by Erik Cederblom | Aug 25, 2025 | blog post
Writers get stuck. We’ve all had it happen; we want to write something, an article, a book, a short story, a report, a love letter, but the flow of ideas, of language, won’t turn on. “I’ve got writer’s block,” some wail, throw up their hands, and quit. But writing is a mental process, each step requiring different skills. Getting stuck often comes from losing sight of where you are in the process and using the wrong skills to move forward.
The most important advice I can offer? See yourself a writer. If you are part of that small minority of writers earning a livelihood from your craft, you may identify as such. However, many us, earning our livelihood elsewhere, see ourselves as unworthy of the term. If you write, you are a writer, so think like one; act like one. It’s that simple.
Have a place you associate with the act of writing: a desk, a favorite table at a café, a spot in the library, a comfortable chair. When you park yourself there, let your brain reflexively switch to writer mode.
Carve out specific time for your writing. Make it a priority. You schedule time for work, for doctors’ appointments, for dates of all kinds. If writing is important to you, schedule time for it; make it a routine. Writing should bring satisfaction, so this should be easy to do.
Carry a notebook. I usually have a simple, wired-bound notebook and a mechanical pencil with me. I’m old school. I like to hear the quiet rasp and rhythm of a pencil on paper. An iPad or smart phone doesn’t do it for me. It might for you. The objective is to be able to quickly jot down ideas: new stories, scenes, character sketches, turns of phrase, or random thoughts, whenever they occur. The more I use my notebook, the more writing material I have. Do I write every first draft in longhand? No, but I understand why many writers do. I usually jot down a sketchy first draft, then get my stories into my computer, filed logically, and backed up. After that, most of my writing/editing happens on the computer.
Again, recognize that writing is a process, a journey if you will. Like any journey, know your destination. Otherwise, you risk finding yourself in a place you’d rather not be: lost, frustrated, stuck.
Before you put words to page ask yourself: How long a piece am I writing? For whom? Why? For example, the target length for this piece, 800 –1,000 words, meant accepting there’s not enough space for all the ideas I wanted to share. That helped me organize (and prioritize) my thoughts. Then, I imagined I was sharing information with my writers’ group. I knew the tone, and the language, to use. I wrote as if I was having a conversation with friends.
The existential question—why am I writing?—at a table full of writers will lead to a lively discussion. But in practical terms, are you writing to entertain, to inform, to motivate, to instruct, to make the reader think? Right now, I am writing a short piece for my writer friends with the purpose of sharing ideas to help them from getting stuck when writing. There it is. Before I’ve started, the general parameters of this project are clear.
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Here the guidelines I use to write a first draft:
Intention: What am I writing? For whom? How much space? Due when?
Destination: Where am I going? Writing the ending tells me whether I’m on the correct path. But if that is not your style, begin with a vivid scene or idea and let the writing discover its own direction, allowing room for surprise and flexibility.
Creation: I need to get the story out of my head. I am most productive when I blaze through what Ann Lamott calls a “shitty first draft.” I don’t edit on the fly. I let my ideas run wild, ignoring grammar, punctuation, and word choice. I capture my ideas and tame them later.
Fermentation: After the first draft, I let it sit. I clear my mind, do something unrelated. I try to let go of it for a day, a week, whatever it takes. Ideas pop into my mind. I jot them down, but refrain from getting into editing.
Revision/Editing: I always approach editing with a happy heart because this is where the real writing happens. We writers need the same creative energy we used when gathering ideas or writing the first draft, but now we must rein in that part of your brain that raced from idea to idea and focus instead on cutting everything that doesn’t contribute. Now is the time for revisions, deletions, turns of phrase, expanded ideas, character development, and refined imagery.
Validation: I don’t trust myself to be the final editor. The mind plays tricks. I often miss the obvious in my own work. I always try to give my writing to someone I trust for their requisite experience for knowledgeable, constructive feedback, and/or wait until I have time—days or weeks—and return and re-edit. How many of us have wished we could edit something already submitted for publication?
Jodi Picoult summed it up nicely: “You might not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.”
