writing setting

CRAFTING CHARACTERS THROUGH SETTING DETAILS

/ Edwina Shaw / Leave a comment

Looking for Clues

Writers are natural snoops, observers on the lookout for clues, closely examining the world around them to figure out how people work and uncovering their secrets. We can’t count on people to tell the truth about themselves, but we can discover what they’re leaving out by closely observing their surroundings.

The same goes for our characters. 

We can get our characters talking in dialogue, but they won’t give much away. What others say about them can give us more clues – so many different opinions. But really, all people, and characters, reveal their true selves by what they DO. That’s why charACTers must ACT! They can say one thing and do another, what they do is the truth.

But first, let’s find out as much as we can about our story people by examining their surroundings and possessions.

Specific Telling Details

When visiting someone’s home for the first time, or the thirtieth, we writerly types aren’t just settling into the couch but searching the room for telling details that give us insight into who our friend really is. 

Pictures of family stuck to the fridge? Faded pixie photos of children in school uniforms with outdated hairstyles? Wall calendars stacked on top of each other hanging from the nail on the wall. Fresh flowers from the garden, or dusty plastic bouquets forgotten on top of cabinets. Carpet or polished floors? Kitchen benches scattered with leftovers from preparing the last meal, butter melting in its container; or pristine benches smelling of bleach?

Every clue gives us vital information about our new friend, or how our old friend is coping. Those photos on the fridge are from a decade earlier, the first calendar on that piled upon hook date from the year their marriage fell apart. As you can see, details of a person’s living space provide us with lots of information. Don’t neglect these details in your writing.

Uncover Secrets

What’s your character’s lounge room like? What about the kitchen? Their bedroom? 

And just wait till you look inside their fridge, or even better, the bathroom cabinet. Is it stacked with pregnancy tests or haemorrhoid ointments? Herbal toothpaste and castor oil or expensive, chemical-laden beauty products? And what about music choices? AC/DC or Mozart? Disco or Jazz? Art on the walls? Abstract originals or Kmart prints of tigers? Fluffy toys on a grown man’s bed? Star Wars pillowcases on an older woman’s? A jungle of plants covering the kitchen table? A hallway narrowed to a pathway through mounds of stacked boxes and files?

A person’s character is shaped by their environment – the country we grow up in, the culture and religion we are born into, the weather and geography.  When you are developing your characters, think about where they come from, where they live and those small telling details you’d find in their home, handbag or pockets. We don’t need pages of description, but you can slide in important clues in half a sentence or two. 

“Fran opened the fridge to find all the organic vegetables she’d bought on Monday. They exhausted her.” Or “Bob stuck his hand into his pocket finding only the lucky rock he’d found as a kid and had carried ever since, and a crusty hanky he really needed to wash.”

I’m already thinking about that lucky rock and where Bob found it and why that rock, found on that faraway day, was so important. I know he’s not going to wash the hanky

TRY THIS

What is in your character’s pockets?

What’s in their fridge?

Go snooping in their bathroom, what clues can you find that give you insight into the past that shaped them and the person they’re dreaming of becoming?

We are, all of us, reaching for the future but dwelling on the past. What does your character really want? And what pain from the past is preventing them achieving it? Where do their thoughts get stuck in a loop? What’s their greatest dream?

Uncover your character’s hidden depths

Use your writing supersleuth powers to dig deep into the heart of every character that plays a major role in your story. Some people like to fill in imaginary questionnaires. 

But I don’t do that with new friends, I check out what they’re wearing. I snoop around their homes, grab a drink from their fridge. I clock similarities to myself and those interesting differences. Most of all I search for clues to their past and what’s shaped them.

Go snooping in your character’s lives and freewrite about what you find. Only snippets may find their way into your story, but you may just stumble upon what really makes them tick.

That new friend may have frozen rats in the freezer, photos of two concurrent love interests on the fridge and heavy-duty tranquilizers in the cabinet (and you’d always thought they were just so naturally calm!).

Use all these setting elements to develop your character and make them more than just a stereotype. Create interesting, fully-rounded characters, shaped by their pasts, grasping for a dream, and reflected by their surroundings.

If you’d like to learn more about CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT I’m running a FREE CREATING CHARACTERS WORKSHOP at Elanor Library on the Gold Coast on Saturday February 1, 2025. Did I say FREE? Book in HERE.

And if you’d like to explore the myriad ways you can add depth, meaning, emotional undercurrents and so much more to your writing through setting details, then join me at the Queensland Writers Centre in South Brisbane on Sunday March 9 for a full day masterclass on SETTING – MORE THAN JUST THE SCENERY. Book in HERE

Give some of these exercises a go and discover what really makes your characters tick!

