Not a Random Bedroom in America ( #WritingTechniques #Setting #Characterization )

By Annabeth Leong

I’ve read so much erotica that seems to take place in “a random bedroom in America.” Unless the anthology topic is something like “al fresco” or the sexual partners in question have a particular kink for unusual locations, the place where they’re doing whatever they’re doing is often treated as an afterthought.

I’m not going to pretend I’m innocent of this phenomenon. I suspect that if I counted up my “random bedroom” stories, they’d represent an alarming percentage of my work. Despite that hypocrisy, knowing where characters are in the world—even and especially when they’re in the bedroom—makes for better stories.

To me stories always come back to character. I write erotica in part because I love what sex can say about who people are. What we do when we’re literally naked, how we talk and think about it, how that vulnerability makes us feel—for a person addicted to the rush of knowing things about people, there’s no substitute. When I teach writing workshops, I often argue that this is a good way to think about what you’re doing in a sex scene. You’re revealing something about who these people are and how they relate to each other. What happens in your scene should advance what your reader knows about your characters, and what they know about themselves. That means that even if you’re writing your 200th cunnilingus scene, it’s unique because you’ve never written about these people in this particular cunnilingus situation before.

I’d argue that bedrooms have a lot of similar qualities. Lots of people work to make their bedrooms their own, and even if they don’t, that says something about them.

I had a girlfriend who had plastered every inch of her walls and ceiling with pictures cut from magazines, often in artful shapes. The majority were of women, and I remember being fascinated by the statement being made about femininity inside her bedroom, and the way that made me feel about her and myself whenever we made out in there. She had so many icons of femininity on display, so many women who knew how to wear makeup and heels, how to pluck their eyebrows. I was trying to default out of that sort of gender consideration, and the result was that I dressed in whatever people gave me. I’d be there in my shapeless outfits, surrounded by these impeccably styled women, wondering what they had to do with me, with us. It represented a world I’d never understood, and I remember kissing her, fearing I didn’t know how to do it, maybe fearing even more that I didn’t even know what I was doing at all. Those perfect women watched me, and I didn’t know if the complicated feelings they aroused meant I was definitely a lesbian or that I definitely wasn’t.

That bedroom, though, inspired my own. I loved the effect of the powerful statement, and I tried to create the same effect. Starting at the top of one wall, I began collecting images. Most of them were of Trent Reznor, Tori Amos, Courtney Love, and Charlize Theron, and no one could have sorted out the complicated mixture of wanting to be them or wanting to fuck them—least of all me. However, not having the same level of motivation as that girlfriend, I only made it a foot down the wall. Many other signs of the unfinished appeared. The books I hadn’t read stacked up beside the bed. The candles I had burned and left to drip, and the soot marks above them. A hurricane warning came through Florida, and I boarded my windows but then left the blockage up. I liked to sit in the dark in silk nightclothes that had belonged to my mother, smoking cigarettes and putting them out in the trophy I’d been given for being valedictorian of my high school. When lovers came to my room, they found it dark, smoky, musky. It was likely impossible to lie to yourself about the fact I was fucking other people. I kept condoms in the same drawer as a ritual knife I’d bought before I got too scared of witchcraft. Someone had left porn in my room at some point, and I kept it around the way some people keep guest towels.

Or how about another bedroom I saw, later in life, while I was in the process of getting divorced? This one belonged to a guy who was trying to date me before I was quite ready to date anyone. My general sensation at the time was of bewilderment. The title “married” bestows a certain quality of adulthood, and I’d just been stripped of that title, and I didn’t feel like I had much else that made me seem grown up. This guy owned an apartment not far from the one where I lived, but it was full of electronics I couldn’t have bought for myself. It was clean, put together. Everything matched. I played video games with him on a modern console and he laughed at me for the way I moved—but I couldn’t help thinking about how I only had hand me down consoles I’d kept running through a combination of hacking and prayer. I went into his bedroom, caught in some combination of fascination, fear, arousal, and repulsion. I looked at his bookshelf, like I always do, and there were only a few books there. About half were about business and the others had names like The Art of Seduction and The Game. I don’t remember much else of the setting except the darkness of the room, the way it felt expensive. When I noticed the books, though, the place began to seem like the sort of performance that comes before a trap. I kissed him to see what it would feel like, and then I left. If not for the books, I think I’d have slept with him.