Be creative in capturing your ideas. No matter how you do it, get them on paper. Know where you are going when you write. Give yourself enough time to come back to your first draft with an open mind. Pretend you are editing someone else’s writing. Be kind to yourself, but be direct and honest. Have your editor’s voice tell your writer’s brain where things went astray. You are a writer. You probably know the solution and where you are in the process. Enjoy the ride.
by Michael J Coffino | Jul 20, 2025 | blog post
The camera shot is to film what the sentence is to writing.
A single film shot can establish setting, mood, and character in seconds. For novelists, this presents a challenge: how can words alone compete with the immediacy and sensory force of cinema? The answer isn’t to mimic the screen—but to embrace what only fiction can do.
While film relies on literal images, prose taps into the brain’s ability to construct entire scenes from carefully chosen language, allowing the story to unfold in the mind’s eye. Film shows us what something looks like. Fiction, at its best, shows us what it means.
Novelists possess tools that reach deeper than the visual, accessing consciousness, time, memory, and meaning, in ways film cannot. Here are some examples.
Selective Detail
Selective detail infuses visuals with a personal and emotionally charged quality. In The Road, Cormac McCarthy employs detail to evoke the visualization and emotional despair of a post-apocalyptic world:
Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before. Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world
The potency of the details captures not only what is seen but what matters emotionally and thematically: a world of despair and fragility.
Omission
The way silence can dwarf the power of sound or music in a film, omission in writing can evoke tension or mood. When writers choose not to describe, they create gaps that allow readers to supply what’s missing and achieve greater emotional investment.
The dialogue in Hills Like White Elephant (Ernest Hemingway) between two characters in a café awaiting a train is a searing example of the evocative power of omission. There, a man and woman talk around the subject of abortion, never uttering the word:
“It’s really an awfully simple operation, Jig,” the man said. “It’s not really an operation at all.”
She looked at the ground the table legs rested on.
“Then what will we do afterward?”
A film director would externalize what is internal in that scene and, with sterling acting performances, could make that happen in a powerful way. But in so doing the film defines the emotions for the viewer. The audience watches how to feel. In the book, however, the omission of “abortion” and Jig’s downward eye tilt gives readers the emotional space to feel their own discomfort, upset, or outrage, allowing emotional meaning to swell.
Metaphor
Metaphor can rival, even surpass, the visual imagery of film. Film provides a fixed image while metaphor activates the imagination. A well-placed metaphor can at once reveal character, mood, and theme, while the same impact in film might require multiple shots, scenes, or dialogue. Unlike film imagery, metaphor invites readers into the inner world of the character.
Consider this single sentence from Toni Morrison’s Beloved capturing both the resilience and emotional state of the character: “She is a tree swaying in the storm, but she will not break.” Readers don’t just see her trembling—they feel her rootedness, vulnerability, and strength, a richness that exceeds what a camera can directly show.
Sensory Immersion
Novelists can engage all five senses—a major advantage. A film might show a character entering a room at night under risky circumstances. The camera might linger here and there. Sounds might occur. Maybe music spikes the tension. But in written form, a character might enter grasping a cold doorknob that sends a chill up her spine, find a room oozing a distinct odor, walk under dim lights over creaky floorboards, and experience a parched throat from anxiety.
Film shows what the room looks and sounds like, but literature lets readers inhabit it.
Setting
Through layered description, literary setting becomes more than backdrop; it becomes a living force—shaping story, emotion, and meaning from the inside out. It is a powerful emotive tool, not a finished image like in film. It is alive with fragments, textures, and impressions and, again, evokes reader imagination and internalization.
John Williams was a master at using setting to evoke emotion in ways hard to achieve on screen. Here is an excerpt from Butcher’s Crossing:
The valley widened; the trees thinned; and the prairie rolled on and on, gray-green in the dusk. The air was so still that the sound of the horses’ hooves on the dry grass and earth seemed to echo back from the hills that surrounded them. The faint odor of pine mingled with the sharpness of the grass; and occasionally a breath of wind carried a stronger scent, heavy and musky, from the herds they could not yet see.
