Fiction Settings From the Character's Viewpoint
Creative Settings Challenge, Exercise 2, Adding Characters
Now we’re going to bring characters into our worlds. This is where we really get a chance to let our imaginations go.
First, a short recap. Every Wednesday from March 6 - March 27, a new exercise is released along with an essay and assignment that will guide and encourage you to craft a creative, memorable 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. The challenge is open to all, including free subscribers! Future challenges will be available only to paid subscribers so I encourage you jump in and participate.
If you want to learn more about the challenge and how it will unfold, you can read the introductory post about it here. If you missed Exercise 1 or want to circle back to it, you’ll find that here. It’s never too late to begin participating. You can find all exercises for the challenge in the archives of Creativity for Fiction Writers after they’re released.
A Review of Exercise 1 From Last Week
Setting is the place where events in your story occur. Your job as the writer is to bring your settings to life so that readers can imagine themselves in the world of your characters. The best setting descriptions convey tone, mood, time period, and more. Setting descriptions present a huge opportunity for writers to get creative.
During this challenge we are exploring three types of settings that appear in 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 the one we will spend the most time working with in this 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 you fired up your imagination and wrote your first immediate setting description. Your assignment was to choose one of the photographs provided (see below) and write an immediate setting description based on it.
Exercise 2
This week we’re going to write an immediate setting description from the point of view of a character. Point of view can be defined as the narrative perspective from which a story is told. Or as the voice in which the story is told. Most scenes in works of fiction are written this way, usually from the viewpoint of the main character. Don’t have a character yet? Use that writer’s imagination and create one! She or he does not have to be fully fleshed out for the purposes of this assignment.
Point of view can get a little complicated, such as when you have more than one main character. We won’t go into a lot of detail about it here, but you can read more elsewhere if interested in exploring further. Here are a couple of links to in-depth explanations:
Grammarly: “What Is Point of View in Writing, and How Does It Work?”
Masterclass: “Complete Guide to Different Types of Point of View: Examples of Point of View in Writing”
For our purposes here, we want to keep things simple. I encourage you to use either the first person (I) or third person (he, she) point of view. If you’re a little unsure about point of view, just write in a way that feels comfortable. One of the main purposes of this challenge is to sharpen your creative skills, and I wouldn’t want anyone to miss out simply because they’re worried about whether the point of view in their description is written perfectly. If you have multiple characters in your setting description, though, stay in the head of only one of them. Other characters can speak but you should not get into their inner thoughts. That can get confusing for the reader.
Your assignment this week is to write an immediate setting description from one character’s perspective or point of view. You may use either of the photographs above from Exercise 1. And you can build on the description you wrote for the previous exercise or start fresh.
In addition, I was asked to include a more contemporary photo for the setting descriptions. Thus I’ve added a third photo that I believe could make a good fiction setting. It appears above and as the cover image for this newsletter or post. Feel free to use it for this assignment if you prefer.
Following is a scene from the bestselling novel The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn in which the main character describes a house in the neighborhood.
Her husband’s almost home. He’ll catch her this time.
There isn’t a scrap of curtain, not a blade of blind, in number 212—the rust-red townhome that once housed the newlywed Motts, until recently, until they un-wed. I never met either Mott, but occasionally I check in online: his LinkedIn profile, her Facebook page. Their wedding registry lives on at Macy’s. I could still buy them flatware.
As I was saying: not even a window dressing. So number 212 gazes blankly across the street, ruddy and raw, and I gaze right back, watching the mistress of the manor lead her contractor into the guest bedroom. What is it about that house? It’s where love goes to die.
In these few lines, we learn so much about this immediate setting. Yes, the main character describes the physical premises of a house across the street, but more than that we discover that there’s mischief going on behind the bare windows at number 212, or at least the narrator of this scene believes so. We also learn that this character is a nosy, busy-body spying on the neighbors and passing judgment on them.
In addition, we learn a little something about the time period during which the novel takes place with social media and other references, which isn’t required for your assignment. We’ll cover temporal settings in a future exercise, but feel free to touch on that here. The author has done a delightful job of developing tone and atmosphere as well as hinting at the personality of the main character in just a few short introductory paragraphs.
To Summarize the Assignment for Exercise 2—
Choose one of the three photos above and craft an immediate setting description written from the point of view of one of your characters.
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.
I really encourage you to share what you’ve written in the comments section. That way others can benefit from my comments as well as comments from other challenge participants. This will help us all learn and grow as writers.
I look forward to reading your character-driven settings. 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.
Trina stood on a corner and looked north. The storefronts lining the street looked like they were from the nineteenth century, but sold modern things such as pet items, wine, and gourmet hot sauces. Beyond the shops was a breathtaking mountain. She breathed in the crisp air, and held her phone up to take a photo. Her Instagram followers would love it.