Jo Anne Fontanilla
Every story takes place at same point or points in space and in time. It is incumbent upon the writer of fiction to "place" his story in space and time, as early as possible in his narrative, so that you will begin making the proper associations with the setting. The setting also presents a share of technical difficulties, but most novelists embrace them gladly. The novel is a prose form and emphasizes realism: its style ought to be, for the most part, terse and transparently plain. Whatever poetic impulse the novelist may have is
likely to be frustrated: only the setting provides him an outlet for it; for in his descriptive writing he is allowed to express his feeling for beauty and create a scene in lavish hues, if he wishes.
The degree of elaboration with which setting is depicted depends upon a number of considerations, all of which the astute writer keeps in mind. Perhaps the first consideration is the importance of the setting in relation to the other essential elements in the story---plot and character. In some stories--- especially contemporary stories that takes place in surroundings that are familiar to most readers--- the element of setting can be safely minimize. The particular setting, moreover, is not indispensable to the conversation that constitutes the body of the story, although the weather not only furnishes its title but also points symbolically to the problem raised by the slightly developed plot.
Another consideration for the conscientious writer is the probable familiarity
of his setting. If the setting is one that is likely to be familiar to
most of his readers, the writer need to depict it in detail; he may assume
that the details he selects will give his readers that pleasure of recognition
that is one of the special values of familiar material. For example, although
millions of Americans have never visited Coney Island, most of them are
so well acquainted with the appearance and nature of the resort that the
With a setting that is remote from most readers not only in space but also
in time, a different problem arises. A writer may safely assume that contemporary
London will be much more familiar to most of his readers than Elizabethan
or eighteenth-century London. If his story takes place in either earlier
period, the writer will have to build up his setting out of appropriate
details. Such a treatment involves information concerning the houses, the
costumes, the manners, and the types of work and play characteristic of
Finally, the treatment of setting, like the treatment of character, will depend on the mode in which the writer is working, whether it is classical, romantic, or realistic. What we have said concerning character in this connection is equally true of setting. In classical stories---in Samuel Johnson's Rasselas or Voltaire's Candide, for instance---the setting is usually sketched in broadly. In romantic stories there is a greater attention to detail, the writer may fall back on elements in setting that have been accumulated by generations of romance writers. The Romantic Age brought in a passionate sense of identification with nature, and the idealization of it. It is soon reflected in the novel. In realistic stories, the writer must consider seriously the accuracy and fullness of his details, since it is one of the tenets of realism that setting should be depicted with a high degree of circumstantiality. Faithful adherence to this tenet resulted in the development, in the middle and later nineteenth-century.
The most richly regional story in this collection is Faulkner's "Was,"
and the very detailed presentation of setting, atmosphere, and manners
is justified not only because the place and the time of the story are unfamiliar
even to most American readers, but also because the details are intrinsically
In contemporary realism, however, the reader is likely to find a rather less circumstantial treatment of American settings than the realistic fiction of the nineteenth century. This less particularized treatment is due, on the one hand, to the writers assumption that readers have now become familiar with the flora and fauna of regional America and, on the other hand, to a change in the conception of the technique of effective description.
In the more expansive form of the novel, the writer may feel free to devote a proportionately greater amount of space to the depiction of setting in and by itself than the constricted form of the short story will permit.
Most authors' delight in turning out lengthy passages of description, "set pieces" with lavish strings of adjectives. However, by now that belongs to a past fashion. Today's readers are impatient and skip solid pages or even paragraphs that do not advance the story. It is best to insert description as unobtrusively as possible, an image here, and the next---after dialogue, or a bit or scatter his pictures of the physical background, just as a dramatist artfully handles his "exposition."
Percy Lubbock observes that paring a novel bare of most detail is occasionally
good, but not very often. The consensus is that the factual inventory can
be carried too far, is it is by Hugh Walpole and Theodore Dreiser, who
compile altogether too much insignificant data; but that is merely abuse
of a method. Too few externals can also be an error. To most of us, clothes
and houses are telling clues, and the novelist owes it to us to report
how his characters dress, and vividly where and how they live. At the
Ultimately, the kind and amount of background detail one likes in a book
depends on its subject and aim, and no less on the temperament of the author
and each reader.