Williams doesn’t just describe landscape; he charges it with mood, using words to enrich the reader not only with what is seen, but with what can be felt.
Psychological Interiorization
Psychological Interiorization in literature—the portrayal of a character’s inner thoughts, emotions, and subconscious responses—can rival and often exceed what film achieves. It allows readers to live inside a character’s consciousness in a way that screen performance, no matter how nuanced, can only suggest. Film shows the face. Literature lets us feel the heart and mind percolating beneath.
Consider Virginia Wolff in Mrs. Dalloway:
She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged. She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside, looking on.
In that sentence, the character exists in two contradictory states at once: the direct and engaged (the knife) and the removed and alienated (the observer). Literature can achieve this paradox without any explanatory visual cue—it simply is. A film can portray a face in a mirror, but it can’t capture both.
Imagery is an essential tool for making your story come alive in the minds of readers. Write what you see in your mind’s eye—with emotional precision, keen observation, and vivid memory.
Michael J. Coffino has published ten books as author and co-author since transitioning from legal practice in 2016, ghostwrites fiction and non-fiction, freelance edits, and coaches other writers.
by A.T. Lynne | Jun 28, 2025 | blog post
Fiction doesn’t merely tell stories—it exposes us. A single passage can resurrect buried memories, awaken long-suppressed dreams, and remind us we’re not alone. Understanding how to wield this emotional force isn’t optional for storytellers. It’s everything.
I’m not talking about purple prose or melodrama. I’m talking about the strategic, intentional use of emotion to transform your writing from something people read into something they experience. Let’s be honest: dry information, no matter how accurate, gets forgotten. But, make someone feel? That sticks.
What Science Tells Us About Connection
Here’s where it gets fascinating. Those mirror neurons researchers have been studying? Neuroscientists have proven what we writers have suspected all along—when readers encounter well-crafted emotional scenes, they don’t just understand what’s happening intellectually. Their brains literally mirror the experience.
The perception-action model shows us that when someone reads about another person’s emotional state, it automatically triggers a representation of that same state in the reader’s brain, complete with physical responses. So when a character’s heart races in terror, the reader’s cardiovascular system responds. When you nail a description of pure joy, you’re literally shifting your reader’s brain chemistry.
Writers have the power to directly influence another person’s physiology through words on a page. That’s not metaphorical—it’s measurably real.
The Emotional Toolkit: Your Big Four
Human emotion, of course, is incredibly complex. But, when you’re crafting stories, it helps to start with four foundational states: sad, mad, glad, and scared. These aren’t just convenient labels—they’re the primary colors of emotional storytelling, recognized in psychology and cinema.
Don’t overthink your first draft. Just tag your characters with one of these four states and keep writing. You’re essentially placing emotional markers that say, “Come back here later and make this real.”
And, this real work happens in revision. Instead of telling us “Clara was scared,” dig into what scared looks like. Maybe it’s the cold sweat between her shoulder blades, or the way her breathing goes shallow and quick, or how her vision tunnels until the only thing in focus is the door handle, inches from her trembling hand.
The difference between telling and showing emotion isn’t mere craft technique—it’s the difference between giving readers information and giving them experience.
Conflict: It’s All About Resourcelessness
You know that old writing adage about getting your character up a tree and throwing rocks at them? The emotional angle makes this so much more powerful. Characters, like real people, make decisions driven by emotion and later use reason and logic to rationalize them. Understanding this changes everything about how you approach conflict.
I’ve found it useful to think in terms of resourceful versus resourceless emotional states. When your protagonist is in a resourceless state, four things are typically happening:
They can’t solve their problem with the tools they have. They need help from people they don’t trust—and who don’t trust them either. They’re in agony or pain. And most of all, they desperately want out–anywhere but here.
This naturally creates organic tension because every choice becomes difficult. Every interaction is loaded with mistrust. Every moment is uncomfortable.
Resourceful states are the opposite—your character has what they need, supportive relationships, physical vitality, and the desire to engage fully with their situation. These states resolve conflict, which is great for your story’s resolution. But, beware, resourceful states deplete tension and momentum if overused in the middle of the narrative.
