CREATIVE NON-FICTION. The power of SETTINGS in your writing from real life - Jenny Alexander
August 2024. WRITING MAGAZINE
www.writers-online.co.uk
Creative non-fiction makes true stories from the raw material of experience, and settings are an important part of the storyteller's craft. Use pathetic fallacy where the outer world reflects the mood of the character or intensifies the action. How many sad girls have gazed out on the world through windows streaming with rain? Pursuits and conflicts played out against roaring , thunderstorms. Lights never work when detectives search through a perfectly ordinary suburban house or flat?
In creative non-fiction, you can’t make up the weather but use it and other elements in the settings to intensify the mood or emotional power of a scene.
For example, your protagonist walks across a city park on an overcast afternoon and not many people are around. If he feels happy (received good news), frame it as how lovely to have the park almost to themselves. He spots early daffodils, not just flowers. That tells the readers it's springtime. Happy protagonists will notice the blackbird's song, the budding branches on the trees, the early daffodils, how lovely to have the park to himself etc. If passers-by wear shell suits, the scene will be culturally and historically different.
If he is anxious, not having many people around intensify his anxiety. If gloomy, he may not remark about the absence of people but notice the low sky, the drift of rubbish under the hedge, the dog’s mess littering the path.
As well as using settings to intensify the emotion of a scene, use them as part of characterisation, letting a character’s environment show what they are like. Someone keeps all their herb jars lined up tidily, labels facing forward, suggests one kind of person: one whose pots and pans come tumbling out when he opens the cupboard door suggests a different one.
Someone who loves to lie int the sun beside a blue pool with a cocktail is not the kind who prefers camping in the muddy fields and going to the pub for a pie and chips.
Settings is an economical way of giving information by the choice of detail. A happy protagonist spots early daffodils, not just flowers. That tells the readers it's springtime. Happy protagonists will notice the blackbird's song, the budding branches on the trees, the early daffodils, how lovely to have the park to himself etc. If passers-by wear shell suits, the scene will be culturally and historically different.
With creative non-fiction, it is important to make sure the factual details are right. If passers-by wear platform shoes two years before they are common, your reader will sense that they are not reading a true story as you are sloppy about details. How they can trust your honesty and accuracy in the story as a whole?
Don’t worry about all details in your first draft, just write the story and the settings how you remember them but check the facts on your redraft. Memories are stories forged from facts in the cauldron of imagination, they can stray from what actually happened.
Creative non-fiction make true stories from the raw material of experience and settings are an important part of the storyteller’s craft. Time, place, weather - they can be much more than just the backdrop against which the action of your story plays out.
TRY THIS:
Really look around you. Take your time. Close your eyes and imagine you are in a joyful mood. Something wonderful just happened. Open your eyes and look around.
What do you see? How would you describe the place you're in. Write for a few
minutes.
Try with other moods - sad, angry, fearful, bewildered. FEEL how you can
describe a setting truthfully, changing none of the facts, but artfully, to express and intensify the emotion of the story.
-----------------------
Settings can also be an economical way of giving information by the choice of detail.
MY EXAMPLE FROM THE DRAGONFLY STORY AT:
https://2010vets.blogspot.com/2025/07/4180-wildlife-in-yishun-pond-and-ktph.html
Khoo Teck Phuat Hospital Botanic Garden. Morning. Blue skies, slight breeze as ripples over Yishun Pond lake are visible. Not many passers-by. One young man exercising in front of me - facing Pond, hands up and stretched out, jumps up and down, repeats. Senior over 80s, tanned, slim, with phone in his left shirt pocket listening to his audio---no need to carry it. Heart affected by phone's EMF? Women wearing head scarves zoom past me on the PMAs. Bright sunshine. A glorious day to be outdoors. Joyful to be alive.
Looking for dragonflies and butterflies to photography. Only one seen hidden. It fluttered to another branch in the shade of the plants and leaves. An overweight female Security guard in her 50s, bespectacled, white blouse black pants sauntered to demand what I was doing. A tripod with Canon R5 pointing at the middle of the Garden.
"I am taking a photo of the dragonfly," I replied. She looked but couldn't see it or maybe could. Far inside. Zoom lens 24-105mm. "It is OK if you take photos of the Botanic Garden," her commanding voice but not other parts of the KTPH.
Security guards get excited about digital camera. More excited at seeing tripods. "You need permission to take photos. Get moving if you don't have proof."
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
