A Writer's Guide to Active Setting: How to Enhance Your Fiction with More Descriptive, Dynamic Settings

by Mary Buckham, Dianna Love (Foreword by)

Overview

Enhance Your Fiction with the Power of an Active Setting!

Setting is one of the most underutilized and misunderstood elements of the writing craft. And when writers do focus on setting, they often pull readers out of the narrative and jolt their attention from the action on the page.

A Writer's Guide to Active Setting will show you how to create vivid, detailed settings that bring your story to life. You'll learn how to deepen character development, anchor readers to a specific time and place, reveal backstory without slowing things down, elevate action sequences, and more.

Drawing upon examples from authors writing across a variety of genres, Mary Buckham will illustrate exactly how the proper use of setting can dramatically improve your story. You'll learn what's effective about each passage and how you can use those techniques to make your story shine.

"Takes an all too often overlooked technique, and elevates it to a next-level game changer for powerful fiction." —Cathy Yardley, author of Rock Your Plot

"A powerful combination of fresh insights, practical examples, and how-to advice on the often overlooked but critical element of setting...written in a quick-to-read and easy-to-understand style, and packed with useful application exercises." —Kelly L. Stone, author of Thinking Write: The Secret to Freeing Your Creative Mind

"If you're a writer, then Mary Buckham's book is a must-have tool for your writer's toolkit. Creating settings that are rich and believable is not an easy task, but with this book, I found that each chapter gave me great tips that I could immediately implement in my manuscript." —Laurie G. Adams, author of Finding Atticus

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781599639307
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	01/01/2016
Edition description:	Revised
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	416,213
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Mary Buckham is the author of the USA Today bestselling Invisible Recruits series, which has been touted for its unique voice, high action, and rich emotion. Mary lives in Washington State with her husband and, when not crafting a new novel of her own, she travels the country researching settings and teaching other writers.

Table of Contents

Foreword Dianna Love vi

Introduction 1

Part 1 Characterization & Sensory Detail

01 Getting Started with Active Setting 5

02 Using Subjective Setting Detail to Reveal Character 27

03 Using Sensory Detail to Enhance Setting 52

Part 2 Emotion, Conflict, & Backstory

04 Using Setting to Show Emotion 80

05 Using Setting to Create Complication 101

06 Using Setting to Show Backstory 126

Part 3 Anchoring, Action, Setting as a Character, & More

07 Using Setting to Anchor the Reader 150

08 Using Setting in an Action Sequence 185

09 Using Setting as a Character in Your Story 210

10 The Devil in the Setting Details 230

Bibliography 239

Editorial Reviews

"Setting is one of the most underutilized and misunderstood elements of the writing craft. And when writers do focus on setting, they often pull readers out of the narrative and jolt their attention from the action on the page. A Writer's Guide to Active Setting: How to Enhance Your Fiction with More Descriptive, Dynamic Settings by Mary Buckham (author of the USA Today bestselling Invisible Recruits series) will show you how to create vivid, detailed settings that bring your story to life. You'll learn how to deepen character development, anchor readers to a specific time and place, reveal backstory without slowing things down, elevate action sequences, and more. Drawing upon examples from authors writing across a variety of genres, as well as her own years of experience and expertise, Mary Buckham will illustrate exactly how the proper use of setting can dramatically improve your story. You'll learn what's effective about each passage and how you can use those techniques to make your story shine. Exceptionally well written, organized and presented, A Writer's Guide to Active Setting is very highly recommended for community library Writing/Publishing reference collections, and a 'must read' instructional guide for all aspiring novelists and short story authors." —Midwest Book Review

From the Publisher