The Writer’s State: More Important Than You Think
Some of the most powerful, emotionally resonant writing comes from authors who approach their craft from a centered, resourceful place. Think about it—when navigating your reader through complex emotional terrain, wouldn’t you want to be the steady hand on the wheel?
This doesn’t mean you avoid writing about difficult emotions or traumatic experiences. It means you approach that material with intentionality rather than chaos, with clarity rather than personal turmoil clouding your judgment.
When you’re writing from a place of anxiety or self-doubt, you’re more likely to inflict those states on your reader without purpose.
The Responsibility That Comes With Power
Let’s talk about something we don’t discuss enough in writing circles: the ethical dimension of emotional manipulation. Because that’s what we’re doing, isn’t it? We’re deliberately crafting experiences designed to make people feel specific things.
Some stories function like emotional junk food—a quick hit without anything substantive in return. Others serve as genuine nourishment, helping readers process their own experiences, expand their empathy, or find meaning in difficulty.
The choice is always yours. You can write stories that exploit your readers’ emotions for cheap thrills, or you use your power to enrich their lives. But either way, acknowledge you’re making that choice.
Making It Work: The Practical Stuff
So how do you actually harness all this? By getting intimate with your own emotional experiences. When you want to evoke fear, recall a time you were afraid. What did it feel like? What thoughts cycled through your mind? What did you notice about your environment?
The authenticity that comes from mining your own experience creates details that resonate with readers’ mirror neurons. You’re not just describing fear—you’re recreating the neurological pattern of fear to trigger recognition.
Remember, the goal isn’t to label emotions but to evoke them. Instead of telling readers what your character feels, create the sensory experience that produces that feeling. Let your readers name the emotion for themselves and they will feel even more deeply connected to the character and the story.
The Bottom Line
Emotion is the most powerful writing tool. It transforms information into experience and makes ideas stick long after the reader has moved on to other things. Readers have countless sources of information, but what transforms them is feeling, being understood through storytelling, affirming their humanity.
Written with Claude assist (https://claude.ai)
by Robin Cohn | May 26, 2025 | blog post
Like many of you, I’ve been dubious about using artificial intelligence (AI), especially for fiction. I felt that avoiding AI was the morally right thing to do since the big players in the AI field committed the original sin of using practically every writer’s work without their permission to train their “robots.” And if AI companies used everything on the internet to train their products, what’s to say they won’t steal your writing if they get a whiff of it?
Then there’s the whole issue of getting your work published. If I used AI just to help me write an article (not actually write the whole thing without hardly touching my keyboard), then won’t publishers reject my work?
And what about the stigma? I didn’t want anyone to think I was a lazy hack who needed a bot to write for me.
I didn’t think using AI for research was any better. I’d heard AI makes up stuff half the time and is otherwise unreliable. In January, I gave ChatGPT a try, the most well-known “language model” as they’re called, for finding book comps. It provided a list of twelve made-up author and title names. I was right! AI was crap.
Then, one of our CWC members recommended another language model for editing. Curious, I attended a few AI sessions at writers’ conferences. I took an online class on the subject and watched webinars sponsored by major writers’ organizations. They all provided recommendations for particular language models, what they excel at, and how to use them effectively. The more fellow writers I spoke with who used AI in their work, the more I realized the stigma is dissipating. I discovered that publishers are adapting to the new reality. Most balk at receiving submissions completely written by AI, but many offer clear guidelines for accepting AI-assisted work, such as parts of the manuscript that AI is used to edit.
I road-tested seventeen programs (mainly the free versions) to see what the hullabaloo was all about. I discovered right away that you can direct them to not use your writing for training or violate your privacy. So, I carried on. Some programs are designed for research, others are specifically for writing, and some do everything but clean your kitchen (and that model can’t come soon enough). Each has strengths and weaknesses.