Let me know how you go! Come along to one of the workshops! I’d love to see your smiling face.

Lots of love

Edwina 🙂 xx

SETTING – more than just the scenery! 

/ Edwina Shaw / 3 Comments

Find yourself writing in this setting! Bali retreat 2025 soon opening for bookings.

I’ll admit I haven’t always found writing setting easy. As I wrote my books I could see scenes playing out clearly in my head and thought the reader would somehow also see it the way I did by osmosis or some other magical device, because I wasn’t giving them much in the way of setting detail. These days I’ve come to realise just how important setting is, and the load it carries, not only in establishing our story worlds and grounding the reader in that world, but also the essential role setting plays in developing the tone of a piece of writing and in illustrating emotional undercurrents. 

Writers of fantasy, sci-fi, magic realism and historical fiction take note – worlds that are not easily imagined by a modern audience demand that the writer spend more time and page space on developing their story setting. This story world needs to be placed in time and space with key sensory physical and cultural details described so the reader is able to visualise where the story action is taking place and is familiarised with the mores and ethical laws of this new world. 

For example, a sci-fi novel set on a planet controlled by women where there are three moons but no sun, with trees as tall as skyscrapers and all dwellings are within the trunks of those trees, needs much more description than a story set in a modern shopping mall. A fantasy medieval world with modern gender sensibilities also needs greater description – not only of the physical but also of the societal aspects of the world. We need to give the reader enough clues about the story world, and demonstrate consistency in this world, both physically and culturally, so that they can relax and not have to strain over imagining where the action is taking place. When we are writing a piece based on a modern, familiar setting we don’t need to fill in as much detail, but we still need to use a few telling clues to establish where and when we are. See GROUNDING YOUR READER for more.

SPECIFIC UNEXPECTED SENSORY DETAILS

Artwork by Karla Dickens, photo by me.

One of my favourite writers, Karen Joy Fowler, author of Booth and We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, once shared with me her tips for writing, and using these specific unexpected sensory details was one of the best. When we write prose rather than screenplays, we have the advantage of being able to use all of our senses, while screenwriting is confined to only what we can see and hear. So USE ALL FIVE SENSES in your writing. Show us the shapes and colours and give us the sounds but also include smells, and taste if you can, and the visceral experience of the body. The key is to make these details interesting. Choose the unexpected. 

For example, if you’re describing a teenage boy’s bedroom, we expect to see piles of dirty sports clothes, and some band posters on the wall, but we don’t expect to see a frog halfway through dissection and a collection of taxidermy projects lining the shelves. The cave dweller who had a crooked little finger that showed up every time she did a handprint is instantly recognisable through this one unexpected detail. Use the power of the unexpected in your setting descriptions!

Setting is not just the house or room or forest or sea or ship or castle or dungeon, it also includes what I call the “props” – furniture, decorations, contents of fridges or bags or other items in that setting. By choosing what you want the reader to focus on through your description of these specific unexpected details you can illustrate their personalities before they even appear on the scene. 

TRY THIS!

Describe a character through the contents of either their pockets, handbag or fridge. What clues can you give us about this character by what you choose to show us?

Artwork by Paul Yore, photo by me 🙂

T. S. ELIOT’S OBJECTIVE CORRELATIVE

The poet T. S. Eliot famously wrote about using objects to illustrate character emotions instead of baldly stating the feeling. For example. Instead of saying: Pam was totally frazzled, we could show Pam packing an overnight bag in a rush, but forgetting to close it properly so when she goes to leave everything falls onto the floor. Think of that old song “My Grandfather’s Clock” – the clock stops short, never to go again, when the old man dies. 

TRY THIS!

  • Use an object to illustrate emotion in your story.

Setting details can also reveal emotional undercurrents to a story and set the tone of the whole piece. Shakespeare often uses the weather to illustrate the emotional turmoil of his dramas. Storms and droughts and wild winds or gentle rain can all play a part in establishing the emotional setting of a scene. 

TRY THIS:

  • Add drama to a scene of conflict through using weather details – a blazing sun hammering down, a torrential downpour about to wash the hut away?

In a similar way, setting details used well in dialogue, can completely change the meaning behind the spoken words. There’s a big difference between “What time is it?” Rosie squints and slowly lifts her head from the pillow. And “What time is it?” Rosie hurls the cold saucepan full of soup at Bob’s head. 

Remember the key to good setting is the use of SPECIFIC UNEXPECTED TELLING DETAILS.

Have you got any tips for writing setting? Do let me know in the comments!

Lots of love

Edwina xx