The point here is that each of these places has a specific feeling in my mind. It’s a big deal to let someone into your bedroom for the first time. I’ve met few people who are truly casual about doing that.

When I revise my work, I try to pay attention to these questions of setting, though I don’t know that I always do it well. I hope I’ve demonstrated here that there’s value in making a bedroom specific rather than generic. It’s another way of showing who these characters are, what it means for them to have sex, and why the reader and writer might care.

The Perils of Precision

By Lisabet Sarai

As I’ve discussed in other blog posts, I almost always set my stories in some specific, real location. Frequently my settings strongly influence the plot and the characters. Even when they don’t, I like to be precise. I can more easily imagine the action as it unfolds when I know where it’s occurring. (Indeed, I sometimes confuse my mental images with actual memories.) I believe that anchoring my tales in space (and time) makes them more concrete, more involving and ultimately more believable.

However, this tendency to be specific introduces some risks not experienced by authors who stay vague about their settings. I need to include convincing details—and there’s always the chance I’ll get something wrong.

If I’m lucky, a beta reader or editor will pick up on my mistake. My paranormal cat shifter romance The Eyes of Bast is set Manhattan. When my husband read the manuscript, he pointed out that my heroine was taking the wrong subway line going uptown to her apartment west of Central Park. I found this annoying, since I’d actually researched this bit of information—obviously I’d interpreted the subway map incorrectly. (DH lived in New York City for more than a decade. I tend to believe him.)

Alas, DH doesn’t like BDSM stories, so often I don’t get the benefit of his sharp eyes!

Most though not all of the places I write about are places I have at least visited. On the other hand, there may be a significant time lag before I use the location in a story. I wrote Raw Silk, which was set in Bangkok, more than a decade after I’d lived there. In my recent revision of that novel (coming out in a new, expanded version in February 2016!), I fixed a number of geographic and cultural errors I didn’t notice in the first three editions. (I also provided some cues to anchor the book in an earlier time. Someone reading it now, thinking it was contemporary, would be baffled as to why none of the characters have mobile phones!)

One of the worst mistakes I’ve made (that I know about!) occurred in my second novel, Incognito, which unfolds in a historic district of Boston called Beacon Hill. I lived in Beacon Hill for a year and a half, but that was nearly five years before I wrote the book. There’s a steamy exhibitionist scene that takes place in a late night subway car. I was quite specific about the stations where the heroine gets on and off the train. Caught up in the action, though (at least, that’s my excuse), I completely forgot that a transfer is required between those two stops! Anyone familiar with the “T”, as they call it in Boston, would realize this immediately. (I was able to fix this in a recent re-edit, too.)

You may ask why any of this matters. It may be that most readers won’t notice this sort of error. However, those who do are likely to form a very negative impression of the author, as sloppy and ignorant. People tend to feel proprietary about places they know.

These days if one individual takes offense at your book, the rest of the world can find out pretty quickly. I haven’t even read FSOG, for instance, but I know from reviews and blog posts that it’s full of geographic errors (not all that surprising since it’s set in the U.S. state of Washington while the author is British).

So I do careful research when I can—but I’m not a research slut like some authors I know. I’m likely to check the Internet or the library when I’m not sure about something, but I don’t spend days immersed in my sources. Problems are most likely to arise in situations where I really believe I know some detail that’s actually wrong (or out of date).

Of course, geographically related mistakes aren’t the only sort that can occur in writing. Erotica authors, in particular, need to worry about errors in describing sexual practices. It’s a bit dangerous to write about BDSM without some serious research. I’ve read some scenes that made me want to throw the book at the wall (metaphorically) due to inaccuracies—especially, the unrealistic extremes Doms were inflicting on their subs. When it comes to sex, though, I think readers are more willing to accept distortions of reality—first because they’re looking for fantasy anyway, and second, because many of them have no experience at all with the activities described.

