Humpty Dumpty Was an Ovicide from James W. Ziskin

How important is setting in your books? Do you write settings that you've never visited, and how do you go about this, if so? Give an example or two of setting in your own work and say how these scenes enhance the plot or create mood.

2017 Macavity Award for Heart of Stone

The title of my post this week has nothing to do with setting. It’s more about plot. But never mind that. Read on.

For me, setting in books is as important as the characters, or even the plot. Is that a bold statement? I don’t think so. Mind, I’m not minimizing the importance of those other two elements, character and plot. Not at all. Rather I’m emphasizing the value of setting. Together, those three pieces make up the story. Without any one of them, your story collapses.

CHARACTERS

You need to have characters doing things in your story. Hitting people, kissing people, plotting unspeakable acts, fighting for right… Or even wrong, why not? And your characters don’t have to be people, of course. A dog can just as easily bite someone, lick someone/something, plot unspeakable (scatological) acts, or just sit there panting his hot breath into the air. Even inanimate objects can be characters, provided you give them something to want. A goal and some obstacles to prevent them from achieving that goal. I once wrote a short story—unpublished, alas—that recounted the life of a single dollar bill. What the bill bought, to whom it passed, where it fell into a puddle, and so on. (I didn’t say it was a good story.) But the dollar bill, identified by its serial number, was the hero of my tale. Now, if my story didn’t succeed—and it didn’t—it might have been for one very good reason: there was no compelling setting. (The character and plot weren’t all that memorable either.) Yes, there was a setting: the bank where the dollar went into circulation, the wallet where it spent a lot of time, the street where it got lost, the crackhouse, and other places I can no longer recall. Just enough setting to make it a story, but not enough to make it any good.

PLOT

There aren’t many plotless stories floating around out there. Even badly written books and poorly directed movies have plots. There’s structure, conflict, and things happen. Characters do something in some location or other, too. No matter if the plot is dull or flawed, it’s still a plot. Humpty Dumpty’s plot may seem simple on its ovoid surface: Humpty sits on a wall and falls to his death. Imagine the elevator pitch for this story: “Egg meets gravity, gravity wins.” Or, if you’re more scientifically inclined, a = Fnet / m, Newton’s Second Law of Motion. But wait, I hear you say. If Newton’s Second Law of Motion is involved…then Humpty must have been pushed! It was murder! Ovicide, my dear Watson.

SETTING

Okay, while you ponder that, I’ll get back to the matter of setting. Yes, you need setting to make a story. The better the setting, the better the story. It can even compensate for shortcomings in character and plot, though not in the case of Humpty Dumpty. Or my dollar story. Yes, better is always better for settings. The same holds true for characters and plots.

In my books, I’ve often leaned heavily on setting for inspiration. They give me ideas. And once I begin writing, setting helps keep the story in balance. Too much plot or too much character can bore the reader. Too much setting can do the same thing. Balance is the key. The three elements should complement each other, be inextricably intertwined such that if you change one, you break the threads of the others, and you’ve got a lot of work ahead to repair your story. 

If the setting inspires me to write a story, it follows that some readers might find that setting to be equally interesting and worthy of their time. I’ve set my books in New York; the Adirondack mountains; Hollywood; Florence, Italy; and Bombay, India, all places I know extremely well. I don’t write scenes in locations I haven’t visited. But setting is not merely location, it’s the whole experience that sets the mood and place. I’ve tried to build tension/interest in my settings with weather, cuisine, politics, history, and art. Here are a couple of examples.

HEART OF STONE (2017 Anthony Award for Best Paperback Original and Macavity Award for Best Historical Mystery—Sue Feder Memorial)

I remember the cool breath of the night woods on my neck. I see the glow of moonlight on the highest boughs, filtering down in a pale cast, weak and washed-out, fading into darkness. I smell the moss and the decay of the forest floor, heady, damp, musky. And I can taste the earthy mushrooms and bitter berries on my tongue. But most of all, I hear the pines whisper and sigh, their needles, like millions of tiny blades, carving voices into the breeze.

