Remember setting? It's important.
Here's an example.
Last week, we talked about setting. How to write it, how important it is, etc. If you missed it, go back here to check it out.
While your story could use setting to be the place where stuff happens, it can also be used to direct the reader’s attention. In the snippet below, the action part of the story is simple: a girl walking through a broken church. But it’s the state of the church that prompts the dialogue of chaos and trauma. Strolling through a perfectly put-together sanctuary wouldn’t make the rest of the story believable at all, but the shattered windows and jumbled-up pews create a disturbing image. It sets the scene for what comes next: a backstory of why the church is in such shambles. Like a prologue, surrounding the narrator.
What’s your favorite example of using the setting to help tell a story? And if it inspired your own writing, how did you put it into practice?
There used to be four walls. Now only two still stand. Like old guards, protecting a castle that’s already burning. Broken glass on the floor, scuffs and dirt stains and grimy little fingerprints all over the place. Father would have died again, seeing his sanctuary like this. Ripped carpet down the aisle, pews jumbled on top of each other in the corner. Blood smeared in the corner, evidence of the last stand from a few weeks ago.
It’s hard to imagine how it must have felt. The windows shattered when the first bomb dropped. Everyone panicked, pushing and shoving, trampling those who couldn’t help themselves. It was so loud, so much screaming and bodies on the ground, others on their feet, running, grabbing. Taking. Killing.
Most of us tried to hide, locking ourselves behind puny wooden doors, praying no one would come knocking. The soldiers didn’t care, though. They marched right through our walls and security blankets, murdering who they wanted, taking whatever was left. Weeding out the weak to terrorize the strong. After that, most people came quietly. Like little sheep, they baaa’d their way to the front lines, bleating apologies and groveling their servitude. A few were shot, but not many. After all, good help is hard to find.
They took a lot of them to the dining halls. From there they were divvied up, spread out over the whole land until nobody had a home any more. They worked the land, stripped naked and beaten. Some of them survived, but not many. They called it a debt of servitude, but that wasn't really it. Nothing described where we'd come to, or how we got there. Only what it was supposed to be.
A few of us were lucky. We were cowards, submitting to their authority, cowering before their grief and righteousness. Obedient little slaves, doing everything asked with our eyes on the floor. They said it was what we deserved, our inheritance. We were stupid. We were blind. We listened.
Then they shot someone. A girl, barely sixteen years old. They killed her in cold blood, for no reason except that her manager - that’s what they call themselves, it sounds better than owner - was drunk. Spilled her blood on the ground like water, an offering to the gods. I watched the light die in her eyes, her stupid cowardice taking its final toll. It woke me up, lighting a fire in my soul like the one that burned our home. That servitude, that menial groveling took her life. It wasn’t about to take mine.
So I ran. Like the stories of old, the ones that children used to learn in school. I crept out from my sleeping hovel, that hole in the wall, and dashed away. I followed the stars, hiding in rivers and trees. I lost my way and found it, barely escaped with my life, and dragged my bedraggled self back to where it all began.
Home. It used to be, anyway. Back when there were people in the pews, singing songs and trading stories about a man who made miracles happen. Back when Sunday was a day of rest. Back when we believed we could change the world.
Now shards of glass crunch all the way down the aisle. Stained glass windows, never to be admired again. Pieces of blue and green and red shine like jewels against the ransacked floor, waiting for a genie to come and put them in his pocket. Ivy climbs the walls, wrapping itself in the empty window frames . Nature has come to reclaim its home. I thought it would take longer, but it’s already here. Like me, somewhere in the dirt and blood and grime is its home. The bones of the earth, and we’re both headed to it.
I walk towards the front of the room. The altar is up there. Somehow it seems untouched by all the chaos, and I want to see how damaged it really is. My foot slips on a pile of carnage from the wall, and I crash into the shattered window at my feet. A shuddering gasp wrenches out of me, louder than I wanted. Tiny flecks of green and blue wink at me from my palms. Now the window is part of me. I can’t have the place, but I did get a souvenir.
I hear the rustling noise at the door, but I don’t turn. Instead, I gaze up at the altar. The statue of the child king is still there, the man draped over a cross, half-dead indefinitely. His empty eyes stare mournfully down at me, as if overcome by sadness. For the first time, I agree with him. Not all grief can be named, and surely this is one of those kinds.
My mind returns to the last Sunday I was here, when there was a service. Before the windows broke and the walls tumbled down. Before the bombs, before the deaths and destruction. The people spoke about the coming war with worried tongues, explained it to the man on the cross behind the altar. They prayed. They wept. They mourned. They thought he would save us. They were so sure.
The glass cracks behind me as footsteps come closer. I don’t turn. Instead I look up to the empty place where the roof used to be. The stars twinkle merrily, a wink in the universe when all hope is gone. If I were a child, I would say that someone was watching over me. That maybe there was someplace left to go, and maybe I could see it after all.
The bullet doesn’t hurt as much as I was afraid it would.