After finishing A Case for Love, I was ready for a break—from the Guidry clan as well as from Bonneterre . . . with the exception of one short draft of a novel written in four months back in 2003, every contemporary piece I’ve written since 1992 has been set in the ever-growing/evolving city of Bonneterre. Having to draw a map and figure out where things are, and create different parts of this fictional city was, I felt, brain draining when I was trying to focus on just getting the story written. So for this new contemporary series, I decided to use a real city in which I’ve lived for almost as long as I’ve “lived in” Bonneterre: Nashville, Tennessee.

Upon moving to Nashville in 1996, I quickly learned that the stereotype that the rest of the world has of Music City USA is just that: a stereotype. Upon becoming a resident of Nashville, I discovered that though the city’s best-known export is country music, the industry itself actually has a small (though important) footprint inside the city. That’s not saying that the music industry isn’t a huge factor in the city—it is, but it’s all types and genres of music, not just country.

But up until about 50–60 years ago, Nashville was known as “The Athens of the South” for its proliferation of colleges and publishing houses.

Nashville—A Brief History
Fort Nashborough was founded in 1779, named after Revolutionary War hero General Francis Nash, by a group of pioneering settlers including James Robertson and Colonel John Donelson (whose daughter Rachel would go on to marry General Andrew Jackson, seventh president of the United States). James Robertson arrived with a group of about 200 men overland by horseback on December 25, 1779; Col. Donelson came by water on a flotilla of flatboats carrying the wives and children of the men in Robertson’s party as well as the supplies they would need for the fort, arriving April 24, 1780, bringing together about sixty families.

Because of the British implications of the –borough tag on the end of the name, before the war ended, the settlement was renamed Nashville, using the French suffix to honor America’s greatest ally during the war. (And if you’ve read my historicals, you know how weird it is for me to write positively about America and France being allies during the late 18th and early 19th centuries!)

Tennessee became the sixteenth state of the United States in 1796. During the War of 1812, Tennessee earned its nickname “The Volunteer State” by sending hundreds more volunteers to fight than had been requested.

[There are about five paragraphs of Nashville history I ended up deleting here. I figure if you're really that interested, you can Google it.]

My Characters Move In
One of the things I hoped to do with the Matchmakers series was to give a little glimpse of what it means to live in Nashville—to dig deeper than the stereotype and let readers see what it means to live here and not be involved in the music industry.

I chose to have a lot of the action in the book take place in the the 12 South, Hillsboro Village, and Lipscomb/Green Hills areas of Nashville—one of the main reasons being that I personally like to spend time in that part of town (no, that’s not where I live).

I focused on the 12 South district as the area of town in which Zarah would live. Not only is it close to midtown (the area of Charlotte Avenue/Church Street/West End Avenue/Music Row/Broadway/21st Avenue south of I-40 from downtown Nashville), but it’s a neighborhood that was in transition about five years ago, around the time Zarah would have been house hunting. I also chose it because in the ten years that I worked in downtown, it’s the area I usually drove through in the evenings going home to avoid traffic on the interstate, so I’m well aware of what’s there and the feel of the neighborhood.

One of the first things I needed to do was find a house for Zarah, and I found a cute one in the real estate listings—a 1920s red-brick cottage, almost fully renovated, which she was able to pick up for a song. But Bobby was a different story. As someone who’d been in the army for most of his early adulthood as well as lived in Los Angeles for the past several years, he struck me less as someone who’d be the suburban type and more as someone who’d be looking for the same modern, urban feel he had in L.A.—but with more space. So I started researching all of the new condo developments in Nashville. And there are a lot of them. But when I saw the Panorama condo at The Enclave, which is right within the neighborhood I wanted him to be (with easy interstate access for his daily commute to the office), I knew that’s where he was supposed to be. (Of course, the decorations on the wall of the office in the photos of the model could have, subconsciously, had something to do with that.)

Real Places in Love Remains
In writing Love Remains, I discovered it actually takes a LOT more brain power to use a real place as a setting than a fictional place. No matter how well I felt I knew Nashville before I started writing, and notwithstanding the fact I made up the names and locations of the agencies for which Zarah and Bobby work, I found myself having to constantly stop and look up places I mentioned—restaurants especially, to make sure they were still in business and that the first thing that came up when Googling them weren’t a bunch of horrible 1- and 2-star reviews.

One of the featured real places in Love Remains is the coffeehouse The Frothy Monkey. I used it for two reasons—I went there to work quite often while writing this book and because it has a genuinely cool, and memorable, name. (They’ve recently opened a new restaurant, Burger Up, also in the 12 South District, which I plan to visit soon . . . because if it’s as good as what I’m seeing on Twitter, it may feature in one of the other two books in this series!).

I also mention a couple of other coffeeshops: Portland Brew and Fido.

Other real places mentioned/featured in Love Remains:
Bluebird Café
Douglas Corner Café
Old Spaghetti Factory
Boscos
Sam’s Sports Grill
The Cheesecake Factory
Amerigo (which real Nashvillians call Amerigo’s)
“that taco place over on the corner of Edge Hill and Villa Place”
Chappy’s

A couple of places in Alexandria, Virginia:
The Fish Market
A red-brick Georgian row house in a previous life, the building housing the restaurant rose three stories above the street, with black box-windows sticking out on either side of white double doors, carved masonry work surrounding them.

And one mention of a real restaurant in Old Town Mesilla, New Mexico: The Double Eagle.

Let’s just say, one book in, that I’m really looking forward to trying to get back to Bonneterre after this series—where, if something doesn’t already exist, I can just make it up and put it where I want it to be!

Of course A Case for Love puts us right back into the fictional city of Bonneterre (pronounced bon-TARE-uh). For a refresher on the origins of this fictional city, read the Settings post from Menu for Romance.

There are a few key locations in and around Bonneterre that see quite a bit of the action in A Case for Love.

