In this week’s episode, JP and Crys continue their Author’s Tarot Journey, this time using The Empress to guide their discussion. They discuss the different tips and tricks they use to create richer settings in their stories.
Question of the week: How do you create rich settings? Share your answer here.
Show Notes
Episode 84: How do you introduce your story world without overwhelming the reader?
Transcript
JP: Hello friends. This is episode number 88 of the Write Away Podcast and it is March 24th, 2022 as we are recording. I am your host JP Rindfleisch, with my cohost…
Crys: Crys Cain.
JP: Hi Crys. How are things?
Crys: Good. I took basically two days off from work last couple days because I wasn’t feeling well. And when I did get energy in the day, just spent time doing creative, fun, playing around with words work, story work. So basically I set aside any kind of admin things for two whole days and even like new word creation and just played with a new story idea.
One of the things I did was a bunch of us have been talking about Jennifer Lynn Barnes’ Id List, which is a talk she gave in 2018 at RWA. You can find it on the RWA website for like $6. There’s also a couple of podcasts and blog posts that have covered it if you don’t want to pay RWA. But it’s the idea that you collect all of just the images and objects and circumstances that just make you really happy when they’re in a story, and then use them to also fuel your writing because they are probably things that make other people really happy when they read stories.
And I even did that as I was planning. I went to the list as I was plotting out a story yesterday, and I had some negotiations with ogres, and for some reason that was just feeling off. I was like, why does that feel off? So I went and looked at my Id List and said, well, what if it was Griffins instead? And like all of a sudden I’m very excited about negotiations with Griffins. So that was a lot of fun.
How’s your week been?
JP: Well that sounds really fun. Just FYI.
My week’s been good. Insanely busy, but good. I have two different projects with two different clients that I am trying to get done. Very close to being done. One is editing, one is the art. Completely unexpected and also exciting to say the least. Yay. And with the client that wanted the art project, I already have something else that’s probably in the works with that client shortly after. Apparently my art goal is going to be out the window because I think I said five things of art. And let me tell you, I have plenty more.
Crys: Excellent. Excellent.
JP: Yeah, so that’s been fun and good. And yeah, I’m working on everything else. I ended up taking two days off of work just to focus on writing stuff just because I had a lot of things, and I just am trying to stabilize them. But I’m by no means like burned out. I’m just waiting for that moment, taking time, that’s probably the better thing. Yeah, so I don’t know, things have been going well.
Crys: Excellent. Okay.
JP: We do you have a comment.
So this comes from, I think it was episode number 85, which was our tarot card, The Magician. And we were talking about what scenes do your characters need to reach their end goal? And our question was: how do you plan out scenes for your characters journey? And Juliet said that she loved the episode. She had some great ideas and she was off to find Verbalize, which I believe you mentioned, and see how it fits into our process. She is a partial plotter, preferring to be a pantser, but life and child don’t allow the mental flexibility. So character development is where she lets her skinny dipping, hippie pantser side run free.
And I love that. It’s so much fun. And she can see how this might allow her to do that while feeling more in control of the project. So that was cool.
Crys: I know Juliet and she’s a number one individualization with the Clifton strengths. So anything very character related is probably a good tool for her.
JP: I’m going to figure out how to use skinny dipping hippie pantser as often as possible. Yes.
Crys: Our new Patreon supporter is Angela Woods. Thank you so much, Angela for supporting us on Patreon.
JP: Yay. Hello!
Crys: All right. So our card this week that we’re using to guide our question is The Empress. Would you mind giving the description, JP?
JP: Absolutely. So some keywords for The Empress upright is motherhood, nature, and nurture. And in reversed, it would be at dependence, smothering, and creative block.
So The Empress signifies the strong connection with our femininity or our feminine side. And this is more in the ways of elegance, creativity and expression, and this nurturing side. Whereas I think the previous cards was The High Priestess, and that was more of that like subconscious femininity.
