Setting is more than the broad location and time. It is everything contained within that space—the items and props that your characters handle and face.
The final blog in this short setting series (read the first and second here) focuses on those pieces you add to convey character or foreshadowing or some other essential element to your story. It could be their father’s pocket watch, a childhood trophy for a sport they no longer play, or a letter that changed their life.
The items you choose matter. If you take time to describe an item, you are making it important to the reader. You are directing their attention to it, so make sure it is working for you and isn’t just filler.
There are different kinds of items you could include in your setting. They include:
Significant Items
These are the objects that are critical to the plot. It’s Ashmole 782 in A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness. The ring in The Lord of the Rings. The book of prophecies in Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. These are items that deserve a closer look and more description. They should either further the plot or character. Examples of items that would be significant to plot include evidence in mystery novels or an item that is the centerpiece, like those items listed above. Character-significant items are those that don’t necessarily drive plot, but reveal character. These are most often objects that don’t matter to anyone but the character, at least not in the same way for the same reason.
Emotional Items
These are items that reveal how your character is feeling. It’s more about their reaction to the item than the item itself. The object acts as a catalyst to memory, feelings, backstory and motivation. These types of items can take any form.
Adding objects to your setting gives it depth and texture, much like adding furniture fills in an empty room making it feel more inviting and lived-in. It’s why real estate agents stage homes to help sell them. The props tap into emotion.
Here are some tricks to filling in the gaps in your setting:
Duration
If an object is not significant or important, don’t spend too much time describing it. Your readers will focus on those objects that get special attention. But that doesn’t mean you can’t include other bits to fill in the space. Just be brief and use groupings of items to convey a larger sense of the space. Clusters also help readers get a better sense of the space and the person who lives within it.
Wednesday lunch at the Kreemie Kakes diner. The special will be meatloaf and twice-baked potatoes. Free refills on coffee. The first doughnuts of the morning will be boxed up and waiting to go for half-price on the counter next to the cash register. Pie, according to season; rhubarb, strawberry, apple, pumpkin. The pie’s homemade but the whipped cream comes out of a tub.
And the rector of St. Alban’s Episcopal Church will be sitting in one of the window booths with the Millers Kill Chief of Police.
Julia Spencer-Fleming, Collect for a Noonday Service
Be Specific
Don’t just include a random list of items—be specific. Don’t say there are books, tell your reader there is a set of leather-bound volumes of Shakespeare’s sonnets or the complete series of Nancy Drew from the 1960s. The specific details is what conveys emotion and meaning, not the item itself. A car doesn’t evoke anything. A red, 1967 Austin Healy that demanded more time under it than above it does.
Be Consistent
If you show an item in the beginning of the book, it must be there at the end unless you have shown it being destroyed, removed or tossed. Books must remain books. Video games must stay video games. A specific jacket should remain that—specific. Don’t introduce objects and then abandon them for other, less meaningful pieces. Consistency helps anchor your reader. It also makes it more meaningful when that item is broken, donated or left behind.
Lists
Sometimes a grouping of items can be more powerful in creating setting than one or two. Lists have the advantage of conveying a broader sense of place. It also helps establish more firmly the people within that space. One of the best passages about objects can be found in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. If you have not read it, I highly recommend it. Here is a brief excerpt to give you an idea of how to handle objects to reveal character:
…Until he was shot, Ted Lavender carried six or seven ounces of premium dope, which for him was a necessity. Mitchell Sanders, the RTO, carried condoms. Norman Bowker carried a diary. Rat Kiley carried comic books. Kiowa, a devout Baptist, carried an illustrated New Testament that had been presented to him by his father, who taught Sunday school in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. As a hedge against bad times, however, Kiowa also carried his grandmother’s distrust of the white man, his grandfather’s old hunting hatchet. Necessity dictated….