It was a dark and stormy night...

The cheesiest and worst opening ever, I know. Yet it does serve its purpose, which is to create the setting. What is setting? The question seems easy doesn't it? It's the location of your story. Duh. But is it really that simple? In a word: No.

Setting, or milieu, is one of the four basic factors that make up every story. When creating a scene, the setting is everything that surrounds the characters; and I mean everything. Here's a list of various aspects of the setting that need to be taken into account in order to create a believable setting:

• Location: This can be anything from the room your characters are in to the planet they're on. It includes the physical objects nearby as well as the scenic skyline afar off. It is everything the characters will interact with during the scene. If your character is going to get in a bar brawl, the bottle he grabs is a piece of the setting right up until he shatters it on the edge of the bar and points it at his opponent.
  
  Location is the most common aspect of a story and the one that most people get right... for the most part. It's easy to describe a room your character is in, as well as the objects he or she will need throughout the scene. But what about the scenery? Make sure to include descriptions of items that will set the mood of the scene. This could be the dying embers of the campfire, the meaty scent of the roast in the oven, or the vast collection of family portraits hanging on the walls. These "background" objects go a long way to showing your reader how the setting feels to your characters.
• Culture: This includes the laws of the land, village customs, city attitudes, the social roles of your character and so on. You can describe a city all the way down to the shape of the cobblestones in the streets, but without some culture your city will be just a flat collection of buildings. If your character is walking down the street, describe the way the citizens around him act. Maybe a couple is arguing loudly outside their home, or a patrol of foot soldiers is making the rounds, eying everyone they pass. The point is, give your locations some personality, some quirks, and some vices. This will bring them more to life than simply describing the buildings reaching for the sky.
• Environment: Weather can have a strong affect on the scene you set. Is it raining? Sunny? Does the wind nearly blow your characters off their feet, or does the heavy fog obscure everything outside arms length? Weather is a great way to set the mood of your scene. Sunny days will typically portray hope or joy while rain can be depressing or even romantic. Fog is a common way to create an eerie feeling.
  
  This applies even if you are writing an indoor scene. What's the weather like outside. Does the soft pitter-patter of rain on the tin roof of the shed drive your hiding protagonist insane? Or does the bright rays of sunlight streaming through an open window fill her with hope for the first time in ages?
  
  But weather is not the only environmental effect to take into consideration. How about day or night? Which season is it? It doesn't even have to be of this planet. The vacuum of space can be a terrifying prospect for your character. Space is cold, lonely, and deadly. If you're a sci-fi author creating a new planet, design some crazy weather or other environmental effects that will fill your readers with wonder and your characters with dread. Have fun with it.

In the end, setting is just as important as your plot, your characters, and your ideas. Take the time to flesh out your world and make it really come to life on the page. Your readers will thank you for it.

Challenge Accepted
I haven't given a writing prompt at the end of a post in a long time, but this seems like an appropriate post to pick up with again. So, here's the challenge: Take a scene and rewrite it three times, with all the same characters and plot points, but in each scene, change the weather, whether it's indoors or out, and see how rain, wind, and sunshine change the way characters think, act, and feel. As always, I did the same and you can read my Challenge here.

Until then, have fun, and write something.

Writing Action and the Betrothed Daughter of a King

This week's discussion on writing is going to be about how to write action. I'm taking the main points of this post from the LTUE2012 panel on Writing Action by action master and self-proclaimed gun-nut , Larry Corriea. Larry is the author of several action packed series of novels, from the Monster Hunter International series to the Grimnoir Chronicles. Check him out of you haven't already.


So, why do we put action in our stories? Is it not enough to say, Boy meets Girl, Girl plays hard to get, Boy persists and eventually wins Girl's heart, Boy and Girl live happily ever after? 