The Fishin’ Shack—Jenn’s restaurant in Comeaux, Louisiana, another fictional town, this one much smaller, about fifteen minutes south of Bonneterre. The Fishin’ Shack has been featured in both of the other books. It’s where a bunch of the Guidry cousins gather on Thursday nights for dinner (they started doing this when Jenn opened the restaurant to help her business grow). It features “Family Friendly Karaoke” on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday nights. And, if I ever do get to write Jenn’s story, you’ll learn even more about it!

Arcenault Dance Studio—Just down the street from The Fishin’ Shack in Comeaux, this is a new business, the grand-opening of which Alaine decides to cover for her show. The dance studio is in an old karate studio and was opened by a married couple, Ruth Arcenault and Ian Birtwistle, who also happen to be world champion ballroom dancers.

Maison Bonneterre—This is the name of the townhouse community where both Forbes and Alaine live. Forbes lives in the “upscale” part of the neighborhood while Alaine’s townhouse is in the more affordable section. I don’t believe I ever used the actual name of the development in the books.

Forbes’s Townhouse (Forbes’s is on the left, Shon’s is on the right):



Alaine’s Townhouse (hers is the light brown one with the bay window, and the kitchen has been modified from this floorplan, as described in Menu for Romance):

Moreaux Mills—In A Case for Love I introduced a new and very important area of Bonneterre. It’s considered by most to be the “wrong side of the tracks”—it’s the residential area built in the early 20th century to house the families of the hundreds of workers for the now-defunct Moreaux Paper Mills. The Mills shut down about twenty or so years ago, but even before then, the area had started changing into more of a mixed-use area with dozens of people operating businesses out of their homes. The inspiration for this type of community came from the Bransford Avenue area that lies between 100 Oaks and Berry Hill in Nashville. And of course, the most important setting in Moreaux Mills is Delacroix Gardens, the florist and nursery center owned by Alaine’s parents.

And just in case you have a hard time figuring out the geography of Bonneterre and how to get around, here’s the hand-drawn map I sketched out just to help myself when writing A Case for Love, because the characters seem to get around town more in this one than in the other two.

Portsmouth is an island city, the only one in England, located on Portsea Island in Hampshire County (Hants). Because of its natural deep port, it was a logical location to become the hub of the Royal Navy, and thus one of the most heavily fortified in the country. The dockyard was the center of life for historical Portsmouth, being its primary industry. Just about everything revolved around the Royal Navy.

But you didn’t come for a history lesson. You came to see the places mentioned in Ransome’s Honor.

HMS Alexandra, 74-gun (3rd Rate) ship of the line. William has captained Alexandra for three years. It is really hard to find images online of a 74-gun ship of the line, and my scanner doesn’t work with my new Vista computer, so I can’t share with you the images from the several research books I have. I can, however, direct you to Dorin Stanciu’s photos of HMS Victory, Admiral Lord Nelson’s flagship, which is permanently installed in dry-dock in Portsmouth. Victory was a much larger ship, as it was an admiral’s; however, you can still get a good feel for what it might have looked like in Dorin’s photos. And here’s a very large photo of a model of a French 74-gun ship so you can see more details of how it’s laid out.

When we first meet William, he’s knocking on the front door of the home of Captain Collin Yates, his best friend. Collin and Susan Yates live in a First-Rate Georgian rowhouse in Portsmouth. I wish I could show you pictures of the interiors and furnishings of most of the homes I’ve described in the book, but, alas, most of them exist only in my imagination. But I can at least show you William’s room in the Yateses’ home, which is quite a contrast to his quarters aboard Alexandra.

In Julia’s first scene (not counting the prologue), she is in her bedroom in the house her father purchased for her mother when he struck his colors, planning to bring Lady Witherington back from Jamaica for good. After sitting for a little while with her father in his study, she joins her aunt in the formal sitting room, where she meets her cousin, Sir Drake.

Sir Drake is staying at Pembroke House, his family’s house in “town” (but, alas, not the right Town, a.k.a., London), which is pretty much falling down around his ears.

Though I don’t want to give anything about the story away, some other locations of interest are Lady Dalrymple’s home, Marchwood (the Pembroke ancestral estate), Portsmouth’s High Street, the dockyard quays, the concert hall, and the Cathedral Church of St Thomas (à Becket) of Canterbury.

I’ve uploaded these and many more setting photos to the Ransome Set on Flickr (since last time I posted the link).

In the summer of 1992, when I was a student at LSU, my then–best friend Amy and I were out running errands one evening. We were discussing our friends and acquaintances and Amy made the fateful remark: “I wonder where we’ll all be in five years.” For anyone not in the know, this is a very dangerous thing to say in front of a writer, especially one that, until that moment in time, had no focus to her writing, but just dithered here and there as the mood struck. I’d always thought I would only ever write historical-set novels. I didn’t read contemporaries, so why would I write them?

That night, and for the next several weeks, I immersed myself in writing A Shared Dream, my vision of where Amy and I and five or six of our closest friends would be and what we would be doing five years down the road. It was the first time I’d ever shared my writing with anyone, and because Amy liked it, I kept on going. After a few months of this, though, I realized that I was going beyond just amusing my friend with a few speculations of what we’d be when we “grew up.” So I changed it from first person (my perspective) to third person, re-named everyone, and changed the location from LSU/Baton Rouge to the University of Louisiana/College Park (no, not a very creative name). And thus, what would become Bonneterre was born.

At first, it was a relatively sleepy college town—I pictured it being a place in which everything revolved around the University of Louisiana and their Marauding Pirates sports teams. Why? Because that was my perspective of Baton Rouge when I was in school there. I didn’t need for the city to branch out much from the university, because when I first created the town, I was writing about characters who were in college (I went back and re-started my story with my main character, Ash’s, first day at ULa). I didn’t need office buildings and corporations in a downtown area. I didn’t need major retail shopping areas (college students at a state college are notoriously poor). I needed a campus. I needed restaurants and shops surrounding a campus. I needed a church. I needed my character’s grandparents’ home out in the country. So College Park was small.

