Dominoes, Triggers, and Plot

Photo: flickr.com/photos, Reece Kidman

"To avoid bad writing, think of the events in your novel as dominoes. Let's call them dramatic dominoes. The first event in the novel--and for that you can read 'the first scene'--must trigger an event that follows...The key here is to remember that scene one is the first domino. It knocks the next one over and so forth." --Elizabeth George, Write Away

Reworking some of my scenes this week with dominoes in mind. What table game inspires your writing? (Please don't say Sorry!)
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Setting, Landscape, Atmosphere--How Are They Different?

"In every piece of fiction...setting is one of the three major elements--along with characterization and plot--that the writer must weave together to create the narrative." --Connie C. Epstein

Setting

Oh, the fun of setting--imagining where the story takes place, how characters respond to their surroundings, drinking in the sights, sounds, and smells that connect the reader to the written word--it's the world-building side of the writer's craft. I've been immersed in the subject this week as I've brainstormed ideas for my WIP. Along the way I've sought the wisdom of others to help open up that world. Helpful thoughts on the subject:

"There are lots of things you can do with setting. Setting adds color to the story. Setting affects characters. Setting lends authenticity to the narrative, and paints pictures in the imagination of readers." --Nancy Lamb, The Art and Craft of Story Telling.

"Settings..aren't just backdrops. Just by where you have the action happening will tell a lot about the action itself and the people involved." --Ansen Dibell, Plot

"Setting grounds your writing in the reality of place and depicts the theme of your story through powerful metaphor. Without setting, characters are simply there, in a vacuum, with no reason to act and most importantly, no reason to care. Without a place there is no story." --Nina Munteanu, scribophile

Landscape

And yet, expanding on the idea of setting, I came across the concept of landscape, this from Elizabeth George in her book Write Away:

"On the surface, it would appear that landscape and setting are the same creatures, identical twins given different names just to confuse the beginning writer. This, however, would not be the truth since setting is where a story takes place--including where each scene takes place--while landscape is much broader than that...Landscape in writing implies much the same as that which is implied by the word when it's used to refer to a location in a country: It is the broad vista into which the writer actually places the individual settings of the novel, sort of like the canvas or other medium onto which a painter has decided to daub color.

"You need to think about the landscape of your book because if you're able to make the landscape of place real, you can make the land itself real, which gives you a leg up on making the entire novel real for the reader."

Atmosphere

But there's more. If the nuanced differences between setting and landscape are not enough, what about the idea of atmosphere? Janet Burroway in her classic, Writing Fiction, a Guide to Narrative Craft, puts it this way: "Your fiction must have an atmosphere because without it your characters will be unable to breathe."

"Like many of the terms that relate to the elements of fiction, 'atmosphere' has more than one meaning," Burroway writes. "Sometimes referring to subject matter, sometimes to technique. Part of the atmosphere of a scene or story is its setting, which includes the locale, period, weather, and time of day. Part of the atmosphere is its 'tone,' an attitude taken by the narrative voice that can be described, not in terms of time and place, but as a quality--sinister, facetious, formal, solemn, wry, and so on...As we need to know a character's gender, race, and age, we need to know in what atmosphere she or he operates to understand the significance of the action."

Setting, landscape, atmosphere. Separate entities yet connected.The first puts you in the action. The second contains the story's broader vista. The third enables the characters to breathe. Had you ever considered the varying distinctions? How so? Will you imagine your setting with a different understanding now?

photos courtesy of sxc.hu

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Photo-A-Day: July

"Character is story." --Elizabeth George

July's photo-a-day project came with a twist, an historical twist that is. My WIP, a middle-grade historical fiction, is set in mid-1800s Ohio. The challenge? Step back in time and attempt to capture images of things my character might have seen, smelled, tasted, touched, or heard. Such an exercise held out the promise of getting to know my character better.

And help bring her to life...

"It takes a long time (to write YA)...I have to let the characters live inside my head awhile. You have to know what's on your character's walls and what's in their closet--even if you're not going to use that in your book. It's a way of bringing your characters to life before they're on paper." --Paula Danzinger

"When characters are really alive, before their author, the latter does nothing but follow them in action." --Luigi Pirandello

"Once we have begun it, we continue reading a novel largely because we care about what happens to the characters. But for us actually to care about these actors in the drama on those printed pages, they must become real people to us. An event alone cannot hold a story together. Nor can a series of events. Only characters effecting events and events effecting characters can do that." --Elizabeth George, Write Away

So without further ado, here's July's photo gallery, sample images of what a young girl might have encountered in a similar month 150 years ago--except that they were captured through the lens of a 21st century camera!

Of course I'd loved to have snapped a slew of others. A mule for instance. A hand-crafted checkerboard. A pontoon bridge and a hollyhock doll or two. But I'll leave that for the imagination--and the finished book :-)

Enjoy.

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