There’s one particularly egregious error in Raw Silk that I couldn’t figure out how to fix. My heroine Kate is “forced” by her master to perform nude in a live show in a Bangkok sex bar. She’s disguised as Asian, wearing a black wig to cover her auburn curls and make-up that hides the freckles associated with her Irish background. Everyone agrees she looks Thai. When she sheds her G-string, though, her masquerade should have been obvious—she has, after all, bright red pubic hair!

I was terribly embarrassed when my own Master pointed this out to me, many years ago, though nobody else has ever mentioned it. (Like many masters, mine is a stickler for detail.) In my recent round of edits, I decided not to mess with the problem. Any mention of the issue would distract from the intensity of the scene. And aside from having Kate be shaved (which wouldn’t fit the time period, her personality, or my personal preferences), I couldn’t think of a good solution anyway.

Fiction isn’t required to be realistic of course. Readers know this. At the same time, concrete details can increase reader involvement. Mistakes in those details, on the other hand, can yank the reader out of the narrative and generate negative emotions.

Just one more thing we authors need to worry about!

"I Am Providence"

by Annabeth Leong



The object of my fascination would likely not have thought much of me. H. P. Lovecraft does not seem to have liked women much. He was anti-immigrant and deeply racist. He hated mentions of sexual matters.

Some people avoid these depressing facts by focusing on the writing rather than the man. My fascination, however, is most definitely focused on the man, and specifically his relationship to his city, where I live now.

When people come to visit me, I nearly always say, "Welcome to Providence, the home of H.P. Lovecraft." The first time I stepped out of the Providence train station and began walking up steep roads toward the East Side, I recognized the shapes of the buildings from Lovecraft's stories. The sky was exactly as he had described it, low and gray. I knew I was walking where he had walked, breathing the air that he had breathed.

***



At the Necronomicon convention in Providence last year, an event devoted to H.P. Lovecraft, I attended a panel of modern Lovecraftian writers. "I am obsessed with H.P. Lovecraft," said Wilum H. Pugmire, lingering on every syllable. When asked about recent reading, Pugmire cited Lovecraft, over and over again.

I don't have that kind of obsession, though. I've read Lovecraft. I am intrigued by his central themes—forbidden knowledge, secrets with the power to break the mind, the ultimate irrelevance of humanity, and the hopelessness of any battle against large, cosmic evil.

But I'll confess that I prefer Lovecraft as narrated by the brilliant Wayne June. I'm not frightened by what frightened Lovecraft—I am only interested in it. I smile at his purple prose, and it sets me free, but I don't exactly admire it. It is June who brings his tangled sentences to life for me, who makes me see the true worth of his descriptions.

I wonder, then, why I think so much about his footsteps. I wonder what Lovecraft did to earn my devotion. I visit the house where he wrote Call of Cthulhu all the time. I go there as if venerating a saint, standing awkwardly across the street, looking at the window that I know was once his, searching for a relic.

***



I once paid a healthy sum to tour the city alongside S.T. Joshi, Lovecraft's foremost biographer.

I already knew some of the sites he showed our small group. Over the years I've lived in Providence, I've collected locations relevant to Lovecraft. Every time I walk up Doyle Street, I recall that Lovecraft liked to wheel his bicycle up that very hill on his way to the observatory. When I am stuck in my writing, I go to Prospect Park, where Lovecraft liked to sit and write.

Joshi, however, far surpasses any obsession to which I could pretend. He turns out to have been part of the group that raised the money for a bust of Lovecraft I like to visit. He was the one who corrected a misidentified photograph of Lovecraft on a bench—rather than the New York location where it was thought to have been taken, Joshi recognized the gates outside of Brown University.

Lovecraft's relationship with Providence ran to breathtaking depths. He went through the entire archives of the Providence Journal and read every issue of the paper that had ever been published. He had a love of old Colonial homes (the Victorians were too vulgar, he thought), and he immortalized them in his stories.

Joshi knows where those houses are. At his side, I learned the location of the real-life Shunned House and the home of Charles Dexter Ward (a few houses down from the address given in the story).

