The Interaction of Characters and Their Settings

 

Have you ever read a book that had some lovely passages of description, but you still wanted to skip over them? You might be the kind of person who prefers action, and you want to get on with the story rather than knowing the intricacies of Aunt Muriel’s petunias. But another reason is that the description is sitting all by itself and not interacting with poor Aunt Muriel.

I was a social psychology lecturer for 25 years, and environmental psychology was one of the topics I taught. In a nutshell, environmental psychology looks at how people and settings co-influence one another.

• People affect natural and built environments in both positive and negative ways.
• Natural and built environments affect people in positive and negative ways.
• Unlike the boy band, these effects do not just go in One Direction. They interact with each other, such that people affect the environment, which in turn affects people, who in turn affect the environment and so on. (And yes, I realise One Direction has broken up.)

So, what has all of this got to do with writing fiction? Think about it in terms of your setting. Are your characters interacting with their settings or are you just telling us what’s in the setting? Let me give an example.

Interacting With Settings

An Example

I read a manuscript extract in which a woman came home and went into the kitchen to make dinner. The author then gave a long paragraph describing the kitchen. She had really put a lot of thought into it and had excellent skills at technical writing. The walls weren’t just blue or yellow, they were particular shades, like the types you would find on a painter’s chart. Kitchen utensils and pots were hanging from hooks on the ceiling. There was a clear description of the layout of the room, including a window over the sink that looked out across the yard.

However, there was just one problem. The description was static. It was as if the character stood to one side while the description of the setting played out. There was no interaction between the character and the setting. 

Show, Don't Tell

Some good old ‘show don’t tell’ would have gotten across the same information. Instead of the author telling us that pots were hanging from the ceiling, the character could reach for one of the pots and put it on the wooden bench. She could open up the pantry cupboard and move aside the cereal boxes to find the pasta. She could go over to the sink and look out the window while rinsing the cutting board she needs to use. That kind of writing is much more engaging than simply giving us a description. By showing the character interacting with the environment, we're not only getting an idea of the setting, but we're also learning about the person.

Avoid Information Drops

Another advantage of having your character interacting with the setting is that you can drop information in a bit at a time when needed, rather than doing the dreaded info dump that encourages a reader to skip over the boring bits. We don't need to know that Grandpa's hunting knife is in the kitchen drawer until someone uses it to carve the Sunday roast.

Setting as Character

In some books, the environment plays such an important role that it is like a character in itself. For example, Susan May Warren set about half of her novel The Way of the Brave on the snowy slopes of Denali in Alaska, where the characters had to fight the elements to stay alive. If you write biblical fiction, think about what it would have been like for Noah and his family to spend so long in the Ark while waiting until the ground was habitable again. Or what would it have been like for the Israelites to spend 40 years in the wilderness? How would you have liked living in a tent with your family for all those years?

Questions to Ponder

Now think about your current work-in-progress.

• Are your characters riding the boundary of their drought-stricken farm to check the livestock? Show us the desolation of the land and the riders.
• Are two people walking through the CBD of a large city? Maybe the traffic is so loud that they have trouble hearing each other, so they have to shout or move to a quieter location.
• Are they stuck in a crowded elevator? Give us a sense of the claustrophobia and panic as it sets in. Is he loosening his tie? Is she thumping the call button?
• Do they go fishing and toss their empty drink cans into the river? Or do they spend Saturday mornings doing litter parade at the beach?
• Do they rearrange the tables and chairs in a coffee shop so that everyone in their group has plenty of room, or do they squish up so there’s four in a booth that usually seats two?

There is a myriad of possibilities, but whatever decisions you make, be sure that your descriptions are advancing character or plot. Don’t just have it rain for the sake of it. Have it rain so we can see how the caterer copes with the quickly rejigged garden party, or so the hero and heroine have to stand close together under a tree to stay dry.

Do you have examples of novels that have done a particularly good job of showing the person interacting with their environment? I’d love to hear your examples.

Author Bio

Nola Lorraine (aka Nola Passmore) has a passion for faith and social justice issues, and loves weaving words that inspire others with courage and hope. Her inspirational historical novel Scattered was published in 2020, and she also co-edited the Christian charity anthology Glimpses of Light with Jeanette O’Hagan. She has more than 150 short publications, including fiction, poetry, devotions, true stories, magazine articles and academic papers. She and her husband Tim also run a freelance writing and editing business, The Write Flourish. She’d love to connect with you through her website: www.nolalorraine.com.au

Photo Sources

Author photo by Wayne Logan at WRLPhoto.

Surfing dog by StarFlames on Pixabay.