Do or Diorama: Visualizing Your Novel

by Cat Woods

I love museums. As a kid, I would sit for hours in front of the dioramas, wishing glass didn't separate me from the world in miniature. I had a special affinity for Native American scenes and those depicting the pioneer days. Often, I would fantasize about slipping into those worlds and getting lost in another place and time.

I suspect that's why many people read novels today. While reading, we can slip away from homework, dirty dishes and nagging family into a world where teens spin the tapestry of life.

But only if the author does a stellar job of painting that new reality, as Gennifer Albin did in Crewel.

Over the past week, my Middle Son was assigned a science project. He had to create a diorama of the coral reef. This is the fruit of his labors.

His fifth grade translation is enough for us to picture this underwater world with some degree of accuracy.

• Sand? Check.
• Giant clam? Check. (Double check for the pearl found inside.)
• Coral? Straight from the Dominican Republic.
• Sea anemone? Not one, but two.
• Seaweed, algae, jelly fish? Check, check and check.

In a similar way, my favorite novels can be seen as dioramas.

• The Hunger Games would have milk carton shacks with dryer lint covering everything like a fine coating of coal. On the back wall, a fence would separate the dreary gray from the vivid forest beyond. Like her or not, nobody can dispute the amazing storytelling capabilities of Suzanne Collins.
• A.G. Howard's Splintered would utilize flamboyant colors interspersed with dark shadows. Wonderland in all its splendid--and contrasting--glory. And bugs. Lots o' bugs.
• Unwind by Neil Schusterman becomes a graveyard of broken planes, while Sarah Darer Littman's Want to go Private? is a blank computer screen. Deep, dark and terrifying.

A good novel will have a distinct setting. While this doesn't mean unique-made-up-100%-from-scratch, it does call for enough detail to let readers visualize exactly where they are and what the world looks like.

Even a contemporary novel told within the confines of a school should have defining characteristics. A little extra something to set it apart from every other school in the world. Think Sideways Stories from Wayside School by Louis Sachar. His school has 30 floors--one floor per classroom. Simple, yet effective.

However, without a connection to scene, readers can feel ungrounded. As if the story isn't quite real because it has no place to live. A poorly developed setting would be a bit like finding a giant clam on the Oregon Trail--too unreliable to trust.

All this got me thinking: what about my own novels? What would my dioramas look like?

What about yours? How much diorama potential does your novel have?

As a mother of four and an ex-preschool teacher, Cat Woods can turn the simplest objects into creative works of art--a trait she obviously passed down to her children. When she's not helping with homework or visualizing her newest writing project, she blogs at Words from the Woods. Her short stories can be found Spring Fevers and The Fall: Tales from the Apocalypse.

Weather or Not

by Jemi Fraser

As a young reader, I didn't really notice the weather in the stories I read. For me, reading was all about the characters, not the descriptions or the settings.

Then I read Farley Mowat's Never Cry Wolf and A Whale for the Killing - then so many more of his books. That's when I noticed weather can be more than an inanimate background setting. It can be as powerful as the characters themselves. In some cases, the weather becomes a character.

Here in Northern Ontario in January, snow is always on our minds. We know how to shovel it, drive in it, swear at it, play in it, differentiate between the different types, and when it's perfect snowman & snowball making weather. So, right now, the main characters in my current story are travelling through some mountains and encountering various types of snow conditions. Little do they know there's a major snowstorm headed their way and they're going to be trapped.

(source)

I can handle that. I know exactly how the snow will fall, what the temperature needs to be, how the wind will swirl, how it feels to breathe in a blizzard, what the effects of so much snow will be on travel, survival tips, what NOT to do, how to handle the loss of power in the cold and the emotional impact of it all. I even think I can do it all without using a single cliche!

But hurricanes? Tornadoes? Tsunamis? Desert heat?

Probably not yet. I can rely on my imagination, research and conversations with people who've experienced these things, but for me, it's not the same. If I was a writer who used more description, maybe then. But right now, I don't feel I have the expertise with that style of writing or with those weather conditions to pull it off. Hopefully with more practice at including description, I'll be able to handle it.

How about you? Are you comfortable writing about the weather you don't know well?

Setting the Setting

by Jemi Fraser

Creating a realistic setting is important to your story. Settings ground the reader and help the story make sense. If you don't have enough information, it can frustrate the reader. Inconsistencies in the setting can throw a reader right out of the story. We don't want that!

In some cases, the setting can almost become a character—especially if you're writing fantasy or anything under the speculative fiction umbrella. It influences characters' actions and decisions.

As writers, we must create worlds that are vivid and real in our readers' minds. This doesn't only apply to fantasy. No matter the time frame or the geographical place, we need our readers to feel as if they could step right into the world and interact with the characters.

I'm sure I've mentioned before I'm not a big fan of reading or writing extended descriptive passages. I tend to skim them when I'm reading, skip too many of them when I'm writing. I invariably have to go back into my drafts and add sensory information.

I'm still learning how to do this well with settings, but here's what I've learned so far.

The first time a character sees an important place (whether it's a planet, a city or a house), it's okay to let the reader see it as well, but don't drag it out. Hit the highlights—what makes it special, or horrible, or ordinary. Focus only on what is relevant to your story and to your character. If it's not new to the character, he/she probably won't really notice it, and certainly won't focus on it. So keep it realistic—only see what the character would see and notice.

Instead of always describing the new place, objects in that place can give great clues and hints to setting without making me feel as if I've got to write another description. A lamp sporting a chipped hula dancer base and pom pom fringed shade will tell you what the rest of the hotel room looks like without having to get into too much detail. I've been doing this more with my Steampunk where I can focus on the tinkerings and things that make the setting Steampunk rather than merry old England. Hopefully it gives the reader a visual.

I'm also finding it fun to use the other senses to describe the setting, and not relying completely on what the characters see. That hotel room from the previous paragraph certainly has its own odor—look for a unique way to describe it too. Musty works, but it's an ordinary description—stretch for something better.

In a nighttime forest, it might be scarier to describe the sounds the character hears—or doesn't—than to describe visuals. I'm not great with using taste yet, food hasn't been that important in my stories so far. Texture is a lot of fun to work with though—especially when my characters are hiding in those alleys in Steampunk London or in the horse barn in my romantic suspense.

If you've set your story in a real place, you need to be careful. For me, I don't think I could set a story in a city I didn't know well. The internet is a wonderful invention, but I don't find it enough. I want to know the feel of a place, the rhythm, the pace. I want to know the people. Is this a city where you make eye contact with strangers, where people throw trash in the gutters, or where people don't use blinkers because everyone knows where they're going?

I'm impressed with people who pull this off without knowing the city. I've set one of my contemporary romantic suspense stories in an unnamed US city. I don't name it because I don't know any US cities well enough to set it there, yet it's important to the story that it be in the States. I'm hoping I'm able to pull it off without people saying, "Where in the heck are we???"

In a middle grade idea I've been toying with, the setting is a newly discovered planet. If I go ahead with it, the setting will be vital to the story—and I'm going to have to weave in a lot of details without bogging down the narrative. Should be fun!

So, those are some of the tips I've learned to make the setting real for your readers. What else can you suggest?