring figures in the novel. These men are not prominent players in the overall narrative, but they play a grand role in bringing the world of "The Lonely Man" to life.
In the group we have a sorcerer (Bad Roe), a man of nobility (Robin), a thug (Brown Tom), thieving brothers (Aln and Eln), a man of mysterious disposition (Allhune), and then Mhets.
I gave each man--Aln and Eln together--a descriptive passage, marking certain elements about themselves that were unique. I used this method as a way of opening up the world of "The Lonely Man." On the surface we learned the world was populated by sorcerers, thieves, nobles, and brutal men. Beneath that surface we came to understand that men such as Robin, though striking an honorable figure, was nonetheless just as violent and cruel as Brown Tom, the bastard of the group. We understood that Bad Roe was, for the most part, a novice sorcerer, yet powerful enough to storm a god's chamber. And Allhune, a man carrying himself with a bearing of righteousness, but harboring a terrible darkness, stood out as an enigma.
These men, in their brief moments, gave the reader glimpses of who populated the world. They were a kind of study group for Gnovia. It was my hope that after reading the prologue, readers came away with a wider scope of the world was like, and what it was Mhets would come to experience. I wanted them to hold fantastic expectations, and enure that they were rooted in the story no matter the situations Mhets encountered. That was most important. I wanted the belief to be there that no matter what happened to Mhets, it was a plausible part of the world. In the very first few pages I wanted the suspension of disbelief anchored in the reader's mind.
Characters as setting gives us as writers an active and interesting way at introducing our worlds.
We all know that setting is where a story takes place. We also know that characters are who the story takes place around. Setting is constructed in different ways. Clues are used to target the senses: sight, scent, taste, touch, and hearing. These are obvious setting indicators, easily determined and conjured based on a particular place in a story. We can see a red barn and its hayloft, smell the hay and manure, hearing the animals, feel the texture of the wood. That is where setting reaches its simplest design, the design centered on the senses.
But what I want to talk about is more complicated. When you want to deliver a world setting, a cultural setting, it's difficult (and boring) to bring that about with long drawn out passages of exposition. There's a far more skillful way of gleaning information about peoples and nations other than a history overview. This comes in the form of characters.
People inhabit our stories, not just those directly on-screen, and not even just those mentioned in passing. There are thousands of other characters out there, living their lives behind the scenes of our stories, and they are a gold mine for presenting a broad worldview.
I'm going to use the prologue from my novel, "The Lonely Man: The Witch's Price" as an example. For those of you who haven't read it yet, I have it posted HERE. So take a quick read and rejoin me as I discuss a few of the intricacies I employed to bring Mhets' world to life.
Done reading? If not, then follow at your peril.
Setting gives us a place for the story, and provides an overall mood. In the opening of my novel, we find ourselves in an underground chamber filled with dead bodies and the men who'd killed them. That is the moment when the reader is supposed to understand the nature of the story: it is not a pretty thing, and it is not a soft thing. The setting gives an indication of how the rest of the novel will proceed. It's a grim and dark world where men slaughter men. But then I do something else, something very different from what would be expected: I describe the men in detail, even though they aren't going to be reoccurring figures in the novel. These men are not prominent players in the overall narrative, but they play a grand role in bringing the world of "The Lonely Man" to life.
In the group we have a sorcerer (Bad Roe), a man of nobility (Robin), a thug (Brown Tom), thieving brothers (Aln and Eln), a man of mysterious disposition (Allhune), and then Mhets.
I gave each man--Aln and Eln together--a descriptive passage, marking certain elements about themselves that were unique. I used this method as a way of opening up the world of "The Lonely Man." On the surface we learned the world was populated by sorcerers, thieves, nobles, and brutal men. Beneath that surface we came to understand that men such as Robin, though striking an honorable figure, was nonetheless just as violent and cruel as Brown Tom, the bastard of the group. We understood that Bad Roe was, for the most part, a novice sorcerer, yet powerful enough to storm a god's chamber. And Allhune, a man carrying himself with a bearing of righteousness, but harboring a terrible darkness, stood out as an enigma.
These men, in their brief moments, gave the reader glimpses of who populated the world. They were a kind of study group for Gnovia. It was my hope that after reading the prologue, readers came away with a wider scope of the world was like, and what it was Mhets would come to experience. I wanted them to hold fantastic expectations, and enure that they were rooted in the story no matter the situations Mhets encountered. That was most important. I wanted the belief to be there that no matter what happened to Mhets, it was a plausible part of the world. In the very first few pages I wanted the suspension of disbelief anchored in the reader's mind.
Characters as setting gives us as writers an active and interesting way at introducing our worlds.
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