And then I dropped out of college and moved to Northern Virginia. The first year I was there, I worked in downtown Washington DC. The next two years, I worked in Fairfax and Vienna, Virginia. I wrote voraciously (it not only helped me conquer the depression I was in that was part of what led me to dropping out of college, but it was how I, in a round-about way stayed “in touch” with my closest friends I’d left behind in Baton Rouge back before there was such a thing as e-mail or Facebook). My characters grew up and graduated from college. They got jobs—and College Park grew beyond the university campus.

Because I’m constantly developing characters in my head, with each new character I got an idea for, I started making a database of people who populated College Park—their families, their businesses/professions, their connections. I worked at a newspaper. College Park gained a newspaper and some TV stations. I worked at an advertising agency in a major corporate area of NoVA. College Park gained a downtown where businesses like that could exist. I went with a friend to the county courthouse for her divorce proceedings. College Park gained a Parish Courthouse and lawyers.

By the mid-1990s College Park had about doubled in size from what it had been when I first created it. But by then, I was already breaking away from that original, and still unfinished (at 200,000 words) manuscript. While it had been a good project while it lasted, I needed to grow as a writer, and that meant working with other characters, other stories. And then, in 2001–2002, I wrote my first full manuscript: What Matters Most. I’d been developing the characters—main and secondary—for years, and as I got into the intricacies of the story, I realized just how much bigger College Park needed to be. It needed to be, well, bigger than Las Cruces (where I grew up) and smaller than Baton Rouge (otherwise, how was I going to “hide” it in the middle of the state?). Small enough that there could still be scandals about a newscaster on the local news channel that would make headlines yet large enough that she could lead a normal life otherwise.

Both of my first two finished manuscripts were set in College Park. The third, I set in Nashville, just for a change of scenery. But when I started my fourth manuscript, what would become Stand-In Groom, I realized I needed to go back to my fictional town, because it was the only logical setting. Nashville wouldn’t work, because a celebrity’s wedding wouldn’t be (isn’t) that big of a deal here. I wanted it to be set in the south, but I’d been away from Baton Rouge for almost fifteen years, and every time I went back I realized how much had changed. Plus, it was still a little too big for what I needed. My other main reason for using my already-existing fictional setting was so that I didn’t have to do a lot of research on a city I wasn’t very familiar with. I already knew College Park. I’d “lived” there for so many years.

I submitted the first ten pages of Stand-In Groom for workshop my first residency at grad school. I don’t remember who made the comment, but someone remarked on how “College Park” didn’t sound like a very Louisiana-ish name. And they were correct. So one of the things I worked on that first semester was renaming the city. I wanted it to be something that sounded vaguely familiar, as if someone might have heard the name before, but just couldn’t remember where. So I got out my old road atlas, flipped to the index of towns/cities and parishes in Louisiana and started reading. And I found it. Terrebonne Parish. Beautiful land in the French. So College Park, Louisiana, was re-named Bonneterre, Louisiana, in the fictional parish of Beausoleil on a river that I have yet to name (could be an existing one, could be a fictional one. I haven’t decided, and I haven’t been forced to, so I don’t think I will). ULa, which was not only confusing to readers who weren’t familiar with UVA (the University of Virginia), now had to be renamed because the public university system in Louisiana renamed two colleges in the state to the University of Louisiana at ______ (Lafayette, Monroe—or ULL and ULM). ULa, even with the lowercased a might be misconstrued as University of Louisiana at Alexandria, since Bonneterre is supposed to be in the mid-state region. So I tweaked the name to the University of Louisiana at Bonneterre, or ULB.

Where exactly is Bonneterre supposed to be located? Basically in the middle of a swamp. If you look at the map of Louisiana on Google Maps, I imagine Bonneterre being east and slightly north of Alexandria, in the triangle created by Catahoula Lake, Saline Lake, and Honey Brake Lake. Or, in other words, about halfway between Alexandria, Louisiana, and Natchez, Mississippi.

What does Bonneterre look like? Well, since it’s a conglomeration of many different places I’ve been or lived and not just based on one place, I’ve collected many different images of different cities when I’ve seen something that resembles my image of places/locations in Bonneterre. Here are some of the important locations in Menu for Romance:
Boudreaux Tower, the tallest building in Bonneterre (and it looks like in Shreveport, too) at the top of which is Vue de Ceil, the sky-view event center that not only plays a major role in Stand-In Groom, it’s where Major’s office is located. Meredith’s office is on the fifth floor in the Boudreaux-Guidry Enterprises Corporate offices, in which we also get to spend some time in the executive dining room.

The kitchen in Major’s condo is not only inadequate for him, but creates a big problem for him once we get into the story.

And then, of course, there’s Meredith’s house that, at the beginning of the novel, she’s in the process of refurbishing.

And for more images of settings in Bonneterre, check out the Bonneterre Set on Flickr.

