Tuesday's Inspiration - Triggered By Bird by Bird - Anne Lamott #MFRWauthor

By Set Design Ms. Lamott means the setting.
Years and eyars ago when I began writing an editor once remarked "Your characters are existing in a vacuum." The plot was moving along. The characters were well defined and motivated. What I had was a a lot of dialogue and action with a minimal bit of showing where the characters existed. Carefully I started to develop the setting for my stories. This was hard at least for me. So I had to go to the drawing board and I sketchedn rooms, I wrote long descriptions of weather, places, environments all I could think of.

Fault number one or two since no scenery was mistake one. I put this setting material in large blocks of prose. Another editor sent the mss back with a sorry. A little note mentioned that setting should be established through the characters' interactions with the environment and should be fed in small bits. Also just pick a few things to orient the reader to the palce, the season and other setting bits.

A few attempts later and I had this down. I still have to remind myself about setting as I move through. How about you?