I don't think I'm this kind of writer, but I wish I was. Perhaps it's because my life has been so impermanent. I ground myself by clinging to a writer whose roots ran deep, a man who seemed unable to truly exist away from his city.

***



It is painful to think that, were I to meet Lovecraft, he would likely respond to me with disgust—he was wonderfully generous with his white male writer friends, and I'd like to hope for the same. I don't fool myself, though. Lovecraft opened his Mythos for others to play in, but he would not appreciate what I do with it.

I'm not sure what made it into the final book, but Bobby Derie's draft manuscript for Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos mentioned my work. It pointed to "The Artist's Retreat," a story that appears in J. Blackmore's Whispers in Darkness: Lovecraftian Erotica anthology, as a rare example of lesbian Mythos erotica. I've also been in an anthology alongside the aforementioned Pugmire—we both had stories in Martian Migraine Press's Conqueror Womb: Lusty Tales of Shub-Niggurath.

To me, there is a way that sex is dark and vast and unknowable, liable to disturb, able to break the mind if it is fully grasped. That's why I like to put sex into the Mythos. That's why to me sex has always been in it.

Still, I know that's not a popular opinion in certain Lovecraftian circles. At that panel I mentioned earlier, a writer I won't name went on a diatribe against what he saw as a disgusting tendency to contaminate the Mythos with sex. His comments essentially amounted to, "Why do you have to go there?" His face was contorted with disgust as he spoke, and others agreed.

My body went hot and my heart began to pound. I am very proud of my Lovecraftian work, and yet his disapproval made me feel the stigma that erotica all too often has. I'm not a real writer. I'm perverted, and I'm perverting something sacred to so many.

Sex belongs in the Mythos, but maybe I also put it in to fuck with people. I can sometimes be a rebel like that. Lovecraft is dead. I visit his grave with devotion, and then I raise a middle finger and write about what it would be like to fuck an Elder God. I use words that would make Lovecraft squirm. I talk about how it would hurt, and how it would feel incredible, and how normal life would be impossible ever after. Desire is, after all, a type of forbidden knowledge. Sex can be inexorable, inevitable. It can reveal selves and realities we don't actually want to meet.

It's too bad the title "Booty Call of Cthulhu" is taken, or I would write that story to fuck with Lovecraft even more.

***



"He's stuck with me," I tell my sister. We are on the lawn in front of the observatory. I go there almost every day.

If I studied his every word like Pugmire, this would make more sense to me. Instead, I read enough to be credible, and then I walk and walk the streets he liked to walk. I am in his city, and I want to make it mine, too.

Maybe I am like a would-be lover studying the behavior of the beloved's ex. From the moment I laid eyes on Providence, I wanted her. Her name rings with fate and destiny. Her streets drip with history. She is rundown in the ways I love. The best bands come to play here, and they do it just before they get famous.

I want to know what Lovecraft did to win this city, to tie her to him so powerfully. How did he and this city seduce each other so thoroughly?

Maybe I am like a lover who wants to leave a hickey. I want to walk up Doyle and leave grooves in the sidewalk in the wake of my passing. I want to learn to write settings better so that someday, a generation from now, someone finds the remnants of the labyrinth in the churchyard of the Redeemer (which is already crumbling, already half-hidden by an improbable willow tree), and they feel they've already seen it because they read about it in something I wrote.

I don't have the blood of this city in my veins. My parents did not both go mad and get committed to Butler Hospital. I haven't even been inside the Historical Society, and the Providence Journal is dying now, and I'm not sure what sort of feat it would be to read its every issue. And yet I have a sticker on my laptop that arrogantly proclaims, "I am Providence," and one day I would like that to be true.

Setting The Scene In A Flash

by Helen E. H. Madden

Do you like to write short stories? How short? 200 words or less?

Sounds like a challenge, doesn't it? And it is. Every Sunday, the Story Time group at the Erotica Readers and Writers Association is open to flash fiction. Flash fiction is a category of stories with extremely short word counts. Depending on who's doing the counting, the limit may be as high as 1000 words or as low as 100 words (and some writing groups and publications set the limit even lower!). ERWA sets the limit at 200 words, and every Sunday writers do their best to craft a sizzling tale that falls within that range.