Setting (May 2007)
Stir Up Your Setting

“…What cinematographers can do with cameras, lighting, and computer-generated graphics, we writers must do with words on a page. And not only that, we must do it in a way that incorporates the grittiness of a New York street or the relaxed, honey-filled air of a small Midwestern town into the action of our stories without being intrusive. Movies are allowed wide, sweeping angles of an Arizona desert at sunset. We aren’t. …”

Stir Up Your Setting – Part 1: World Building

“…World Building isn’t just for SciFi/Fantasy writers! Even if you’re using a contemporary, real place like New York City or London, the setting is just as important as if you’re writing about a fictional city or another place/time/world. Your job as author is to bring the reader into your world, not just assume they’ll know your setting without being shown. …”

SUYS – World Building…A Step Further

“Because of the genre, Speculative Lit writers (science fiction, fantasy, allegory, etc.) have both an advantage and a disadvantage when it comes to setting. Spec Lit readers expect much more detail when it comes to the setting. They want the author to do the cinematic sweep of the landscape (through the lens of the character observing it) and describe it in detail. But that means the Spec Lit author must know his world(s) intimately and be able to use captivating, picturesque language to describe the setting. To a lesser extent, readers of historicals/historical romances expect a larger measure of setting description (including costuming and props) than we typically see in contemporary fiction. …”

Stir Up Your Setting – Part 2: Using All Five Senses

“…Just as character descriptions should be gradually peppered throughout the introductory scene, the description of the scene shouldn’t all come at once . . . unless there is something vastly important about the look of the setting—such as a pauper entering a palace for the first time, but even then, be sure to tie emotion and the five senses to the experience of the setting. …”

Stir Up Your Setting–REAL Fictional Settings

“…Describing a fictional setting for readers is like giving someone directions how to get somewhere. If it’s a place we’ve never been or only been to once or twice, it’s going to be hard for us to explain with confidence how to get there, where to turn, how long it will take. If we’ve lived there many years—or all our lives—we can do it turn-by-turn (“take Highway-22 West to exit 52/College Ave. Turn left at the top of the exit, and stay straight on College Ave.—it will become Oak Alley Lane after the next light”), with lots of landmarks (“turn right on Bocage Avenue–there’s a service station–Buddy’s–on the near corner and a library on the far corner . . . if you get to Tezcuco Place, you’ve gone too far.”), and down-to-the-minute time estimates (“it takes me about fifteen minutes to get home from downtown if I take the freeway, twenty if I take surface streets.”). …”

Favorite Settings on Film

“…The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy. These films, while also being great action films, give a visual tour of Europe unlike any other modern movie I can think of. I especially love the scenes in Moscow in Supremacy. The action sequences (especially the car chases) chew up the scenes, and yet the setting gives them their sense of urgency—from the narrow streets of India to the crowded streets of Berlin. The weather also helps set the mood—as it’s usually either raining, snowy, or cloudy for most of the movie. The three main scenes that are bright and sunny are (a) the end of the first film when he joins Marie at her shop on the beach, (b) the opening of the second film when they’re happy together in India (before the assassin* shows up), and (c) the end of the second film when Bourne calls Landy and she tells him his real name and where he was born—emphasizing the happiness, the optimism of those scenes. …”

Stir Up Your Setting–Making Setting a Character

“…Think about the difference between the setting of a stage play and the setting of a modern, big-budget movie. No matter how much money a production pours into building sets for the stage, it’s always going to look like a set. Why? Because the environment isn’t real. There are no elements, no weather, no sunlight, no wind. When movies are filmed on location, they have so much more realism—and actors will tell you that they can get into their roles better when away from soundstages or backlot locations. …”

Stir Up Your Setting–Finding a Happy Medium

“…I have a tendency to be a ‘too much setting’ writer. Almost everything I’ve written in the past twenty or so years has been set in my fictional Louisiana city. When I first started letting anyone (my mom and grandmother) read what I’d written, one of my mom’s comment was that she wished I would include more about the setting because she wasn’t getting a good feel for it. That’s when I started studying this element of craft. I started finding places where I could interject tidbits about the setting. And then, once people started commenting on how much they liked it, I wanted to put more in (you know, if they like it a little, they’ll like it a lot, right?). …”

For Discussion:
A. What’s one place you want to visit because you saw it in a movie or read a book set there? (Even if it doesn’t really exist—like Middle Earth or Avalon)

B. What’s your favorite setting you’ve ever used for one of your stories?

Which (naturally) leads me to the question: do settings choose the author or do authors choose the setting?

It’s no secret that the setting of my three novels with Barbour are set in a fictional city in Louisiana that has been under development as a setting since 1992. How did it get started? Well, I needed to mask the fact that I was writing a fictional account of the lives of me and my friends from LSU. So I changed Baton Rouge to College Park (and later to Bonneterre) and I changed LSU to ULa (and recently to the University of Louisiana-Bonneterre, because who knew that during the years I would be using this setting, Louisiana would change the names of the smaller state colleges to the University of Louisiana system).

So why have I continued using this setting after all these years?

Well, for one thing, it’s easy. With so many years and stories set in a single setting, especially a fictional setting, I know this city. I know what the big social events are. I know where everything is. If I want to add a feature, I can. By not using Baton Rouge, where I spent every summer as a child and lived from 1989–1992, I’m not tapping into an existing culture nor being bound by a particular city’s real history or layout. Yes, it may be stretching some Louisianians’ imaginations that there’s a mid-size city buried somewhere in the middle of the state (especially for those who live in the middle of the state in Alexandria and surrounding areas). But the truth of the matter is that my experience with actually living in Louisiana is limited, even though I’m there at least once a year. By using a fictional setting instead of a real one, I can tap into my emotional memory of living there and apply it to a setting where I can control all of the cultural constraints upon the characters and events, instead of them controlling me.

In looking at my writing longer term, once I complete the three books in the Bonneterre series, I’ll need to figure out if the next contemporary-set stories I write will also be set there or if it may be time to look at setting my stories in the city where I live: Nashville. But will anyone buy novels that are set in Nashville if they don’t have anything to do with the music business? After all, that’s what the outsiders’ stereotype of Nashville is: Music City U.S.A. Opryland. The Grand Ol’ Opry. The Ryman Auditorium. The home of Country Music. Etc. But having lived here for twelve years, I have an insider’s view of the city that while music is, yes, a large industry in town, so are publishing, auto manufacturing (Saturn and Nissan plants, Nissan just moved their US headquarters here and Volkswagen just announced they’re doing the same), healthcare, aeronautics manufacturing, telecommunications, and so on. It’s also got a great history, from Daniel Boone to Davy Crockett to General John Bell Hood.

