Creating a Sense of Place Using Your Own Imagination
Creative Settings Challenge, Exercise 3, An Imagined Sense of Place
This week you’re on your own. Well, not really. I’m still here to guide and support you. Still here to answer your questions. However this week, there will be no photographs of possible settings to ignite your imagination. This time you’ll come up with your own immediate setting–real or entirely imagined–and then craft a creative description. If you’ve followed along this far, you’re ready for this.
First, here’s the weekly recap for those new here or in case you need a refresher. Every Wednesday from March 6 - March 27, a new challenge exercise is released along with an essay and assignment that encourages you to use your imagination to create a setting description.
If you’re not yet a subscriber and would like to have the challenge exercises delivered to your inbox through email each week, consider subscribing. This challenge is open to all, including free subscribers! Future challenges will be available only to paid subscribers so I encourage you not to miss out on this opportunity.
If you want to learn more about the challenge and how it’s unfolding, you can read a previous introductory post about it here. You’ll find all previous exercises for the challenge in the archive at Creativity for Fiction Writers, where they appear once released.
A Little Background
As explained in previous exercises, setting is the place where events in your story happen. The best setting descriptions convey place, mood, time period, and more. Your job as the writer is to bring your settings to life so that readers can imagine themselves in the world of your characters.
During this challenge we’re exploring the following three types of settings that may appear in your novels and stories–
Immediate settings - the immediate area where a scene takes place, such as a room, a house, or a city street. This is the setting type that appears most often in fiction, and we will spend more of our time working on this type during the challenge.
Environmental settings - the larger geographical area in which a scene or story takes place such as a town, a state, a country. Or even outer space.
Temporal setting - the time period during which the story takes place. Examples are the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, the modern era, or an imagined time in the distant future.
Last week, in Exercise 2, we created immediate setting descriptions from a character’s point of view using one of several photographs provided. Most scenes in works of fiction are written from the point of view of a character, usually the main character.
Exercise 3
This week we take a big, important step forward. Your assignment is to write another immediate setting description from a character’s perspective. However, I also want you to add conflict or a challenge for your character and use this to influence how your character sees his or her surroundings (the setting). (See an example from a James Baldwin novel below.) And remember that you have five senses to work with: touch, sight, hearing, taste, and smell.
Here are some setting suggestions to help get you going. These are suggestions only. I encourage you to come up with something entirely on your own.
A woman lives alone in a small apartment in a big city. Outdoors it’s noisy with blaring traffic, people yelling and cursing, children playing loudly. Indoors, the woman does her best to ward it all off, to create a sanctuary around herself and avoid going nuts.
An older married couple visits an American diner, a place they have frequented for breakfast on Sunday for decades. Only now one of them is gravely ill. They sit together quietly as they eat.
A young couple arrives at a modern-day glamping campground in pouring rain after having just gotten into a heated argument on the drive to the location. The idealized setting in the woods ends up being nothing like they had envisioned when they booked the trip.
A pilot flying a futuristic spaceship suddenly hears a loud thump and smells smoke.
On a damp, muddy night, a woman daydreaming as she strolls alone through a grove of trees lit only by a single street lamp suddenly hears footsteps behind.
Notice how in each case I’ve added a conflict or challenge that would impact how the characters experience their surroundings. I encourage you to do the same.
Your setting can be based on a real place–such as one in your daily life or perhaps a place you’ve read about. Or it can be based on a place you create entirely from your imagination. It can be a setting from the past or the present or even futuristic. You’re also welcome to use a setting description from something you’re currently writing or plan to. Finally, if you wish to continue with a setting description from a previous exercise in this challenge or some variant of it you may also do that. This is your story setting to tell after all. I’m simply guiding you toward writing something that is creative and compelling.
If you’re feeling hesitant or unsure, here’s what I do to find inner peace when that happens, since I know my imagination cannot feel free to soar until I clear my head. Start by finding a quiet space to sit and relax. Take a few moments to shove aside anxiety, worry, and negative thoughts. Close your eyes if you like. Breathe in and out. Slowly. Listen to the sound of your own breath until it is calm and steady. Take as much time as you need.
Once your head is clear, only then should you turn your thoughts to the setting you’re working on. Focus on the character and the challenge or conflict. What type of setting makes sense? How would that setting make your character feel? What would it make the character think about? Do a little research if needed to add detail.
When you feel even a little ready, try writing. Remember, this is a first draft. It doesn’t have to feel complete. It doesn't have to be perfect or even close. Give yourself permission to be imperfect, even crummy at first. Only you need to see this early on. But get something on paper. Then go back to improve and revise.
Following is a scene from Another Country by literary legend James Baldwin. His character Rufus has just left the movie theater, where he’d spent hours doing more napping than watching the film. It’s midnight as Rufus steps out onto Times Square.
The policeman passed him, giving him a look. Rufus turned, pulling up the collar of his leather jacket while the wind nibbled delightedly at him through his summer slacks, and started north on Seventh Avenue. He had been thinking of going downtown and waking up Vivaldo–the only friend he had left in the city, or maybe in the world–but now he decided to walk up as far as a certain jazz bar and night club and look in. Maybe somebody would see him and recognize him, maybe one of the guys would lay enough bread on him for a meal or at least subway fare. At the same time, he hoped that he would not be recognized.
Note how the character’s life circumstances (challenges) influence the way he experiences the surroundings and how the author uses that in addition to the physical features mentioned (such as Seventh Avenue and a jazz bar) to help create a sense of place. From this description, we see both the lively, gritty nightlife of Times Square as well as the character's inner loneliness and despair despite being in one of the busiest and most densely populated cities in the world. Rufus’s hardships heavily influence the tone and mood in this scene.
To Summarize Your Assignment for Exercise 3—
Come up with your own immediate setting and describe it from a character’s point of view. Give the character in the scene a conflict or challenge and use it to influence your character’s view of the surroundings.
Keep your description under 150 words.
Share it with the rest of us if you’d like feedback.
Feel free to provide considerate, constructive comments on the shared work of others.
When you’re done, if you want feedback, I encourage you to share what you’ve written in the comment section. That way others can benefit from my comments as well as the comments of other challenge participants. This will help us all learn and grow as writers.
As always, I really look forward to reading your descriptions. If you have questions feel free to post them in the comments or respond via email. And please, share this newsletter/post with anyone you think might like to join the challenge.
Hello all. I hope you keep the setting descriptions coming. I'm away over the weekend and may be a little slower that usual responding but I do plan to check in here and there and will comment on your posts as soon as I can.
If not for the “house on fire” call from Aunt Ida I would not be standing here. Resisting Aunt Ida even from far away was impossible. Often I’d find myself searching for something she’d seen in a magazine or on TV. Not once had she called and begged me to come home. This time she called in such a panic using words like hallucinations, crazy talk, and seeing shadows with no one near by as she described my Fathers’ current state. How frighten she must be to live in that cramp apartment above the art emporium with him possibly losing his mind. I’d hoped once I left she would find the courage to leave as well. There was a time when I too felt afraid to escape the false protection of the majestic mountains down Main Street, the comforting clutter of the art emporium with it’s cheerful facade, and my Father.