 Action/Adventure: November 21, 2007 Issue [#2080] |
  Action/Adventure
This week: Edited by: larryp
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There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it's like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.
There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.
Ernest Hemingway
A writer chooses a particular setting for a short story, not because it is realistic or accurate, but because of what it accomplishes in the story.
http://www.saskschools.ca/curr_content/CrWriting20/module3/setting.html
In this edition, we will take a look at the setting of the Action/Adventure short story.
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Often, when writing a short story, the location – the setting – is just important as the plot and the characters. While developing characters and building plots, don't forget about the location and what is happening in that location that adds to the storyline.
The following are some helpful tips and guidelines for creating the setting for your Action/Adventure story.
Develop a location for your story that readers can picture in their minds. Use all of your senses so the reader can live the experience with you and feel like he or she is there. If you are painting a beach scene, for example, hear the thunder of the waves crashing on the shore. Taste the salt from the spray. Smell the clean, crisp air. Feel the soft breeze brushing across your face.
As you write short stories, take readers on a journey with you and captivate with your spellbinding story.
Susan Titus Osborn, Just write! An Essential Guide for Launching Your Writing Career
SETTING -- The time and location in which a story takes place is called the setting. For some stories the setting is very important, while for others it is not. There are several aspects of a story's setting to consider when examining how setting contributes to a story (some, or all, may be present in a story):
a) place - geographical location - Where is the action of the story taking place?
b) time - When is the story taking place? (historical period, time of day, year, etc)
c) weather conditions- Is it rainy, sunny, stormy, etc?
d) social conditions - What is the daily life of the character's like? Does the story contain local colour (writing that focuses on the speech, dress, mannerisms, customs, etc. of a particular place)?
e) mood or atmosphere - What feeling is created at the beginning of the story? Is it bright and cheerful or dark and frightening?
http://hrsbstaff.ednet.ns.ca/engramja/elements.html
Creating a Setting:
The setting can be an important part of the story but too many times, in the short stories contributed for competitions, the setting becomes a description based entirely on what can be seen. It reads like:
"Mary woke up. Her bedroom was beautifully decorated with pale pink wallpaper, light coloured curtains and a neutral, wool carpet. The quilt across her bed was covered in patch-worked dolls and pink roses. Through the window she could hear the birds..."
There may be something in this description that tells us something about Mary BUT if the writer keeps on with this for too long the reader will not learn anything about Mary or, for that matter, will the story make any progress.
If the setting is important to the story the writer should, as well as establishing time and place, attempt to create a scene that makes use of the other senses the writer has. TASTE. SMELL. HEARING. TOUCH and SIGHT.
http://english.unitecnology.ac.nz/resources/units/short_story/setting.html
In the best stories, the setting is not just chosen randomly but is integral to the meaning of the story. Along with the characters and plot, it unifies the story. Think of Faulkner and Mississippi. Think of Hemingway and Spain or Africa or Michigan. Think of Edith Wharton and New York City. Think of Virginia Woolf and London. Think of Stephen King and Maine. http://www.bloomington.in.us/~dory/creative/class8.html
In the following excerpt from As I Lay Dying, notice the setting William Faulkner creates in one paragraph and how it adds to the action.
The cottonhouse is of rough logs, from between which the chinking has long fallen. Square, with a broken roof set at a single pitch, it leans in empty and shimmering dilapidation in the sunlight, a single broad window in two opposite walls giving onto the approaches of the path. When we reach it I turn and follow the path which circles the house. Jewel, fifteen feet behind me, looking straight ahead, steps in a single stride through the window. Still staring straight ahead, his pale eyes like wood set into his wooden face, he crosses the floor in four strides with the rigid gravity of a cigar store Indian dressed in patched overalls and endued with life from the hips down, and steps in a single stride through the opposite window and into the path again just as I come around the corner. In single file and five feet apart and Jewel now in front, we go on up the path toward the foot of the bluff.
~~ From As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner
http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780679732259&view=excerpt...
In the following excerpt, notice the descriptive, colorful scene created by Edith Wharton in The Age of Innocence:
No expense had been spared on the setting, which was acknowledged to be very beautiful even by people who shared his acquaintance with the Opera Houses of Paris and Vienna. The foreground, to the footlights, was covered with emerald green cloth. In the middle distance symmetrical mounds of woolly green moss bounded by croquet hoops formed the base of shrubs shaped like orange-trees but studded with large pink and red roses. Gigantic pansies, considerably larger than the roses, and closely resembling the floral penwipers made by female parishioners for fashionable clergymen, sprang from the moss beneath the rose-trees; and here and there a daisy grafted on a rose-branch flowered with a luxuriance prophetic of Mr. Luther Burbank's far-off prodigies.
~~ From The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton
http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=978067964207...
The writer of an Action/Adventure story does well to pay attention to the setting. If you have viewied the 1981 movie Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, you probably understand the influence setting has upon the plot of an action story – from tombs to temples and snakepits.
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Have an opinion on what you've read here today? Then send the Editor feedback! Find an item that you think would be perfect for showcasing here? Submit it for consideration in the newsletter!
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monty31802
A great newsletter Larry, I like the paragraph on editing is not writing.
Thank you, Monty. I'm glad you enjoyed the newsletter.
Tehanu  
Death is such a large part of life, isn't it? And my favorite season is Fall, when the leaves are dying, but morphing into such beautiful colors that they make me smile...
Thanks for sharing your experiences and thoughts on death and showing how the subject can be a worthy story subject.
Thank you Tehanu. I agree with you about Fall. It is my favorite season also.
SHERRI GIBSON 
As always, your newsletter is great. I've read most of your picks, and couldn't agree with you more that they're excellent.
Thanks Sherri, I'm glad you read the featured items.
Vivian 
Your Tread Barefoot Contest is unique and interesting, Larry. Good job. ~~ Viv
Thanks Viv. I'm afraid I have a bit overloaded myself with the short story contest though, with all the other things I am doing now. I plan on terminating the contest at the end of this month.
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