But would the setting (Nashville) be important to the story? Or would it just serve as a more generic city? What part of the culture of the location would I be incorporating in the story? What is this area’s culture if I don’t have at least one of the characters involved in the music industry? Would I be setting the stories here because it’s easy—since I live here—or because it’s for some reason a facet of the story that it takes place in Nashville, Tennessee?

I’ve discussed settings on this blog quite a bit before, yet still these questions persist. It’s easy to think of continuing to use Bonneterre as a setting for the foreseeable future—because, after all, I’ve “lived” in (with) Bonneterre for most of my adult life (I’ve lived in Nashville since 1996—four years less). Bonneterre is a part of me, because it came out of my imagination. However, I also have to think that while readers can enjoy a fictional setting, readers can connect even more with a real setting, especially one where they live or where they’ve visited or where they’d like to visit.

I’m not certain what I’m going to do (and plan to discuss this with my editor in September). I’m not leaning one way or the other right now. All I know is that I do need a good reason for the setting I choose so that I can use the setting as part of the story: to create culture and conflict, for events and things the characters can do, and to develop the background of the characters.

My historical trilogy is set in England, Jamaica, and aboard ships of the Royal Navy in 1814. For the story to work, it had to be set there because the story wouldn’t exist outside of it. So, in a way, instead of the setting being inspired by the story (like Bonneterre), the story was inspired by the settings. And that inspiration grew out of my love of that setting developed through my love of the stories of Jane Austen and the Horatio Hornblower series. There was no question about where I would set those books.

How do you choose your settings? Does your story dictate where it needs to be set, or has you developed your story around a particular setting? Are there certain places you’d like to set stories because those cities/towns/places inspire you?

Not enough setting. Writing that falls into this segment doesn’t give enough information about the setting—the geographic location (especially important for scenes occurring outside, when there is “unseasonable” or “strange” weather, or when a character has moved to a new city/state and we know where they came from but not where they now are), the physical location (it’s a school, but what does it look like? A suburban neighborhood—but is it full of small 1940s saltbox houses or 1990s starter mansions?), or location of the character or objects in the environment (first she’s leaning over the edge of a precipice looking down, then she’s climbing up to escape something chasing her). I found myself writing comments like “Where is this taking place?” and “How did he get from (point A) to (point B)?” Or the entry had confusing descriptions—sparse in several places and then suddenly laden with adjectives and poetic descriptions of landscape which then ended up being confusing because I didn’t know whose POV it was being seen through and didn’t know what the characters were doing.

Too much setting. Much of this came in the form of what I’ve mentioned in this discussion already: stopping the forward momentum of the story to give an inventory of everything in the room or the vista the characters see as they top the last hill. This is where we can also get into trouble taking the “be specific” advice to the extreme. Instead of just writing “she jumped in the car and peeled out of the parking lot,” it’s more along the lines of: “She ran to the car and fit her key into the keyhole in the door of the dark green Pontiac G6 coupe. The lock clicked open and she lifted the door handle to yank the door open. She turned and slid her right leg in the car first, her rear-end sliding across the leather seat with ease, drew her left foot in, and slammed the door–in which was the panel holding the controls for the power windows, door locks, mirrors, and driver’s seat adjustments. She poked the key into the ignition, turned it to the right, and engaged the engine. With her foot on the brake—because the car required the brake be engaged to be able to put it into gear—she pressed the button on the gear shifter with her right thumb and jerked the stick down to the R-position. Without looking behind her, she took her foot off the brake and positioned it on the accelerator and pressed down hard. The car backed out of the space faster than was safe. Once out of the space, she put her foot on the brake again and shifted the car into drive. She stomped her foot on the accelerator and the car lurched forward, tires making a squealing sound against the pavement.” (Did you make it reading this far? If so, good on ya!) That’s an exaggeration, of course, but I think you get my point. In some instances, we need to give the reader the benefit of the doubt that they understand what it means when we write that the character got in the car and peeled out of the parking lot. (This ties in with Showing vs. Telling too. Sometimes, it’s okay to tell when it’s the difference between a twelve word sentence that keeps the action moving and an entire paragraph that brings the action to a screeching halt.)

I have a tendency to be a “too much setting” writer. Almost everything I’ve written in the past twenty or so years has been set in my fictional Louisiana city. When I first started letting anyone (my mom and grandmother) read what I’d written, one of my mom’s comment was that she wished I would include more about the setting because she wasn’t getting a good feel for it. That’s when I started studying this element of craft. I started finding places where I could interject tidbits about the setting. And then, once people started commenting on how much they liked it, I wanted to put more in (you know, if they like it a little, they’ll like it a lot, right?). This happened as I started writing my historical which is set partially aboard a ship-of-the-line in the Royal Navy and partially in Portsmouth, England, of 1814. I’d done my research, and I wasn’t going to let it go to waste. The problem with it turned out to be that I used too much authentic setting and the terminology and importance placed on certain locations or objects detracted from the story. So I learned there has to be . . .

A happy medium. This is when there’s just enough setting to really ground the reader in the “here and now” of the story so they can picture the action in their head, but not so much that it becomes overwhelming or confusing. This varies from genre to genre. A happy medium of setting in a Fantasy novel is going to be much different than a happy medium of setting for a Romantic Comedy. Some genres naturally call for more description of the setting (incorporated into the narrative appropriately, of course), such as Fantasy, Science Fiction, Historicals (including Historical Romance), and Crime/Mystery.

How do we reach this happy medium? Two ways:

Read, read, read. Read your favorite novels over again, taking note of how the author handles giving information about the setting. Caution: if it is a book that was not published in the last five to ten years, you are more likely to find the “block style” descriptions (walk in a room and give an inventory) than you will in more recent books as the industry has hightened the standards on this area of craft. Find newly published novels in the genre you’re writing (preferably by lesser-known authors than someone like Steven King, Tom Clancy, or Danielle Steele—meaning they’ve had to go through a more strenuous editorial process) and compare how different authors incorporate setting. Do you like it? Would you have done it differently? Was it too much? Not enough? Just right?

