Publish and Be Damned

I like stories with a strong sense of setting. I truly enjoy feeling the texture of a place well described, the grit under my fingers, the faded, chipped paint of a windowsill. On the other hand, as both a reader and writer, I like settings that are virtually nonexistent – either minimally described, or truly limbo-like non-spaces. Much like characters, I often like the reader to fill in a great deal of the texture himself – in some pieces, especially flash fiction like the Nightmares and Visions, it serves the function of making the reader a participant in creating the tiny space of the scene.

“A sole brilliant spotlight in a vast, dark room illuminated me from above.” (N&V #1) – Unformed space

“I am curled in a ball, naked on the floor.” (N&V #9). – Nowhere

“It’s pitch dark. I think I’m blindfolded. Someone is fucking me”. (N&V 22) – Disoriented

“I was titillated, even aroused by the scene, but I wanted to warn the woman. To call out and wake her from her dream. To help her  escape whatever was seducing her in her sleep. She couldn’t hear me.” (N&V 39) Nowhere – watching a dream.

“I am taking a long soak in the hot bath after a hard day. I doze in the steamy, scented water. A low clanging and gurgling sound in the pipes disturbs my repose.” (N&V 53) – Barest establishment.

(All from Nightmares and Visions, Republica Press)

For many of the Nightmares, the lack of setting – or the indistinctness of setting, is part and parcel of the feeling of displacement, or being lost or out of control inherent in the vignettes being told. This kind of sparseness or negative space can either draw in or alienate the reader from the place, but I think both are valid, and both are therefore correct.

In my stories, settings sometime serve very specific functions.  In In The Dark the setting is designed to separate the main character from the “real” world just on the other side of the door so that she could cross into new experience.

“Sandra closed and locked the bathroom door, sighed, and went to the mirror to touch up  her makeup, grateful for the brief privacy of the small ‘extra’ bathroom next to the standard,  multi-stalled ladies’ room. She was having an OK time, but was getting discouraged, losing the heart and purpose she had come with. Damn Phillip anyway.

In flash of motion behind her, the door to the bathroom suddenly opened and closed, letting in a loud blast of music. At the same time the lights went out, and an instant later, just as Sandra startled from the noise, one hand grabbed her arm as another clamped over her mouth. “ (In The Dark, in Through a Tinted Lens, Republica Press)

In other stories rather than removing the character from the familiar setting, the familiarity of the setting is removed instead:

“We run along toward the north field. The noises of the waking city seem to murmur more quietly, muffled by the veil of mist. We pass other runners almost startling each other during fleeting moments of resolution on the winding path. We hit the long curving pathway of the northern field and with your hand at the small of my back, we veer off the path and onto the grass, to be quickly lost in the barely lightening gray of the pre-dawn in fog.

The trees lining the path become dark, smudged shapes, then disappear altogether in the mist. We run ten, twenty more paces, then slow in a small closed-in patch of green surrounded apparently, nothing, though mere tens of yards in any direction, there isn’t anything between us and the paths, and beyond that the streets lined with apartment buildings and business skyscrapers facing the park. We hear a truck hit the brakes, the thudding tread of a runner, an eager dog pulling his lead. We are in the middle of the living, waking city, but, at the moment, in complete privacy. “ (Fog in Through a Tinted Lens, Republica Press)

Sometimes the setting is indeed intimately wound into the story. In The Cliff, it’s details, and the need to experience them are an essential part of the story:

“I gazed over at him. Nick looked like he was supporting the cliff, instead of the other way around. In the pale moonlight, his sinewy arms and legs were the same blue-gray as the granite wall. His chalk-dusted fingers sought and hooked into holds naturally, reflexively, the toes on his climbing shoes finding purchase on the tiniest juts. Like hanging onto a rock face was no different than leaning against a wall. He was gorgeous. Hot. The fact he wore only his climbing harness and shoes made it even hotter.” (The Cliff, in Through a Tinted Lens, Republica Press)

In The Cliff, the scene isn’t set all at once, that kind of dawning and filling in of the setting as the story moves makes it hard to showcase it in a small quote, but the developing of the setting over the action is an essential almost-character in the story.

And then there’s alienness. In some stories, I’m trying to place the characters and readers in truly different setting, like an alien world, or a demented laboratory. The stories in Through an Ethereal Lens do this, but through somewhat minimal means. In “From the Blue World” the Aquarioum exhibit setting is used again to separate the character from the known, so that the strange may take place:

“The exhibit space was cleverly designed, snaking around many different tanks, keeping people from crowding too much. Velvet ropes and dark curtains guided and funneled everyone into single file, and kept the conversations hushed. The dim lighting allowed animals in faintly lit—or black-lit tanks to be easily seen. The path twisted this way and that, past fascinating, colorful sea life…” (From the Blue World – in Through An Ethereal Lens, Republica Press)

It is in this dark maze-like path that Paula comes unstuck from the mundane.

I’ve been experimenting with more textured settings. Upcoming stories play a little more with the grit and detail of a place, but I think my tendency towards setting minimalism remains fairly strong. It’s the intimate world of the people experiencing the action that draws me, and that upon which I want the reader to focus.

-Monocle

May 12th, 2010 | Monocle | Setting in Fiction | 1 Comment »