At first, I wasn’t impressed. However, week by week, the tools quickly exceeded my expectations, some more than others. Don’t get me wrong; they have no idea how to provide the special spark and intelligence of humans and they often flatten voice as they default to a generic style of expression. And for heaven’s sake, they can’t resist using clichés as often as possible. But they can augment weaknesses and blind spots. I learned how to use AI for great brainstorming and editing results. They finally started offering me book comp possibilities that were REAL books! Caution: it’s essential to verify any information they provide and analyze feedback with common sense and an eye for artistic quality.
Begrudgingly, I had to admit that these tools can be fantastic writing buddies for any type of project. In non-fiction writing, I’ve used AI to critique my drafts of a query letter, a novel synopsis, and develop other submission package materials. I’ve had them generate images for social media and my website. I’ve prompted AI models to critique paragraphs and a chapter from my historical fiction manuscript, and was astounded by the quality of the feedback. AI models have suitably served authors as developmental, line, and copy editors, as well as proofreaders. They cannot replace the value that human critique partners, beta readers, or professional editors (if you can afford them) can offer. But why not use these tools in conjunction with other resources you have?
Their effectiveness draws heavily upon the quality of the instructions (“prompts”) you provide them. Devising the best prompts—it often requires a few attempts—is itself an exercise in effective, even creative writing, which will shape and influence the clarity, detail, and relevance of what the AI models deliver. Several AI tools allow you to provide detailed instructions and style guides in the settings, as well as samples of your writing for them to provide better responses. In addition, there are many resources on the internet, as well as good old-fashioned books, about how to use AI tools to improve your writing.
Fortunately, on June 11 via Zoom, the CWC Marin chapter is sponsoring Dan Miller, an expert in this field, to discuss copyright issues as well as the pros and cons of AI for writers. I watched him give a similar presentation to another organization, and I came away feeling less anxious about AI stealing my work. I think we are in for a real treat because Dan Miller knows an ocean more than I do about the world of AI and what it means for writers.
And as far as the original sin committed by AI companies, well, that hankie has been used and isn’t going back in the box. There’s no stopping AI from becoming infused in every aspect of our culture. Trying to live without it will be like trying to live without electricity or plastic. In my youth, I built a log cabin in the woods and attempted to live off the grid. It didn’t take me long to stop trying to forge my own tableware. Perhaps it’s time to plug in your coffee machine and laptop, and give AI a try. It’s probably safer than building your own kiln in the backyard.
[Note: The only AI tool I used for writing this blog was the free version of Grammarly.]
by Susanna Solomon | Apr 15, 2025 | blog post
I am a Genius. You say, how? Because when I write, when I sit down at a café with paper and pencil or peck away at my computer, I make things up. Only then am I giving myself permission to create characters, whole worlds, or anything that comes to mind. A beach in 1909. A monster wave coming into shore where a family is having a picnic. My grandmother at nineteen pining for a boyfriend. My father at six, disappointing his mother, an argument between an old guy and a kid on an e-bike, two women at the beach, a student preparing for an exam and a mom worried about her six-year-old who was bullied at school and hasn’t come home. A college student during exam week worried she hasn’t done enough. A slender man taking a toke on a cigarette, shouting into his iPhone.
Only by making myself the king of my world can I invent it. I can make up whatever I want, I can put people in peril, or save a kid from drowning. Real life doesn’t allow this freedom, at least not often, anyway. But fiction and writing does. This is what makes writers write.
However, this is only the first part.
Being a genius means you have put something down on paper.
Something on paper may need editing.
Some editing is good for you.
Some editing makes you doubt you are a genius.
More editing makes your work sing.
More editing means you have to “kill your darlings.” Some editing makes you doubt what you have written. Some editing may make you want to hide. Some editing makes you want to do the dishes, the cat box, clean the garage, puke, do anything but write. But do not despair. Keep going. After over 250 short stories, I always feel like a hack. Every day.
Some editing may show you have a good sentence or two.
Polishing means you have to look at your work with a steady eye.
Reading your work aloud in public means you have to look other people in the eye.
Reading your work aloud in public can be scary.
Reading your work aloud in public can make people laugh.
And it can make them cry.