Join a critique group. While we all hope we’re good judges of our own writing, the truth is WE’RE NOT. Just like parents can’t see when their own children are little heathens, but are quick to point it out in other families, it’s hard for us to see our own work criticially and with an objective eye. That’s what critique partners are for. Want to know more about the benefits of being in a critique group? Check out my series on critiquing.

Before closing this topic, I’d like to make sure I haven’t forgotten anything. If there’s a specific aspect of setting you’re having difficulty with, please leave a comment and we’ll continue on. If not, I’ll be starting a new series: Back to Basics—Common Mistakes in Grammar and Manuscript Formattting. (If you have any questions on that topic, please post those too.)

Not enough setting. One-third didn’t give enough information about the setting—the geographic location (especially important for scenes occurring outside, when there is “unseasonable” or “strange” weather, or when a character has moved to a new city/state and we know where they came from but not where they now are), the physical location (it’s a school, but what does it look like? A suburban neighborhood—but is it full of small 1940s saltbox houses or 1990s starter mansions?), or location of the character or objects in the environment (first she’s leaning over the edge of a precipice looking down, then she’s climbing up to escape something chasing her). I found myself writing comments like “Where is this taking place?” and “How did he get from (point A) to (point B)?” Or the entry had confusing descriptions—sparse in several places and then suddenly laden with adjectives and poetic descriptions of landscape which then ended up being confusing because I didn’t know whose POV it was being seen through and didn’t know what the characters were doing.

Too much setting. Much of this came in the form of what I’ve mentioned in this discussion already: stopping the forward momentum of the story to give an inventory of everything in the room or the vista the characters see as they top the last hill. This is where we can also get into trouble taking the “be specific” advice to the extreme. Instead of just writing “she jumped in the car and peeled out of the parking lot,” it’s more along the lines of: “She ran to the car and fit her key into the keyhole in the door of the dark green Pontiac G6 coupe. The lock clicked open and she lifted the door handle to yank the door open. She turned and slid her right leg in the car first, her rear-end sliding across the leather seat with ease, drew her left foot in, and slammed the door–in which was the panel holding the controls for the power windows, door locks, mirrors, and driver’s seat adjustments. She poked the key into the ignition, turned it to the right, and engaged the engine. With her foot on the brake—because the car required the brake be engaged to be able to put it into gear—she pressed the button on the gear shifter with her right thumb and jerked the stick down to the R-position. Without looking behind her, she took her foot off the brake and positioned it on the accelerator and pressed down hard. The car backed out of the space faster than was safe. Once out of the space, she put her foot on the brake again and shifted the car into drive. She stomped her foot on the accelerator and the car lurched forward, tires making a squealing sound against the pavement.” (Did you make it reading this far? If so, good on ya!) That’s an exaggeration, of course, but I think you get my point. In some instances, we need to give the reader the benefit of the doubt that they understand what it means when we write that the character got in the car and peeled out of the parking lot (This also ties in with Showing vs. Telling too. Sometimes, it’s okay to tell when it’s the difference between a twelve word sentence that keeps the action moving and an entire paragraph that brings the action to a screeching halt.)

I have a tendency to be a “too much setting” writer. Almost everything I’ve written in the past twenty or so years has been set in my fictional Louisiana city. When I first started letting anyone (my mom and grandmother) read what I’d written, one of my mom’s comment was that she wished I would include more about the setting because she wasn’t getting a good feel for it. That’s when I started studying this element of craft. I started finding places where I could interject tidbits about the setting. And then, once people started commenting on how much they liked it, I wanted to put more in (you know, if they like it a little, they’ll like it a lot, right?). This happened as I started writing my historical which is set partially aboard a ship-of-the-line in the Royal Navy and partially in Portsmouth, England, of 1814. I’d done my research and I wasn’t going to let it go to waste. The problem with it turned out to be that I used too much authentic setting and the terminology and importance placed on certain locations or objects detracted from the story. So I learned there has to be . . .

A happy medium. This is when there’s just enough setting to really round the reader in the “here and now” of the story so they can picture the action in their head, but not so much that it becomes overwhelming or confusing. This varies from genre to genre. A happy medium of setting in a Fantasy novel is going to be much different than a happy medium of setting for a romantic comedy. Some genres naturally call for more description of the setting (incorporated into the narrative appropriately, of course), such as Fantasy, Science Fiction, Historicals (including historical romance), and Crime/Mystery.

How do we reach this happy medium? Two ways:

Read, read, read. Read your favorite novels over again, taking note of how the author handles giving information about the setting. Caution: if it is a book that was not published in the last five to ten years, you are more likely to find the “block style” descriptions (walk in a room and give an inventory) than you will in more recent books as the industry has hightened the standards on this area of craft. Find newly published novels (preferably by lesser-known authors than someone like Steven King, Tom Clancy, or Danielle Steele—meaning they’ve had to go through a more strenuous editorial process) and compare how different authors incorporate setting. Do you like it? Would you have done it differently? Was it too much? Not enough? Just right?

Join a critique group. While we all hope we’re good judges of our own writing, the truth is WE’RE NOT. Just like parents can’t see when their own children are little heathens, but are quick to point it out in other families, it’s hard for us to see our own work criticially and with an objective eye. That’s what critique partners are for. Want to know more about the benefits of being in a critique group? Check out my series on critiquing.

Before closing this topic, I’d like to make sure I haven’t forgotten anything. If there’s a specific aspect of setting you’re having difficulty with, please leave a comment and we’ll continue on. If not, I’ll be starting a new series: Back to Basics—Common Mistakes in Grammar and Manuscript Formattting. (If you have any questions on that topic, please post those too.)

