Setting and POV or What my Architect Father Inadvertently Taught My About World-Building

Years ago, when my first husband and I were in the process of buying our first house, I brought my architect father with me to check out each possibility, well, the ones my husband and I both agreed were possibilities. For him, the more modern, the more trendy, the better. For me, the more vintage and within our price range, the better.

I learned a lot about fiction that way.

While I noted high ceilings, large rooms, sufficient bedrooms for our current brood (three at the time) with room to grow that family, whether or not such and such a room would need redecorating, and the size of the yard so the kids would have room to play, my father was checking out other things: the number of outlets in a room (should be one to each wall), amps or breakers and their number (breakers preferred), if the electric was up to current code, the amount of insulation in the attic, the heat source (He sternly advised against gravity heat in a three-story house), the last well test, and the location of the septic field. He'd even want to get up on the roof.

Creating a plausible setting for your story is more than simply describing the landscape. Setting has everything to do with your characters. Most of us, perhaps without realizing it, do not just notice our settings, we filter them, AND we react to them.

Suppose two of my sons - Christopher and Timothy - take me to a cell phone store to buy a cell phone for me. Since I dont't understand the technology (even when it's explained to me), I usually let them do the sorting out of possiblities, while I wander around.

Both boys have a solid understanding of current products and can discuss cell phones for hours (Literally). Christopher, like his father, veers towards the newest, the lastest, the whistles and bells - the obtaining of the most options for his money - and he will negotiate anything and everything in order to get as much free stuff as possible. He will also zero in on the sales person he will be most likely to "persuade" into those things. Timothy wants to discuss battery life, memory storage, the pros and cons of each brand and the specs of company that produces those phones, the contract terms.

Both boys will agree on free upgrades and the necessity of my phone fitting into pockets of chick jeans, which are notoriously teeny. Apparently, clothing designers can't undertand some women like their clothing to be functional, as well as decorative.

So when describing a room, a landscape, a town, a person, remember that it's usually from the point view from the character noticing it. This will help you add the details and the ruminations particular to that character.

Some examples:


            Her mother parked in front of a dingy, squat-looking building, Sue’s Diner. Brian turned and rolled his eyes. Melissa mouthed back, probably get food poisoning.

She fretted about the report all the way past Main Street, which now split in two. One road led into the deeper part of the woods; the other wound up the hill toward their new home. Brian wiggled and bounced to see everything at once. The tops of the lush, profuse trees touched each other, but the sun filtered through the leaves and formed lacy patterns on the asphalt. Lake Munson, full of ducks and geese, rippled a clear blue-green.

Big deal, she thought, catching herself watching them, determined to find nothing redeeming about her new home. Who cares about a bunch of old birds?

The box-shaped cottage was too flat, too old, too gray, too small, and most of all, too ugly. The Grover’s Park ranch, with grey-blue siding, black shutters, and a manicured yard with a few perennials and tomato plants, had been home. This could never be home.

She took three steps down the creaking stairs and glimpsed an old furnace and a washer and drier. Melissa couldn’t imagine doing laundry in that musty place, where snakes might lurk. She’d let Brian do it. He’d probably find it fun. 

A wrought iron sign hanging from a small one-story building advertised homemade soaps, while the wood sign posted on the two-story home next door promoted its hand-dipped candles, which reminded Melissa of the candelabra on John’s desk inside Simons Mansion’s library.

One step inside Rudy’s, a large Queen Anne of reddish-brown stone, and Melissa knew Jenny had understated its elegance. To one side of the main lobby sat a concert grand piano, although not, Melissa thought smugly, a Schwechten.

 Two boys shouldering matching blue-gray vinyl bags soon joined them. The taller boy had neatly combed sandy hair, gold-wire glasses, bow-shaped lips, and a serious face. His much thinner companion, with wispy brown hair and a scrawny mustache, winked at Tracy, and she blushed, the first time Melissa had seen her even slightly flustered. The boys unzipped their bags and removed shoes, several balls of different styles and weights, wrist braces, and monogrammed hand towels.

“I think I’m in the wrong place,” Melissa said.

Julie set her own ball on the return and grinned. “You’ll do fine. Let’s go find you a ball.”

An angry clicking sounded from the pond’s edge, and a cloud of monarch butterflies shot from the purple milkweed, hotly pursuing the flower sprites that preyed on their nectar. A hearty laugh broke through John-Peter’s lips and fluttered away into the woods. Although reluctant to leave such serenity, he stood, hungry now for something more than dandelions and ground beetles. He chuckled to himself. Those butterflies would never catch the fairy pack, especially with Aodhan leading it. 

The oak trees surrounding him moaned his name, and the cool breeze rippled their leaves, as well as the tender grasses, causing them to dance about his feet. John-Peter,  the oaks' national hero, acknowledged their greeting with a detached nod. From here, the earth sloped downward, but John-Peter saw the top of the thatched roof of the tiny mud and grass cottage he forsook centuries ago. Even before he reached his home, he spied the overgrown weeds of what used to be his garden and decided he might have to hoe and plant before he brought the princess here, just in case she didn’t hunt for her food. Still, he waded through the tall greenery and stumbled upon a few cabbages and potatoes, entirely inappropriate for an ancient, abandoned, Irish garden, but this wasn’t his fantasy, and, besides, he was plenty thankful for their existence. He gathered an armful of food and trotted back to the cottage. Today’s breakfast, at least, was assured, thanks to the steward’s benevolence. He noted the cord of wood, as he pushed through the grassy, rear doorway. What a surprise. That wood should have rotted eons ago. 

On Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation when Abbot was in town, father and son attended High Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral, its Federal-style architecture and plaster ceiling and walls resembling home: hard, beautiful, and cold. As erect and immobile as the marble statues, but not nearly so tall, Abbot stood beside his son, and, to the accompaniment of the Erben organ, sang those majestic Latin hymns in a strong and powerful tenor voice.

The outline of buildings came into view. John slowed his pace. He couldn't avoid spending his summer as a chore boy, but he could delay it. The white farmhouse, trimmed in dark gray, looked fresh and inviting in the early morning light. The shutters were still closed, a sign that the aged mistress of the farm, bound in the distance ancient sycamores, hadn't yet stirred. He rode straight back to the barns. Despite their age, they, too, appeared sturdy and well maintained, almost as if recently built. John hitched the horse and went inside the first one, meandering through the large building, gazing from side to side at the sleek thoroughbreds. The condition of the barn was impeccable. How had a single, elderly woman managed it, and did the widow really require his services?