In the last lesson, we learned how to set a plot in motion
by creating a protagonist who has a strong desire and plenty of conflict. Many
other elements of craft go into the making of a good story, all of which
revolve around the characters, in one way or another. (Remember, characters are
the source.) Let’s take a brief look at just a few of these elements.
Setting
Setting
A setting is the place and time in which a story occurs.
It's helpful to let the readers know where and when the characters are. The Great Gatsby takes place in Long
Island and New York City in the 1920s. But setting zooms in even closer than
that. Notice how Fitzgerald evokes the magic of Gatsby's mansion:
There was music from my neighbor's house through the summer
nights. In his blue gardens, men and girls came and went like moths among the
whisperings and the champagne and the stars.
And here Fitzgerald evokes a much less glamorous setting:
This is a valley of ashes – a fantastic farm where ashes
grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens, where ashes take
the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a
transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the
powdery air.
In both instances, we are given a very tangible sense of
place. The first example also indicates time, and a little later in the second
example, we are told that it's "afternoon." Not only do these
settings tell us where and when we are, but they also enhance the emotional
landscape of the book, which deals with the effects of money.
Some stories contain numerous settings, others only a few. Generally, longer stories utilize more settings than shorter ones. "Cathedral," for example, all takes place in the narrator's house on a single night. Regardless of how many settings you use, you want to give the readers the sense that they are there. And this can be achieved most effectively through description.
Description
Description happens when the writer discusses something in
detail rather than just naming it. Instead of merely writing "Gatsby had
music and guests at night," Fitzgerald goes quite a bit further, by
summoning the powers of description. Done well, description makes the story
spring vividly to life in the minds of the readers.
Look at this description from "Cathedral":
At first glance, his eyes looked like anyone else's eyes.
But if you looked close, there was something different about them. Too much
white in the iris, for one thing, and the pupils seemed to move around in the
sockets without his knowing it or being able to stop it. Creepy. As I stared at
his face, I saw the left pupil turn in toward his nose while the other made an
effort to keep in one place.
One of the keys to effective description is being specific.
Notice how specific Carver gets with the motion (or lack of it) in the blind
man's eyes. Carver tends to be very sparing with his descriptions but when he
needs it, he knows exactly how to bring something to life.
Another key to good description is to appeal to the senses.
All of the examples given above employ the sense of sight. But the other senses
count, too. In the description of Gatsby's mansion, we can hear for ourselves
the "music" and "whisperings" among the night. In
Fitzgerald's description of the valley of ashes, we can almost feel, smell, and
even taste the ashes and smoke. You desire a shower after reading this passage in
the book. It's almost as if we're driving through this desolate area ourselves,
which in a sense we are because we're getting the story through Nick's point of
view.
Point of View
Point of view, at its most fundamental level, refers to who
is narrating the story and what this person knows. Most fictional works are
told from either the First Person or the Third Person p.o.v. (p.o.v. is a
commonly used abbreviation for point of view.)
In the First Person p.o.v., the story is being told by a
character in the story, using the "I" voice. This is true of both The Great Gatsby and
"Cathedral."
A First Person narrator is limited to telling about what he
or she has thought or observed, just as people are in real life. Here's Nick
narrating an encounter with Gatsby:
He looked at me sideways - and I knew why Jordan Baker had
believed he was lying. He hurried the phrase "educated at Oxford," or
swallowed it or choked on it as though it had bothered him before. And with
this doubt, his whole statement fell to pieces and I wondered if there wasn't
something a little sinister about him after all.
Here, we're seeing Gatsby through Nick's eyes. Nick often
has trouble knowing if Gatsby is being honest or not because he doesn't have
direct access to Gatsby's mind. Since Gatsby is the protagonist of the story,
this set-up presents numerous challenges to Fitzgerald. He must find artful
ways to sneak in certain information about Gatsby, as when Jordan relates to
Nick the story of Gatsby and Daisy's courtship. (It should be noted, though,
that the first person narrator usually is the protagonist. Gatsby is unusual in this respect.)
In the Third Person p.o.v., the story is narrated directly
by the writer, who is not a character
in the story. Never using the "I" voice, the writer refers to the
characters as "he" or "she." Such is the case with Ernest
Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls,
which opens like so:
He lay flat on the brown, pine-needled floor of the forest,
his chin on his folded arms, and high overhead the wind blew in the tops of the
pine trees. The mountainside sloped gently where he lay; but below it was steep
and he could see the dark of the oiled road winding through the pass.
In this passage, the narrator is seeing through the eyes of
the protagonist, Robert Jordan. But in the Third Person p.o.v., the writer has
some latitude regarding what knowledge the narrator can and can not have. In
some stories, the Third Person narrator will stay confined to the thoughts and
observations of a single character, as in the First Person. In other stories,
the Third Person narrator will have access to the thoughts and observations of
numerous characters, as in For Whom the
Bells Toll.
The vast majority of the time, writers will make a choice
regarding how they handle p.o.v. and stick with it throughout the story, be it
First Person or some variation of Third Person.
How do you know which method will work best for your story?
Well, it's not an easy decision. Often, it's a good idea to experiment with
p.o.v. and see which method feels most comfortable or enlightening for your
story. In "Cathedral," for example, the reader gains much insight by
experiencing the story directly through the narrator's curmudgeonly eyes. But
this p.o.v. wouldn't work as well in For Whom
the Bells Toll because Hemingway needs to move fluidly among the minds of
several different characters.
Point of view is a tricky thing to understand, but it's
important because it will affect nearly every aspect of your story.
Other Elements
We’ve already spoken a bit about dialogue. Stories without
dialogue tend to be flat, boring, and too quiet. Dialogue is a great way to
liven up your story and it’s also an effective tool for characterization. At
its best, dialogue sounds realistic but is also crafted in such a way that it
reveals insight into each of the characters who speak.
Then there is voice. Surely you’ve noticed how the writers
we’ve read in these lessons handle their use of language in very different
ways. You probably wouldn’t confuse a Raymond Carver sentence with one by F.
Scott Fitzgerald. This is because these writers have a different voice, meaning
there is a different sound to their
storytelling. You should strive to develop your own unique voice, which is
often best done by just writing in the way that comes to you most naturally. Of
course, in the First Person p.o.v., the voice also needs to fit with the
character who is narrating.
And, there are still more
elements that go into the crafting of a good fictional story. In fact, writing
fiction is a bit like cooking a stew. You toss in numerous ingredients then
simmer and stir until the story is as good as you can possibly make it. Now
it’s just a matter of going to the kitchen and cooking up some wonderful
stories.
Discussion
After reading the lecture, try answering some or all of the
following:
1. Were you previously aware of point of
view?
2. Does a story need a setting?
3. Do you prefer description that is lush
or spare?
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