Think about the difference between the setting of a stage play and the setting of a modern, big-budget movie. No matter how much money a production pours into building sets for the stage, it’s always going to look like a set. Why? Because the environment isn’t real. There are no elements, no weather, no sunlight, no wind. When movies are filmed on location, they have so much more realism—and actors will tell you that they can get into their roles better when away from soundstages or backlot locations. For example, the location Peter Jackson & crew found for Edoras for the second and third Lord of the Rings films: a hill  rising up out of a flat valley, surrounded by a ring of huge, snow-covered mountains. The actors all agreed that their performance was different because of the location—better—because they felt they were truly in this medieval kingdom atop a hill.

The first way setting starts becoming a character is through its culture. Books set in the South but written by someone who’s never lived in the South may get all of the details right when describing what things look like, but they aren’t going to be able to describe what the air smells like after a rainstorm; how in the height of summer, the clouds roll in during the hottest part of the afternoon and release a quick, drenching downpour that does nothing to lower the temperature, but raises the humidity to armpit-of-Satan levels; when the azaleas start to bloom—and what they look like lining most residential streets and the campus of LSU; the electric anticipation of the entire campus on Saturday afternoon as everyone makes their way to Tiger Stadium; the way that 50 degrees with 75% humidity can be bone-chilling; or local idioms like, “How y’all are?” or “‘Preciate ya!” or that we don’t all walk around calling each other “Hon’” all the time. Incorporating the local culture—the flavor, the uniqueness of social customs, language, and the “this is how things have always been done here”-ness—pulls it into the forefront of the writing without its overwelming the characters or the story.

A second way to incorporate setting as character is through specific, unique details. Did you know that in Baton Rouge, almost all of the streets are concrete and not asphalt? Whereas in Nashville, almost all of the roads are asphalt—a major exception being the I-440 loop that bypasses downtown (although they patch it with asphalt, which really just makes it worse). When you think of azaleas, do you picture a small bush with little blossoms? Then you’ve never seen Louisiana-style azaleas. Springtime in Baton Rouge was one of my favorite times of year when these huge shrubs that lined most residential streets (and the LSU campus, as mentioned above) burst into large white, pink, and fuscia blossoms.

A third method of making setting into character is to have the setting create conflict for the characters. A rainstorm that knocks out the electricity (can happen anywhere). A tornado that hits downtown Nashville (happened in 1997—could happen again any time. Think about The Wizard of Oz. The story wouldn’t have happened if there hadn’t been a tornado). A flash flood that keeps the characters from being able to get to the hospital when one is bleeding to death. Have the elements of the location affect your characters. Is it hot outside? How hot? Does your character like hot weather or hate it (like me)? Is the air conditioner inside working? I, personally, am so sensitive to temperature that I will wake up in the middle of the night if my house gets over about 71 degrees. Why? Because when the house gets warmer than that, my sinuses solidify into a concrete block and I can’t breathe. Are there allergens in the environment that your character(s) could react to? (Nashville is one of the top five worst cities for allergies.) Though allergies might seem like something inconsequential to think about, it is a conflict for the character because allergies make the sufferer feel absolutely rotten, which then affects everything in that person’s life.

Fourth, use specific locations/names. Use street names, names of local businesses, or names of national chains you know exist in that location. To add local flavor to my fictional city in Louisiana, I don’t have them go to Starbucks for coffee. They go to Beignets C’est Vou Plait (like Cafe DuMond in New Orleans). I don’t have them shop at Kroger or Publix. They shop at Bordelon’s. They don’t eat at Olive Garden, they eat at Palermo’s Italian Grill—which serves Cajun-inspired pasta dishes like crawfish ravioli. The sister of my heroine in A Major Event Inc. owns a seafood restaurant that has a pirogue (PEE-ro) hanging from the ceiling. The bookstore where my characters like to go to read and have coffee is Blanchard LeBlanc, not Barnes & Noble. One of the main residential areas of my city features names of Louisiana plantations such as Oak Alley, Destrehan, and Rosedown. The tallest building in downtown is Boudreaux Tower, and the glass-enclosed, huge event venue at the top of it is Vue de Ceil, not the Skyview. If you are using a real location, you must make sure you do your research really well. Nothing will betray your lack of familiarity with a place than getting something out of place which is familiar to locals. For example, I read something supposed to be set in Nashville which had the character looking out of the Bluebird Cafe onto Music Row. I immediately knew the author had never been to Nashville—nor had he or she even looked at the location of the Bluebird on a map—because it’s several miles away from Music Row and looks across at a strip shopping center in Green Hills.

Finally, the setting can affect the mood of the scene. In the movie list, I mentioned how the weather reflects the emotions of what’s happening in the Bourne movies: “The weather also helps set the mood—as it’s usually either raining, snowy, or cloudy for most of the movie. The three main scenes that are bright and sunny are (a) the end of the first film when he joins Marie at her shop on the beach, (b) the opening of the second film when they’re happy together in India (before the assassin* shows up), and (c) the end of the second film when Bourne calls Landy and she tells him his real name and where he was born—emphasizing the happiness, the optimism of those scenes.” It doesn’t have to be the weather—it can be the delapidated state of a building that reflects the broken-down feeling of someone who’d just experienced a loss. Or it can be the opposite—the character is euphoric despite the foul weather, bad traffic, dirty kitchen. How the character bounces around washing dishes, singing while she scrubs at the crusty spots on the floor can emphasize just how happy she is.

The easiest way to start incorporating Setting as Character is to have the character interact physically and emotionally with the setting. Look at some scenes you’ve already written. Can you add a phrase here, a sentence there where the character interacts with the setting—picks something up, dusts off a windowsill, sees a new restaurant—without pulling the character out of the forward momentum (and without adding anything unnecessary)? Is there a way you can use the location of your setting—weather, climate, geography, topography—to create conflict for the characters?

