Please join me in welcoming today's Roses' guest, Nel DuVall.
Setting is an important element of
any story. In some novels, setting becomes almost a character influencing the
action. Two well-known examples are Hemmingway’s Old Man and the Sea and Joyce Carol Oates’ Black Water.
Setting should seem believable to
the reader whether a real place or an imagined one. I have been fortunate to
live many places including overseas. I’ve traveled extensively both for
business and please. Participating in various Earthwatch projects took me to
interesting places and allowed me to take in variety of activities from an
archaeological digs to environmental surveys. Conferences in foreign countries
introduced me to other cultures and places. Vacations also added to these. All
have contributed something to the settings used in my novels.
Not all writers have those
opportunities, but they can research setting in other ways through the
internet, via documentaries, books, photographs, and a variety of media.
Writers need to develop a feel for their setting and how it influences and
interacts with their characters. Setting provides an important element of
texture to writing.
Popular icons are gloomy castles, a
haunted Victorian house, a farm on the prairie, a seaport, a big city like
Paris, London, San Francisco, Chicago, or New York. Each carries certain
connotations or associations for the reader. The writer can use those
expectations or chose instead to create new ones, but in the latter case, the
storyteller must understand the setting and make changes skillfully and in a
believable manner.
My own novels have used both
familiar and strange, other worldly settings. My two time travel romances were
set in Ohio, but mainly in the past. They took a lot of research and access to
old maps and newspapers. I also visited the places as they now exist, including
the canal and real railroad line used in Train
to Yesterday. In a mystery, Selvage,
I lived in the area where the novel takes place. However, the setting for Beyond the Rim Light by Alex Stone (Nell
DuVall and Steven Riddle) was the far future and outer space. That one took
some knowledge, but a lot of imagination.
My current series, Murder in the Shadows, involves Columbus,
Ohio, and eventually Ireland. My newly released novel Murder in Her Dreams is set in Columbus. I have been to the various
locations mentioned in the novel so setting posed no problems and did not
require extensive research.
Next time you read a novel or write
one, look at the setting and see how the author has used it to provide a sense of
believability and realism to the novel. Is setting just there or does it
influence the characters and the action?
You can find all my books (print
and ebook) under Nell DuVall on Amazon, most of them on Barnes and Noble, and
other book and ebook retailers. Melange Books has the recent offerings,
including Murder in Her Dreams. Check
out my website at www.nellduvall.com.
I’m also a reviewer of mysteries on
www.gumshoereview.com and on www.sfrevu.com for science fiction, fantasy, and
paranormal romances under Mel Jacob
