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picture of the house and its occupants.
The house in Cornwall smelled different from the one in
London: shinier, cleaner. Harriet s grandmother spent
her time arranging flowers picked from her garden,
polishing the furniture, filling the days with small
routines, doing what she had done yesterday and what
she would do again tomorrow. The lavender-scented
sheets on their beds were starched and made of linen;
there were starched napkins at meals too, with
monograms in one corner. She did things in due
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SETTI NG AND ATMOSPHERE / 53
season; made marmalade, collected windfalls, stirred
Christmas puddings, cut the stalks of lavender and
sewed the scented grains into sachets of lace and
ribbon. Things were done at prescribed times; milk
drunk at eleven, a walk at three, the radio switched on
at 5.54 for the weather forecast before the six o clock
news.
Moving back and forth in time
The above passage does more than set the atmosphere, it also
conveys an impression of time.
Harriet s grandmother is not a modern career woman. She is
the epitome of respectability, comfortable with her role as
wife and homemaker. She lives an ordered life in the country
and her outlook is rooted in a strong sense of duty and the
values of a previous generation.
Remove her from this setting and place her in a chrome
and glass apartment in the centre of a bustling city and
she will appear old-fashioned and vulnerable. Pulled out
of her own time, she will be like a fish out of water and the
atmosphere will become completely different.
Setting over characters
The importance an author gives to a story s setting depends
not only on the style of writing but also on the genre. In a
romance, for example, the background has a major influence
on the behaviourof the characters. Listed beloware just afew
examples of settings taken from romantic novels:
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a Caribbean cruise ship
a tropical island
an Italian vineyard
a lake in the Canadian Rockies
an antiques shop and cottage in the country.
In each case, the setting is described in sensuous detail, the
scents of fruits and flowers, crystal clear lakes, whispering
breezes and rolling hills.
The pace of the story is always slowenough to allow the reader
to savour the sights, sounds and flavours but fast enough to
maintain the impetus.
Making war not love
Action novels such as war stories use similar techniques to
conjure up the feel of battle. Shattered bodies and flattened
buildings, deafening shellfire, screams of terror, the stench of
death all around. Once-bustling towns are reduced to piles of
rubble and twisted metal, the surrounding landscape
becomes a mass of craters littered with burned-out vehicles.
This time, the pace is very fast, pulling the reader through the
horrific sights, sounds and smells as quickly as possible to the
comparative safety of the next chapter.
Keeping the background out of the foreground
As a general rule, the setting should never be allowed to
dominate the storyline. It is relatively easy to get carried
away but try to avoid using more than ten lines of pure
description in one block or your story will lose pace and
fail to hold a reader s attention.
SETTI NG AND ATMOSPHERE / 55
Letting your characters set the scene
The most effective way to describe a scene is to let your
characters do it for you through interaction with their sur-
roundings. This will improve the pace of your writing and
convey a feeling of setting, atmosphere and insight into the
character in one fell swoop.
For example, study the following two passages and decide
which you feel is most atmospheric:
Passage A
It was the middle of winter. The room was icy cold and
hiding in one corner was a child, a little girl. The man
stood in the room for a moment but could not see her
concealed in the dark shadows. He turned and strode
away.
Passage B
No warmth from the thin winter sun had managed to
penetrate the icy coldness of the room. The child
huddled, shivering in one corner, willing the shadowy
dimness to conceal her. She held her breath as the man
stood motionless, listening for what seemed an eternity,
before he turned and strode impatiently away.
VISITING LOCATIONS
There are pitfalls in setting your stories in real locations,
particularly if you choose an area you moved away from
and have not visited for many years.
To illustrate this, the following is just a small sample of recent
changes in my own neighbourhood.
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The local high street has been decimated by the opening of
an out-of-town shopping complex.
A multiplex cinema is being constructed on the site of the
former technical college.
A series of mini-roundabouts has been built.
Several roads have changed their use from two-way to
one-way streets.
A complex system of zebra crossings and pedestrian
refuges has been constructed.
Changing the landscape
All over the country, roads are being widened, housing, trad-
ing and industrial estates are being built, supermarkets are
springing up, golf courses and theme parks are changing the
appearance of the landscape.
Conversely, many town and city centres have acquired a
neglected, derelict look as unsuccessful businesses close
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