This is more of that like expressive side of things, and it’s necessary for creating that balance in both men and women. And The Empress calls on you to connect with this feminine energy and create beauty in life. Connecting with your senses through taste, touch, sound, smell, and I think that’s where I would like to end the description.
Crys: Excellent. The question that you brought to us for this one was: how do you create a rich setting and stick to it? And we have talked a bit about how to deepen your description, but we haven’t talked about imagining your setting.
Now, some people, some writers, I can think of a few right off the top of my head, are very much driven by pictures. Like they will go out and they will find picture sources as ways to inspire their writing. And they have to know what their place looks like before they can start writing. So if you’re one of those people, you probably got this on lock.
I am not one of those people. I tend to suffer from white room syndrome, which is where the characters interact in a blank, empty white room. If you’ve ever seen The Good Place, there is a long sequence where the characters get stuck at a blank white room, and it’s like all my seeds happen there.
JP: You were talking about white rooms, I think I’m in the same boat sometimes. 50% of the time I have major scatter problems. I will either focus really heavily on the characters and the interaction between the characters, or I will think about like the space that they’re in. I think I’m probably less good at description but I’m good at lived in spaces, if that makes sense. So like history about places, which I think is also important in this like rich setting and senses, is places that are lived in and not just like brand new house, because that’s not the case like 90% of the time. But yeah, I think I’m like a 50/50.
Crys: Yeah. So one of the things I think that is really going to be helpful for moving forward is that Id List because there are a lot of places that I really like when stories are set there, like creepy castles on cliffs with lots of fog. So that’s on my list. I also like cities in the desert. And one of my serials that I’m working on, the idea for the world was simply that I wanted to create a rich, bustling metropolis in a very tropical region, humid tropical regions, so that I could include all of the inspiration from Costa Rica, with all the bright colors of animals and the thick woods and all of that. And also the ocean.
So one of my suggestions is to start creating an Id List where you just write down places that you really like reading stories in, or that you just really like the image of, and put them on your list. So that when you’re going, oh, where could this be? I mean, one of the things on my list is cafes. I love cafes tea shops, any of that. Basement rooms, but like you access from the outside.
JP: Brain was like, hey, what about flavors? Cause one, I’m gonna tell you a little bit about this coffee I’m drinking because this is important to the conversation, but this coffee has a really nice chocolaty note to it that I would not have expected with coffee. And even saying that as a descriptor, like that kind of gives it more life to the discussion than “I’m drinking coffee.”
And I think that I’m really bad with taste, touch, and smell, and so I’m focused more on sight and in hearing as those are the two key features in cinema. But when I try to think about like, how can I describe foods? That’s the next thing that I think about is like all of the flavor descriptors. And so I read what does the wine say that it has secret notes of. And I think about that and I try to find those notes. Same with coffees. And then I try to reincorporate that into like the foods that I eat. Because if you’re talking about if you’re writing a coastal city, what are the coastal foods that are there? Can you describe those?
Crys: Yeah, I agree. I am also a foodie. I think this comes more easily to those of us who would travel 16 hours just to taste one dish. I do not understand the other kinds of people, do not. And yeah, that’s part of the history of a setting, right?
Do they have spicy food? Do they have bland food? Why is that? And so some of the hotter regions will tend to have spicier foods because it’s healthy to sweat more when you’re in those regions. But that’s not a hundred percent true. A lot of the foods in the Central America regions, not all of them, tend to be lower on spice. I’m thinking like Mexican is not one of them.
Mexico is so huge and has such a variety of climates. They have arid, they have desert, they have rainforest, they have everything. But yeah, taking into account like what kind of food might have come up in your region, especially if it’s not contemporary. If it’s contemporary, then you can just look and see what food exists in this region because that creates a good sense of space. Sometimes of otherness if your readers are not from the place that you’re writing or not familiar with the place that you’re writing and an otherness that is very comfortable to us or very exploratory, very exciting.
