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  In the above situation, for example, after showing the character's observation of the new setting (the different neighborhood), you might add three sentences like the following showing resultant immediate action and the beginning of a major character change (the immediate action and suggestion of character change italicized for clarity):

  She noticed how different the neighborhood was . . . how empty the streets, how shabby. Every black alleyway seemed like it might hide an attacker. She heard voices somewhere behind her. She shivered and walked faster. Already she knew she was a different person here. She would never trust anyone again. . . .

  Sometimes, of course, it simply isn't practical for you to move your character to some drastically different physical setting in order to produce a desired character change. In such cases, however, it is often possible to keep the character in essentially the same setting, yet introduce significant alteration in that setting.

  Any number of possibilities come to mind, and a few examples will help you see what I mean:

  • When Jill opened her curtains onto the dear, familiar street, she immediately saw the big moving van next door, and the strange boxes being unloaded. . . .

  • "Bill," the boss said, "we are going to redecorate your office to reflect the new duties I have in mind for you."

  • Clouds scudded over the sun, and it began to rain. Marianne's depression began to grow. . . .

  • The Detour signs went up Monday morning, and Ted's store was shut off from traffic.

  The key to success in handling all such instances lies in locating the kind of change within the present setting that is most likely to jar the character and create the possibility and even the need for character change. Obviously, you must mix and match properly.

  What do I mean by this? Well, look again at the examples above. When Jill opens her curtains and sees boxes being unloaded from the van, she would possibly worry about that kind of change. Storekeeper Ted, however (in the fourth example), wouldn't worry about boxes being unloaded nearby, but the detour (which might not worry Jill) is a potentially disastrous change in his setting.

  So you can change character by moving him to a new setting, or by introducing the right kind of changes in his present setting. That leaves the third basic way of using setting to change character, which is, essentially to leave the setting the same, but have the character notice new things about it.

  One of the most obvious examples of this that I've ever seen involved a friend who had always been physically active and cheerful. One day he happened to fall and slightly injure his back. As a result of this minor injury, which at first had seemed frighteningly serious, he became more cautious and began looking for other possible dangers in his environment. He noticed floor tiles which might be slippery, pavement that was even slightly uneven, area rugs that might slip. He began to see every familiar staircase, escalator and change of floor level in the local mall as a place where he might fall again. He began to see almost everything in his familiar setting in a new way, and so he began acting in a new way, no longer taking walks or going out much by himself. . . finally becoming almost a recluse.

  I'm happy to report that my friend went into therapy and managed to overcome the irrational fears that had made him see his setting in a new and dark way, which only fed those fears. Finally he saw quite clearly how the mechanism in his case had worked:

  1. A sharp experience jolted him out of seeing things as he always had.

  2. A growing alertness to a familiar setting, with his new orientation, caused him to notice things he had never noticed before.

  3. Interpretation of the new things he noticed made him begin to act differently —he "became a different person," as he later put it.

  This is the machinery by which you can get your character to experience his story setting in new ways, and so change as a result. You should first make something happen to get your character looking at his setting freshly, in a new light. You next show him finding "new" things in his setting (new to him, that is). Then you show him changing as a result.

  In a few cases you might not even need a dramatic or sharp experience to get the ball rolling. Stories of boredom or desperation are quite common, and in many of them the character finally goes bonkers because nothing has changed in the setting, and seemingly never will. Once the character becomes aware of this dreadful unchangableness, then the very lack of change itself becomes a powerful potential instrument of character-change.

  You can also use setting to create longer-term and more subtle character growth. Consider the change in the TV series character mentioned earlier, Dr. Joel Fleischman in Northern Exposure, over the first two seasons the show was on the air. At first he was in a panic and only wanted out of Cicely, the fictional town. Later, however, as he began to know people in the area and see some of the area's natural beauty, his attitude subtly changed and he became more human and forgiving. (Even his dress changed from modish New York to sloppy Alaskan bush pilot.) He became more calm and the hard edge of sarcasm dulled. Even later in the series, when he learned his forced stay in Alaska was to be longer than he had previously thought, he remained a man changed by his setting even as he bemoaned the fact. The setting's impact on his character, while slow in taking effect, is obvious.

  This kind of interaction between character and setting almost always takes place, whether the writer designs it or simply allows it to happen. You should be as aware of it as possible, and use it to your advantage whenever you can.

  SUGGESTED EXERCISE

  As an exercise at this point, you may wish to write a short story segment in which you quite consciously delineate how a setting changes a character. Place yourself in the character's viewpoint and show him or her observing something about the setting, and reflecting on the observation. Then show, in viewpoint, that the character realizes he is seeing the setting in a different light. Define how his perception has changed, and, if possible, why it has changed. Finally, show the character reflecting on this changed attitude and wondering how the change is going to affect his plot motives and interaction with other characters.