It's tough to do. Flash fiction is an exercise in precision storytelling. When you only get 200 words, you have to be very careful what you write. Stories are stripped to their bare bones, no extraneous words allowed.

So how do you set the scene for a tale that short without blowing your word count?

The most efficient way would be to consider up front how much setting is really needed to tell your tale and just write that. Unless the details of the setting are crucial to the story, less works better. Your characters can either be making love in a brass bed that squeaks like a hamster in heat, or they can simply be making love in a bed. The later option is not nearly as descriptive, but if all we need to know is that the characters are in a bed and not that fact that said bed sounds like a rodent ready to breed, then the latter option is what gets the job done and frees up words for use elsewhere.

However, most of us can't find that right level of detail right off the bat. There are times when no matter how hard I try, I simply must cram in every single detail. It's ALL important to the story, right? Wrong. Not when we're talking flash fiction. But it's okay on the first draft to go on and on about where the story is set. Describe the bed if you think you must, the first time around. Hell, give me the whole bedroom if need be, and the adjoining master bath. Tell me the color of the sheets and the texture of the carpet. Get every detail perfect. Then, once you've gotten that out of your system, save your story under a new file name and start trimming.

Adverbs will be the first to go, followed by adjectives. You'd be surprised at how many of those kinds of words get packed into a short story and how many of them are related to setting. If losing these words leaves the story flat, go back and tinker with your nouns and verbs. Look for words that do double duty. For example, the wind doesn't blow loudly, it howls. That's a verb and an adverb right there, all rolled into one!

Need more examples? Your characters aren't making love in an antique bed, they're wrestling naked on a divan. Sounds pretty rich and decadent, doesn't it? Though if your setting isn't so posh, they could be humping on a mattress. Pull out your thesaurus and see which words best describe your scene and cut your word count.

Slowly but surely, you'll whittle the entire story down to its bare essentials, leaving just enough detail to tell us who your characters are, where they are and what they're doing. It may frustrate you at first, but it can be done. Go through as many drafts as you need until you get there. You'll soon learn a flash fiction can hold an entire bedroom or an entire universe, and every setting in between.

Like the White House, maybe...

*****

The Oval Office


by Helen E. H. Madden


200 words

"You want to do it in here?"

Bobby, a White House intern, stood in the Oval Office, gaping at his companion. Senator Bedford chuckled.

"What the president doesn't know won't hurt us. Now drop your pants and hop onto the desk. I've been wanting this all day."

Bobby complied, resting his bare buttocks on the desk's surface. The senator knelt and devoured the younger man's hardening cock. Bobby moaned. Senators always gave the best blow jobs.

When the lights flickered on, both men jumped.

"Madame President!" Bobby yelped.

The president glared. "Sorry to interrupt, Bobby. Does Defense Secretary Richards know about your other boyfriend?"

"No ma'am." Bobby blushed fiercely. Senator Bedford blanched.

"I see." She folded her arms. "Senator, your committee has the new Family Focus bill?"

"Uh, yes ma'am."

"We're changing it tomorrow. Eleven o'clock. Don't be late."

"Yes ma'am!"

After the two men escaped, the president punched up the intercom. "Jackson, did you record that?"

"Yes ma'am. Every detail."

"Good. When the first lady gets back from China tomorrow, let her know. We'll watch it together."

The leader of the free world settled behind her desk, sighing. "If only I had North Korea by the balls like that..."

Another World

By Lisabet Sarai

Last week on the Grip we talked about characterization. How can an author give depth and verisimilitude to characters who are very different from the author in their background, personalities, orientations? This week's subject, “Setting the Scene”, nicely parallels that discussion, though I didn't know about Helen's topic when I posted mine.

No story takes place in a vacuum (not even in science fiction...;^)). Every character exists in a spatio-temporal context that influences his or her assumptions, perceptions, and reactions. The books that I enjoy most offer a rich sense of the environment surrounding the characters – place and time, climate and history, sound, smell and taste. In the books I write, I try to create that same kind of dense, three-dimensional world in which my characters can play.

