Sense of Place -- How to achieve it?

[Mark Robson]

Originally Posted by Kelpie

In your own writing, how much of the story arises out of the setting, and how much of the setting is dictated by the story?

Assuming that you start with at least a rough idea of the plot -- are you willing to modify that if, in working out the background details (history, culture, etc.), a new and interesting direction occurs to you? Or if you realize (or someone points out to you) that certain plot points don't make sense in the context, do you reinvent the context to make it all work?

How "organic" do you all think the story and the setting should be to one another?

To maintain a sense of balance within my stories, I tend to use the little mnemonic HIPS. History, Individuals, Plot, Sub-Plot. Depending on the type of story, I will try to balance the four elements accordingly. For something like your work, Kelpie, there would be more of an emphasis on the history with the other three elements balanced with almost equal, but lesser importance. Most of my stories are based around characters who are driven by events, so the individuals and plot elements would major, with history and sub-plots being pushed into the background.

If I'm feeling really industrious, I sometimes go through scripts allocating points to chapters for each element and then count them up at the end to see how many History points I score, how many plot etc. This can make for an interesting analysis. The relevance of it is to think about the type of readers that you are trying to attract and ensuring that your emphasis is correct for those readers.

I don't know whether that will add anything to your writing process, but it helps me sometimes.

I do sometimes allow myself to be dragged off on tangents, though I'm generally quite disciplined when it comes to following my plotlines. When I have been diverted it has led to one of two outcomes:

1. A brilliant unanticipated twist or event that I could not have plotted had I sat for years thinking about it.

2. A complete unmitigated disaster, as the tangent introduces so many possibilities and other tempting avenues to explore that it destroys the overall plot of the book - these are inevitably filed under B1n!

[rune]

Not sure if this question is in the write thread. But I wanted to ask, since you are a published author, have you taken a creative writing course to be able to write novels?

[Teresa Edgerton]

Ah, a dangerous question, which if I should answer fully and honestly could well raise a storm of indignation against me -- so to keep this thread tidy and on topic I'll answer it next door in the "Questions You Always ..." thread, where it will probably be more at home anyway.

[Teresa Edgerton]

Now that I'm back to writing full time, I've been giving a lot of thought to this particular subject, and I thought it might be time to revive this thread and restate the original question, in case those who weren't here to answer it before might have some ideas to offer.

So ...

As a reader and/or a writer, which are the details of a fictional setting that make it feel real to you, that put you there -- that either ground what Tolkien called the secondary world sufficiently in the primary world to make it plausible, or that create an utterly alien reality that nevertheless convinces you?

Tolkien paid a great deal of attention to things like the phases of the moon and the changing of the seasons, also most notably (and not to everyone's taste) the physical features and geography, as though he had personally climbed every last ridge and visited every last swampy place between the hills.

Does this sort of thing work for you -- or what other kinds of details have your favorite authors used to good effect, or have you used yourself in your own writing to bring it to life? What about the plants and animals? The activities and rituals of every day life? Is it the bloodiness of the battle scenes? The prevalence of running sores and running sewers? A carefully planned out rationale for the magic?

When you've finished a book, what were the things that made you genuinely feel that you've been There and Back Again?