JP: Yeah, definitely. And I’m thinking of when I read passages that are like, so and so is at a market and spices filled the air. Sometimes that’s good to have. Sometimes you can just say that and then your reader can pick up on whatever spices are familiar to them, but if you want that more specificity, you could always say, hints of rosemary, hints of cardamom, pieces like that. Because people are familiar enough with a couple of spices that they would be able to pick up like, yes, I know what this is, and I can get that sense.
To me, I like having those specifics in there because it gives this picture of my mind to the reader. And I understand where sometimes broadness is good, and I understand where sometimes being a little bit more specific makes your story a little bit more in depth.
Crys: Yeah. I think particularly when you are setting the sense of a space, the specificity can be really useful. For instance, talking about markets, a Christmas market in Slovakia is going to have much different spices than a weekend market in Mumbai.
JP: Very much so.
Crys: One of the things that’s recommended often in The Writing Excuses Podcast –which I haven’t listened to in a couple of years, just fell out of the habit, but listened to religiously for, I don’t know, 10 years, or like maybe it was like six years once I discovered them, I’m not really sure– is that the number of places you have will lengthen your book. The more places you have, the more scenes and more places you have, the longer your book will be.
So that’s something to consider if you’re writing a short story, a novella, a novel, or an epic, is literally how many places do you have? Not just, oh, the castle is one place. No, the bedroom in the castle is one place. The dining room, a ballroom, those are all different places. And if you’re doing a short story, you’re going to want to keep your setting very focused so that you don’t have to spend so much time describing each new individual setting. You can shortcut and be like they re-entered the library. And then all of your word count, which is very important in short stories could be given to the actions of the characters.
JP: Definitely. I also really enjoy when I read passages where I’m experiencing the scene through the perspective of the character, as opposed to being told the description of the room. And this is one I’ve practiced a lot on to get that information conveyed through the perspective of the character. Are they in a moment where they’ve been captured and been brought into this library? I’m going to feel very restrained. I’m going to be able to like peek through my eyes and see dusty shelves of books.
As the writer, I’m not sitting there describing the room as a whole. I’m describing it through this constrained perspective. I, one, find that really enjoyable to write as, but two, I find that the tension in the room keeps this question as to what does the character perceive and how can I convey that?
So it’s another added layer of difficulty because you know all of the descriptors that you have for this room, but now you have to reconstruct it to what that perspective of the character going to be.
Crys: Yeah. And I’ll link that episode where we’ve talked about that previously. We have a downloadable exercise that can help you practice that deep POV as well, which adds not only that personal view, it adds opinion and adds emotion when done well, and just adds a lot of depth to your setting.
JP: One more thing. I think it was when I was talking to Hugh Howey, he had mentioned one thing he likes to think about when he brings in or introduces his new characters is what’s in their pockets as a way of knowing that this character existed before they showed up on the page, knowing that they had a history. And so that’s his short phrase that he uses in his mind when he’s writing. And I’ve taken on that kind of thought as to what’s in their pockets, what’s their history?
And then I also do that with places too. A place is lived in, a place has history in it. So it’s, what’s the scrubs, what’s the dirtiness in the house, where did that come from? Where are the dents ad dings and how did that kind of come into play? And this isn’t an exercise that takes hours for me. It’s just a thought that I have, and then I might introduce the concept in the writing.
So for one of our books that Abe and I are writing, there is a ghost entity. And we just asked the question, who is this ghost beforehand? And we were able to come up with a story within 10 minutes that just gave that character life, but then it also gave room to the place that they were in because there’s more history of that place. And there are other like threads that can be broadened from it. So it’s like a couple of minutes of time just thinking of where this character came from really broadens and enriches the story.
Crys: Excellent.
Do you have a question for our listeners this week?
JP: Yes. How do you create rich settings?
Crys: Easy Peasy. All right, friends. Thanks for listening. We’re about to go record our business episode relating to The Empress card, and you can access that at our Patreon. The link will be in the show notes.
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