I’ve posted this passage before in this space, but I do it again now because it’s a good example of my own attempts to set the scene—and mood—with a one-paragraph intro at the beginning of the Ellie Stone mysteries. I wrote this in the hopes that readers would find themselves transported to the woods—perhaps recall the smells and sounds—and appreciate the beauty as well as the creepiness.

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CAST THE FIRST STONE (2018 finalist for the Anthony, Lefty, and Macavity awards)

“I see you found the place,” Dorothy said once we were seated in a booth. 
    She and Stemple sat on one side of the table, and I took the other. The setup felt like a police interrogation. I tried to break the ice and my own jitters by asking if Dean Martin and his friends might stop in. The two exchanged a glance. Archie Stemple snorted through his nose. 
    “Oh, no, Miss Stone,” said Dorothy, shaking her head in a most condescending manner. “Dean Martin wouldn’t be caught dead in here.” 
    My face flushed hot. “But it’s his place, isn’t it?” 
    “He merely sold his name to these people,” said Stemple, oozing even more arrogance than Dorothy had done. “In fact, no one comes here anymore.”

 

(The scene above takes place in 1962, in Dino’s Lodge, which was a real eatery on Sunset Boulevard.) 

If I had described my Hollywood setting by saying “Ellie was in Los Angeles for the first time,” I’d have produced the equivalent of a stick drawing. Such a lazy description sits on the page like a lump of dropped oatmeal. It lacks form, style, taste. There’s nothing compelling about it. Rather, I want to put readers in Ellie’s shoes. I want readers to share her wonder, excitement, and disappointment. That’s one reason I love writing in the first person. Every word tells you something about the narrator. 

I wrote scenes like the one above to show actual places that could suggest to readers the glamor of Tinseltown—or lack there of—through Ellie’s eyes. I believe it gives more dimension, depth, and believability to my Los Angeles setting. That Ellie believes Dean Martin might actually show up at the lodge to which he lent (sold) his name, should inspire surprise or curiosity in readers, especially those who might be expecting movie stars on every corner. Los Angeles is indeed a company town, but you’re not constantly rubbing elbows with the rich and famous, and you rarely spot them at the supermarket or local gas station. And Hollywood the area itself? Not as glamorous as you might think… Ellie’s visits to restaurants, a threadbare hotel, the Los Angeles Central Library, Malibu, and even Paramount Studios help paint a more accurate, complete picture of my 1962 Hollywood setting. And not necessarily through physical descriptions.

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Next is an example of more traditional scene-setting. The following paragraph describes a dining room in a fifteenth-century villa in Fiesole, Italy, just outside Florence. The idea here was to share Ellie’s reaction to her surroundings, all the while giving the reader a healthy dose of one of the book’s supposed attractions, namely a trip to Tuscany. I tried to describe a real place, not some fairytale palace where everything glitters and is in perfect repair. Instead, this place looks and feels like the villas I’ve enjoyed in Italy. It’s not perfect but… it’s perfect.

TURN TO STONE (2021 Barry Award for Best Paperback Original and Macavity Award for Best Historical Mystery—Sue Feder Memorial)

The bare floors, tiled in an ornate antique pattern, suggested a huge bordered carpet with eight-pointed stars and smaller flowers inside. A dappled mirror, its glass heavy and dark, hung on the north wall above a battered filigreed credenza. Sconces on either side illuminated the area with a faint, flickering electric light. Bright lighting, I was coming to realize, was not a prized feature in old Italian homes. An octopus of a crystal chandelier overhead provided little more than a glow from ten of the twelve working bulbs. Completing the picture was a gothic triptych that may or may not have been wildly valuable, depending on its provenance. Still, the lack of guile in the room’s trimmings led me to believe everything was genuine. They exuded sincerity and plain honesty while showing their age and wear.

    

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Now be careful with eggs. They’re quite expensive these days. And go pick up an Ellie Stone mystery and enjoy the settings. (The characters and plots, too.)

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