The setting is where the story takes place, but it also frames the story you're telling. Josh, Chuck, and Scott sit down and discuss how the setting you choose can affect your story.

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The Story of Setting

The setting is where the story takes place, but it also frames the story you're telling. Josh, Chuck, and Scott sit down and discuss how the setting you choose can affect your story.

Hosts: Josh Hayes, Scott Moon, C. Steven Manley

[00:00] Opening remarks—Dragon Award Nominations are open!

[04:16] Weekly update, “Welcome to my world” Edition

Josh: Developmental edit of Valor #3. Reading Mr. Paradise by Elmore Lenard  100% dialogue. Finishing The Late Show by Michael Connelly.

Chuck: Almost done with Galactic Murder Clowns 3.  Waiting for his wife to read the Jack Dark book while writing the next one.

Scott: Frustrated by David Baldacci’s Memory Man

[15:20] Main Event: The Story of Setting!

-Location research makes the setting feels like a character.

Example: Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch series

-Setting helps ground the story. Even if you don’t live there, you feel like you know the place very well.

-Certain places have a mystique about them that’s built up over time, a history and culture.

-Humanizing the non-human elements of the setting.

-Pulling elements from a known location and renaming it to ‘borrow’ elements.

-Imaginary places needs a stronger sense of place and setting.

-Making the setting drive how people deal with one another

-Taking a place and rubbing “sci-fi” all over it to anchor a reader.

Chiba City, Japan in William Gibson’s Neuromancer

Example: Neo Tokyo in Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira

[30:00] Sponsor: Scott Moon’s Enemy of Man (Chronicles of Kin Roland #1)

[33:28] Main Event: The Story of Setting, Continued!

-Using the setting to reduce the number of characters in a scene for dialogue.

Example: Aaron Sorkin’s constrained environments

-AI works well in sci-fi because it allows dialogue to add description or information.

-The setting can affect the character and dialogue (church vs. watching football in a sports bar).

-Surrounding conflict (setting) can drive the story and dialogue.

-Balancing action vs. story movement.

-Pulp fiction has a place.

Example: Don Pendleton’s The Executioner series

-Getting lost in the setting description can bog down the story.

-Doing the research serves the author in writing the scenes.

-You only need to describe something once and just touch little elements when necessary.

-Using Google Maps and Street View.

[55:54] Closing remarks

Coffee and Concepts

Writer’s Journey

Storytelling

 

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