I first read my work aloud at an open mic in a Fairfax bar called Pints ‘N Prose. In 2011. Like all good open mics, this one was timed, five minutes (which I learned later was 750 words). I read from my novel. Right away, I could tell I wasn’t making any sense, the audience did not know the characters, didn’t understand the setting, or the conflict. They fidgeted, I was lost and knew it. At five minutes and ten seconds, they blew the horn, which was at least three feet long and loud, kept behind the bar. A person hauled me off the stage and I slinked away.
I found a dark place beyond the stage to sequester my beet red face from public view. I wanted to crawl under my table and die.
What was the problem? Many. My reading had to be short, snappy, have a denouement, an action and a resolution. What my writing teacher calls Slam, Bam, Kablooie.
I scrapped reading the novel, and concentrated on finding that five minute sweet spot. I would beat them at their own game.
I started reading the sheriff’s calls section (actual police logs) from the newspaper, The Point Reyes Light, our local West Marin newspaper. Most every day there were lots of calls, but this particular day, a Wednesday, there was this sheriff’s call.
“There were no calls. Good job West Marin.”
So I decided to write about what didn’t happen. I took citings from other days and made them not happen. Boys at a bus stop, with a bag full of rotten apples, did not throw them at the bus, because one of the boy’s mother called them in for supper. A paragraph.
An unhappy man woke up feeling sick and desperate on the floor by a porcelain throne and did not reach for his bottle of Jim Beam.
No one was camping at Brighton Beach in Bolinas, which was the first time that happened in over sixty days.
Speeding drivers slowed down and did not run into a ditch.
A cow, wanting green grass, did not break the fence, but instead turned around to join the herd.
A desperate Penny Henny, behind in her rent, pleaded with her landlord for more time. The landlord got a text from his mother that she was expecting lunch.
It was a series of short paragraphs, and the story ended with an elderly lady looking for trouble and grabbing her gun.
I knew this story would fit the time. When I read it aloud the whole place erupted in laughter and applause. I wrote another based on another sheriff’s calls, and the audience was close to tears. I wrote and read more and more, hitting that sweet spot. I had found a new voice in my writing. A publisher asked me what I was writing and I sent in one of my stories and received a publishing contract. So you never know.
Reading your work aloud will improve your writing in countless ways. E.g., it can reveal the seemingly poetic sentence as a confounding tongue-twister, the overuse of certain “crutch” words and clunky expressions, an emotionally-starved or unimaginative dialogue, holes in character traits and development, and the lack of storytelling rhythm and pacing. And if you have a live reading audience, the benefits are immediate. Your writing improves. You can hear your audience fidget, or whisper, or you can see them sit up and smile or sigh or burst into tears.
So when you prepare for a reading, look over each word. Does this move the action? Is this the best way to say this? What do my characters want? Where’s the kablooie? And remember, you are a genius.
Susanna Solomon is the author of Point Reyes Sheriff’s Calls, and More Point Reyes Sheriff’s Calls, short stories she first read at an open mic.
She is also the author of Paris Beckons, a short story collection based in Paris. At the moment she is at work on another collection tentatively called A Garden of Misfits. From an alien to a time-traveling cowboy to a not-very bright guy wanting to be a “made” man, Susanna tells stories about people who are different.
by John Byrne Barry | Mar 26, 2025 | blog post
How Memorable Setting Can Advance Plot, Reveal Character, Echo Theme, and More
How do you know how much setting to include? What do you mean by “setting that works?”
Two elderly couples are taking a walk, the women in front, the men closely behind. One man says to the other, “We went out to dinner last night and had the best grilled fish ever —”
The second man says, “What restaurant?”
The first man slaps his forehead. “Damn. Senior moment. Help me out here. You know that flower, the fragrant one with the thorns?”
The second man says, “Rose?”
“Yeah, Rose,” the first man says, then shouts to his wife, “Rose, what was the name of that restaurant we went to last night?”
Notice anything about that story? No setting. None needed. Readers can picture the setting in their own way.
