Thoughts on Setting in Historicals: When youre writing about Regency ladies, or queens, or noblewomen, or or pretty much any woman in history, there can be a feeling of literary claustrophobia. Female protagonists dont often get to go to the battlefields or see the exotic sights. They spend a lot of time at home. And so it becomes an easy (and lazy) technique to show them repeatedly sipping tea in the parlor or soaking in an bath or lounging about in the dining room eating peeled grapes. One of the toughest jobs for an author is to think of places that the character might reasonably be that will help give the reader a fuller picture of the world. Historical writers are part tour-guide, bringing the past alive so that the reader can see, smell, taste, hear, and touch days long past. You cant really do that in the parlor. If you find that every scene youre writing seems to take place in a dining room or sipping brandy by a fire, its time to do some brainstorming. Sometimes its better to write the scene in a white room and figure out how to revise it later with regard to a new and interesting setting that can illuminate and educate without seeming to.
Posted on: Tue, 01 Apr 2014 15:03:57 +0000