  Doing an exercise like this may feel mechanical. No matter. I urge you to do it, writing it step-by-step in the order I've just given you. I think the work will give you a better feel for how setting can have direct impact on character. The better you come to understand this interrelationship, the better you can tailor setting to character, and vice versa.

  USE OF SETTING AS A CHARACTER

  The tactic of making a setting into a character was mentioned previously in connection with my novel, Twister. It seems appropriate to reiterate the point in the context of this discussion. In short, the point is that sometimes a setting (or aspect of a setting) can be so overwhelmingly important in development of the plot (and the characters' lives) that it seems to take on a life of its own. This is a dynamic which cannot be forced; nothing could be cornier than trying to breathe life into a setting not vital and central enough to "take over" a story. But setting can become a character when setting, plot and characters blend perfectly.

  In Arthur Hailey's Hotel, for example, the setting also becomes something of a character in its own right, practically taking on a life of its own. Similarly, in Hailey's Airport, the terminal building and everything it contains seems to become for the reader almost a huge living organism itself. In stories of the sea, the sea often becomes the central antagonist, and seems (even in a classic narrative poem like "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner") to become malevolent.

  Clearly, setting and character are inextricably tied in the dynamic of fiction. But setting can affect fiction in other ways, too, as the next chapter describes.

  CHAPTER 9

  HOW SETTING ADDS TO STORY MEANING AND VITALITY

  In designing the setting or settings for your story, it's important to remember that the setting, and how you handle it, may go far toward finally defining what your story means. In addition, your work on the setting may stimulate your imagination to e
xplore story angles and ideas that weren't at all in your original concept of the tale.

  STORY MEANING

  Selection of setting can profoundly affect story meaning because some themes may be difficult or even impossible to examine in a certain kind of setting, while a different setting could make these same themes seem almost inevitable as a concern of the characters in such a place and time. If you begin planning your story to be played out in a rough, isolated wilderness setting, for example, that choice may at the outset be nothing more than a convenience for you, or the first idea that leaped into your mind.

  But selection of such a setting virtually eliminates some story themes and makes others likely.

  For example, if you choose to set your story in a rugged, isolated mining town in the Klondike a century or more ago, it's hard to imagine that your story's meaning could have much to do with any of the following:

  • The pressures of high society on a young woman's marriage plans

  • The difficulty of choosing a college curriculum

  • Country club exclusion due to racism

  • The desperation of urban slums

  • The choice of an apartment complex roommate

  • Finding a date for the prom

  • Lost airline tickets

  • Harrassment by telephone calls

  • Concern about AIDS

  • Worry about environmental pollution and endangered wildlife.

  The first six themes in this list relate to physical location of the setting. The situations listed would not likely exist in a place like the Klondike. The next three themes on the list relate to the time of the setting. Airlines, telephones and AIDS would not exist in a Klondike setting.

  The last theme on the list, environmental pollution, would not be likely because of the attitude existing in such a setting: Until fairly recent times, environmental concerns were not much of a worry, and certainly old-time miners repeatedly raped the environment with no thought whatsoever of the consequences in pollution and destruction of wildlife. As a matter of fact, prevailing frontier attitudes toward wildlife were the opposite of today's; killing off all wolves, coyotes and bears was a positive value in those days.

  So choice of a setting limits the themes you can deal with.

  Conversely, choice of a setting immediately suggests themes which are possible. Using the same isolated, old-time Klondike setting, some possible ideas and themes come to mind at once:

  • Greed for gold

  • The threat of starvation in the wild

  • The danger of wild animal attack

  • The quest for food and shelter

  • The value of friendship

  • The terror of being lost in the wilderness

  • Homesickness for civilization.

  Once you realize this interdependence of setting and thematic ideas, you can better tailor your setting to your ideas. That wilderness setting might be chosen and developed consciously in order to state as clearly as possible a realized theme involving courage against great odds, perhaps, or the saving strength of religious faith in a time of isolation and trial. If you also emphasized certain other aspects of the wilderness — the cruel and random death of prey animals, as one illustration, or the seemingly hostile persistence of the killing winter gale —you might more clearly develop a theme about personal courage.

  We often see this relationship between setting and meaning most clearly in movies, because so much has to be shown and not explained in words. In the Treasure of Sierra Madre, for example, the war between good and evil impulses in the characters is emphasized and made clearer because of the savage and primitive conditions under which the men exist, leaving little or no room for pretense or manners. The recent Batman movies derived part of their meaning from the dark, towering, crumbling city infrastructure that formed their setting. Many critics saw serious ideas about the human condition depicted in these films. The setting put the audience in a somber frame of mind, and gave outrageous activities a semblance of verisimilitude. Played in a less menacing and terrible urban setting, the stories might have been seen merely as comic book nonsense.