Instead we say, Boy meets Girl, Girl plays hard to get, Boy wins Girl's heart, but leaves to seek his fortune to support her, Boy gets killed by Dread Pirate, Girl is agrees to marry Prince, Girl is kidnapped by Thugs and subsequently rescued by Dread Pirate who she later discovers is actually Boy, Prince-who plans to murder Girl to start war-pursues Boy and Girl, Boy and Girl get lost in Fire Swamp and must fight quicksand, fire bursts, and ROUS's to survive, Prince captures Girl, sends Boy to Pit of Despair, Boy is rescued by Thugs and revived, Boy and Thugs storm palace, kill Prince, and rescue Girl, Boy and Girl live happily ever after.


Ok, so I didn't exactly make that up on the spot, but did you see the difference? Even though the second plot summary was much longer, it was also tons more interesting. We write action into our stories to build suspense, to keep things interesting, and just because it's downright fun.


So how do we do it right? Well, according to Larry Corriea, the first rule of writing action is: If it sucks, don't do it; if it's awesome, do it. If you don't enjoy it, your readers won't either. You can get away with almost any action scene you want in a novel, no matter how ridiculous, provided you set it up right and make it as plausible as possible. In the first book of Larry Corriea's, Grimnoir Chronicles, Hard Magic, the finale of the tale as Larry puts it is, "...a teleporting magic ninja fight on top of a flaming pirate dirigible." It sounds ridiculous, but since Larry took the time to set it up right in the novel, it not only works, but is dang awesome.


Another tip Larry gives is to do your research. If you're going to have a gun fight, make sure you know how guns work, how people react around guns, how bullet wounds affect people, and what residual consequences there may be from your shootout. For example, if your characters are fighting indoors with black powder rifles, make sure to take into account the vast amount of smoke put off by a single muzzle blast. Take recoil into account; and ammunition. Unless you are writing and Arnold Schwarzenegger action film, don't give your characters bottomless magazines. People will notice.


If you don't know anything about guns, talk to someone who does. Visit a shooting range. You'll find many people more than willing to share with you their immense knowledge of firearms.  The same goes for any action skills; martial arts, para-trooping, scuba diving, midget wrestling, sword fighting, car chases, or curling. Chances are, whatever you are writing about, someone in the world is an expert at it. Google them.


Another tip is to not just write action. You have to break up your story into high points and low points, the high points being action, suspense, etc., the low points being your plot and character development. Now that's not to say you can't develop both plot and characters within and action scene, you very much can and should. But if your entire story is high points, all action all the time, then the suspense level ten you've built up will begin to feel like a suspense level three. If it's all action, then it gets boring, you'll lose your readers. 


Along those same lines, you have to vary your action scenes in order to avoid monotony. If every action scene is a gun fight, then your reader will begin to expect and even predict the outcome of your action scenes. It will become dull. Break it up. Start with a shoot out, then have a car chase, then a sword fight atop a tank, then an all out assault on an ice-fortress. Whatever your story is, make sure to vary your action.


Avoid writing a checklist in your action. "I (or he/she) did this, then I did this, the I turned and did this, then I did this..." Again, variety. "He did this, then this happened. Moving over he saw this. This happened, then this. This happened suddenly and it forced him to do this..." As Larry said, "We're not choreographers, we're writers." 


And don't worry too much about avoiding cliches. If it's cool, it's probably been done. That's ok. Remember Rule #1: If it sucks, don't do it, it's it's awesome, do it. If it's a cliche action, twist it a bit to make it your own, but as long as you set it up right and write it well, no one will care. However, if your reader expects something to happen, that might be a good time to subvert the narrative and pull the rug out from underneath them.


Finally, to use a Star Trek reference, don't be afraid to kill bridge crew. If you kill a main character early on, then it shows the reader that you're not afraid to kill anyone in the story, and that helps immensely in keeping up your tension.


Challenge Accepted:
No one responded to the writing prompt last time, but it's ok. It was kind of vague anyway. And technically I cheated. So here's a simpler one for us all to try, relating to this post: 
Write an action scene that makes curling interesting. 
Challenging, I know. Don't forget to do your research, you can't write about curling if you don't understand it.