Thinking and writing about Settings this week has brought to mind both books and movies with settings I love. As I’ve mentioned, a lot of times, it’s easier for movie makers to portray the setting, whereas in print it may be harder.

Anyway, I’m not supposed to be getting into any deep discussion here, but just posting something fun. It’s Fun Friday, after all—the weekend is almost here, and I’m looking forward to the Middle Tennessee Christian Writers monthly meeting tomorrow, where we’ll be discussing “Sagging Middles” (in our writing of course!).

So, here are some of the movies that I love for the settings:

1. Lord of the Rings trilogy. Whether digital, “big-ature” models, or the sweeping landscape of New Zealand, when I watch those movies, I believe in a place called Middle Earth. Though The Chronicles of Narnia was also filmed in New Zealand, I don’t think it did quite as good a job of really using the real settings as LOTR.

2. First three/original Star Wars movies. Each film had a theme for the settings: Star Wars was monochromatic, whether it was the black-and-white of the Imperial sets or the tan-and-white of Tatooine. Empire Strikes Back was lush, but dark, with the swamps of Degoba or the pristine interiors of Cloud City. Return of the Jedi incorporated the browns and greens of California’s giant sequoia forest juxtaposed against the black-and-white of the Empire. Because of the way these films were made, the settings are realistic—not overly processed and digitalized like the later three films (or like the re-releases of the first three).

3. North & South. This BBC miniseries adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell’s early Victorian novel captures the dank, dark streets of an industrial town in the North of England at the genesis of the Industrial Age. From the crowd scenes during the mill workers’ strike to the purple river (from the runoff of fabric dye from one of the factories), the film creates a stark contrast between this part of the country and the more genteel South: London and Hampshire, which are seen as clean and bright and pastoral—thus serving to visually explain one of the the themes of the book: the way where we live affects how we live.

4. The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy. These films, while also being great action films, give a visual tour of Europe unlike any other modern movie I can think of. I especially love the scenes in Moscow in Supremacy. The action sequences (especially the car chases) chew up the scenes, and yet the setting gives them their sense of urgency—from the narrow streets of India to the crowded streets of Berlin. The weather also helps set the mood—as it’s usually either raining, snowy, or cloudy for most of the movie. The three main scenes that are bright and sunny are (a) the end of the first film when he joins Marie at her shop on the beach, (b) the opening of the second film when they’re happy together in India (before the assassin* shows up), and (c) the end of the second film when Bourne calls Landy and she tells him his real name and where he was born—emphasizing the happiness, the optimism of those scenes.

*These movies also top my list of hottest bad guys ever, with Clive Owen and Karl Urban. I can’t wait to see what up-and-comer hottie is the villain in this summer’s The Bourne Ultimatum.

5. Master and Commander and the Hornblower series. While there was some creative license taken with these movies, for the most part, the research was impeccable, and I watched these movies over and over and over when writing my 1814 Royal Navy/Regency romance.

6. Anna and the King. When this remake was released in 1999 with Jodi Foster and Chow Yun Fat, I was enthralled, not just by Chow Yun Fat being able to take the role quintessentially identified with Yul Brynner and make it completely his own, but by the lushness of the settings (including the costumes). While the 1950s film version of The King and I didn’t stray far from its roots as a stage show—which, for a musical, isn’t a bad thing—Anna and the King wasn’t about the music and dancing. It was about the culture shock Anna Leonowens, a Britishwoman, has when she arrives in Siam to teach the king’s many children in Western ways.

7. Serenity and the television show for which it served as the capstone, Firefly. Joss Whedon, the creator, painted a grim-but-hopeful picture of humankind five hundred years in the future. Having outlived Earth’s resources, humans have expanded out into the galaxy. Those living on core planets live in the opulance of settings that look like New York, Tokoyo, or Hong Kong—big, modern, full of technology and artificial light. Those living out on the rim have reverted back to pioneer days—horses, dusty streets, wooden sidewalks, covered wagons—and a few touches of futuristic technology here and there. But the best setting of all is Serenity itself, the ship on which our band of heroes sail between worlds, plying their trade as good-hearted pirates.

8. Persuasion (1995), Sense and Sensibility (1995), (and even though I haven’t seen them yet, I’m sure the new BBC miniseries versions of Northanger Abbey and Sense and Sensibility—both of which have been adapted for the screen by the incomparable Andrew Davies), Pride and Prejudice (1995 and 2005), Bleak House (2005), and Wives and Daughters. What can I say? I love British costume dramas. And these make particularly good use of not just the costumes but the settings.

9. Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Maybe it’s because I’m not a fan of Brad Pitt that I actually noticed the setting in this movie. But even though they end up either blowing up or shooting to smitherines whatever setting they find themselves in, the filmmakers did a clever job of finding seemingly innocuous places for the action scenes to take place: the perfect suburban house, a car chase when our heroes are driving the neighbors’ minivan (and their loving the automatic tailgate that allows them to shoot at the bad guys chasing them in sleek, black Mercedes—or were they BMWs?), and the final showdown in a home-furnishings megastore (especially the lull between shooting scenes when they’re on the elevator listening to the elevator music).

10. Steel Magnolias. Aside from this being the most quotable movie EVER, you always know exactly where you are when watching this movie: Louisiana. Filmed on location in Natchitoches (NA-kih-dish–first syllable is a short “a” like in “apple”) they made the most of the picturesque Victorian architecture of the town, the riverfront park, the Christmas Festival of Lights, and in showing the difference in status between where Dolly Parton’s character lived/worked, and where Sally Field’s character lived—showing just by their homes their place in the town’s social stratus. As I’ve mentioned many times before, Natchitoches is one of the many places which has inspired my fictional city of Bonneterre.

What are some of your favorite setting movies?