This is not to say that setting isn’t important as much as that if all it does is its primary role — immersing readers in the scene, so they can visualize it, feel it, smell it — it’s a missed opportunity. Even the most elegantly written setting can slow your story down.
The best and most memorable setting is lean and strong because it’s working multiple jobs. It advances the story, or sets the mood, or echoes the theme.
One of the most powerful jobs setting can do is propel the story. For example, in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, the setting is central to the plot. The Joads, a family of farmers, are so poor they have to leave drought-stricken Dust Bowl Oklahoma (the first setting). They drive to sunny California, seeking new opportunities only to find low wages, an oversupply of labor, and exploited workers (the second setting).
The most common side gig for setting is defining or revealing character. In many novels, the camera sits on the character’s shoulder. The reader sees what the character sees. If I’m walking in my neighborhood in Tam Valley, I might notice how flowers are bursting out all over. Someone else might notice the Teslas and Mercedes. What the character sees shows the reader who he or she is. I notice the expensive cars too, not because I care about cars, but because they remind me I live in a community where many people have more money than I do. That’s revealing my character too.
What books, and which authors, would you say provide good examples of setting done well?
Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day comes to mind because the setting there is so much about describing a culture and tradition more than a place. The story follows Stevens, a middle-aged butler in 1950s England, who takes a motoring trip to the West Country, where a former housekeeper lives. He’s hoping he might rekindle a connection with her.
But most of the novel is his reminiscence of the time between the wars, when he presides over a large staff at Darlington Hall, a Downton Abbey–like estate and strives to be the best butler ever. He’s so obsessed with loyalty to a stuffy and antiquated tradition that he doesn’t allow himself an emotional life. He leaves the bedside of his dying father to take care of “critical matters” in the household, like polishing the silver.
The setting reveals Stevens’ character — not Darlington Hall as much as the devotion to “dignity” that sadly limits his life.
Then there’s Prodigal Summer, by Barbara Kingsolver, set in the fecund forests of Appalachia. Deanna, a wildlife biologist, is studying a den of coyotes that recently migrated into the region, and she falls in love with a young man who’s come to the mountains to hunt the coyotes.
The setting here is the opposite of The Remains of the Day — it’s humid and lush and bursting with procreating plants and animals. I read it long ago, and still remember the rowdy, sexy natural environment, the birds and bees writ large, and how that seeps into Deanna’s complicated relationship with the hunter.
How important is setting to a story? What about books where setting is like a character? Is that possible?
Consider The Perfect Storm, a true story about the crew of a fishing boat caught in a vicious Atlantic storm, which escalates the way a character might, and is described with adjectives you might use with people — angry, fierce, relentless. Severe weather, because it changes, can be like a character. In The Perfect Storm, the setting is the story.
There are plenty of books where cities are like characters. Think 1980s New York City in Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities, with its go-go greed-is-good bond traders and its polarizing racial tensions. Or Dickens’ London, with its prisons, workhouses, and “misanthropic ice.”
How else can setting strengthen your story?
Setting can also convey mood and tone. If you were to describe a committee of vultures perching on a tree branch, studying the ground, that certainly communicates an ominous feeling. Or it’s a metaphor for what’s happening in the story.
In The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje’s desert setting and the hot winds evoke mood, character, tension, theme, story.
“The desert could not be claimed or owned—it was a piece of cloth carried by winds, never held down by stones, and given a hundred shifting names long before Canterbury existed, long before battles and treaties quilted Europe and the East.”
One of my favorite uses of setting is in All the King’s Men, where Robert Penn Warren echoes his main theme — how the past impacts the present — on the very first page. He describes driving fast down a heat-dazzled white slab of Louisiana highway that hypnotizes drivers to sleep and how the highway department marks the location of accidents with a cross along the side of the road with a skull and crossbones, to warn drivers, but then the kudzu vines cover up the crosses. We don’t learn from the past.
John Byrne Barry is a writer, actor, designer, director, and crossing guard. Also a former board member of California Writers Club Marin. He is the author of three plays and four novels. Find out more at johnbyrnebarry.com.
He is available to present “Setting That Works” to CWC branches.