  This relationship between setting and story meaning was brought home to me most vividly when I was writing a novel a few years ago titled A Boat Named Death. The story is of an old mountain man, quite mad, who stumbles upon a woman and her small children in a cabin in the wilderness. Through being touched by their total vulnerability and dependence on him to save their lives, he is changed from practically an animal to a love-filled man who faces his own death for the sake of others.

  The novel met with some success, but probably could not have done so if the choice of setting had not been right. Most of the story is of the man's attempt to get the little family to medical help by taking them down a wild river in flood in an old rowboat with the word "Death" painted on its side. The trapper's struggle against the river—which seems to him a character bent on their annihilation —becomes a symbol of his entire life struggle, and explains how he became the man he is. But, at the same time, his journey down the river becomes a spiritual one, his heart changing as the river batters and almost destroys him. The setting, the boat in the careening river, makes possible the themes of man against nature, and man against himself. A final change in the setting, to a small and hostile town bent on the trapper's destruction, makes possible an emphasis on the transforming power of love, even on a man whom the wilds had practically turned into a beast.

  Every writer comes upon situations like this, where the choice of setting not only defines the kinds of ideas that can be explored, but suggests ways that all or part of that setting can be transformed into a symbol that contributes to story meaning. In an example earlier in this book, we used an old clock tower, visible from all over a small town. One immediately thinks of using the clock tower as a symbol for the passing of time, or for a town's living in the past as if time had stood still, or to illuminate the story's meaning.

  In such ways, setting can have a profound impact on your story's meaning. You should be alert to this fact, and remember it in matching plot to character, and both to setting. In a proper blend of the three, a story meaning and depth of ideas will come much more clear. To put this another way, the perfect setting can make all the difference in what your story ultimately means.

  You should also remember, however, that conscious manipulation of the setting and other story elements does not mean that you should set out on a mad quest for symbols and metaphors in your setting. Symbolic meaning, when it occurs, is usually an outgrowth of the creative process itself. Such meaning usually develops fully in your mind only as you write the story. It's very dangerous to set out on a piece of fiction with the idea of "making something a symbol." The result too often is artificiality.

  What should you do, then? Simply remember that setting can affect meaning in the ways we have mentioned here. Work to make setting harmonious with your other fiction elements. If symbolic or metaphorical meaning comes clear to you as you write the story, consider ways you might point it out more clearly. But never force it; that way lies disaster.

  STORY IDEAS

  We've seen in earlier chapters how good setting makes the story world vital and vibrant and real to the reader. But there's also a quite different advantage of good setting: The impact it can have on the writer herself as she researches and creates her tale.

  Many writers have experienced the "turn-on" that research digging can bring. What happens is that new and previously unsuspected facts turn up during the research, or some new detail or anecdote provides unexpected delight. In either case, the writer gets newly excited, and sometimes gets new story or character ideas from the experience. What can also happen is that the writer imaginatively gets so deeply into her setting as she writes, that she actually sees possibilities in it that were previously not seen.

  The late Clifton Adams, one of our most gifted western writers mentioned earlier, told me once with great pleasure how he had stumbled u
pon a historical record of French foreign legionnaires actually assigned in south Texas during frontier times. This unusual historical sidelight so fascinated Cliff that he did considerably more research about it and found material for use in several later novels. Phyllis A. Whitney has remarked that she researched a setting for an adult suspense novel and found enough material for an additional young adult book. In my own career I have had numerous similar experiences: Medical research done for my novel Halls of Dishonor gave me considerable additional information about the medical setting, which was one of the inspirations for a later book called Miracleworker, another medical story. The germ of the plot for Miracleworker, as a matter of fact, came from an accidental encounter with a medical supply "detail man" (salesman) during a research visit for the other novel.

  Careful research is required to make sure your setting is accurate and believable, as discussed back in chapter three. But such research very often pays the considerable dividend of inspiring new ideas for setting, as well as indicating how story people in such a setting might think and act, and how a plot in such a setting might play out.

  The moral? Never shirk research. Learn to love it. Even when you think you have done enough research for your story setting, try to dig just a little deeper—conduct that one more interview, visit one more site, write one more letter or read one more book on the subject. Trust the process of research. It will feed your imagination in ways you may never have dreamed of.

  You may indeed find that the inspiration continues through the writing process, even after you thought learning about your setting was finished. In a curious way, the process of writing sometimes intensifies a writer's vision. In fact-writing, putting the words on paper sometimes helps clarify the very thought the writer is struggling to record. In fiction, it is even more common for a writer to begin writing a description or factual passage about a setting, and suddenly find herself imaginatively transported into that setting in a more vivid way than was possible before she started writing it down.