Even when I'm writing a short story, I always have some notion of where the action occurs. I might not mention the setting explicitly, though often I will. Of the twenty stories in my print collection Fire, only two fail to identify their location. Of these, one is a sort of prose poem about a many-year relationship, while the other is set in the future. The settings of the others include northern California (five stories), New York City (three stories), Bangkok (two stories), Pittsburgh, New Orleans, the American Midwest, the Maine coast, Prague, Provence, and Laos.

In many cases, the setting is integral to the plot. In every case, I try to make the environment real enough to draw readers into my characters' world.

Often I will mine my own experience when setting the scene. That's one explanation for the repeated appearance of some locales in my work. The passage below, from Raw Silk, is based on my first trip from the Bangkok airport into the city, many years ago

From under heavy eyelids, she watched the roadside sights fly by. Garish neon signs, in English, Thai and Chinese, lit up the night with the names of multinational corporations. Gleaming, modern buildings two dozen stories high alternated with stunted blocks of grimy concrete, weak fluorescent light visible through their open windows. Every now and again, she would glimpse the peaked, layered roofs and delicate spires of a Buddhist temple, rising incongruously from the middle of a residential or industrial district.

The full moon rendered the scene even more alien. High above the horizon by now, it lent a silvery sheen to the buildings, while creating sharp black shadows between and behind them. Brighter than any man made illumination, it reminded Kate of an old-fashioned flashbulb. Each tableau seemed frozen in meticulous detail, captured by the moon like a surrealistic snapshot.

The car was silent, seeming to float over the road. The slight hiss of the air conditioning soothed her. Kate tried to stay alert, to pay attention to her new surroundings, but drowsiness was irresistible.

Here's another scene from my past that shows up in Exposure. I spent four years doing graduate work in Pittsburgh and enjoying the views in that hilly city.

Jimmy signals for the check. Suddenly he's confident and in control. He gives me one of his crooked smiles. "Feel like a walk? It's still early, and it's a lovely night. We could go up to Schenley Park."

I mentally check the status of my ankle. The throbbing is hardly noticeable. "I'm supposed to stay off my feet," I reply, smiling into his eyes, "but it's very tempting."

"We won't go far. And if your ankle begins to bother you, we'll turn back."

We leave the car at the edge of the park and stroll along the paths to the crest of the hill. We seem to have the place to ourselves. New leaves whisper on the oak branches that arch over our heads. The spring air is like wine. It seems totally natural that we should be holding hands. I feel my heart quicken as we emerge from the trees and see the lights of the city spread out before us.

This place is breathtaking. The broad lawn slopes downward nearly half a mile. When I was a child, I rode my sled down this incline, screaming with excitement as we gathered speed. Past the grove at the foot, we see the lights of Oakland, violet and orange, and further to the west, nestled between the rivers, the glittering towers of downtown.

The night is moonless, so clear that even with the urban brilliance below, the stars are visible. There is some kind of perfection here. I breathe deeply and feel the knot of tension in my chest soften. Peace, for the first time in two days.

Sometimes, though, my tales demand a locale that's unfamiliar. My recent paranormal release, Serpent's Kiss, takes place in a rural village in Guatemala. “Monsoon Fever”, my contribution to the ménage anthology Brit Party, is set in Assam, India, during the aftermath of World War I. I've never visited either of these places. So how can I write about them?

Curiously, the answer seems to be the same as that which I offered in my post last week: analogy and research. For setting the scene, research is often the more critical aspect. I need to understand the geography, the topography, the climate, and the culture of the place where my story is set. On the other hand, it's difficult to achieve realistic sense impressions without a leap of imagination from what I have experienced to what I have not.

Though Guatemala isn't stamped in my passport, I've traveled in other third-world countries. I know a bit about poverty and lack of opportunity, about the gaps between haves and have-nots, about the ridiculous bureaucracy that seems to exist in inverse proportion to a country's level of development. I've lived through monsoons in lands other than India, and so I can imagine watching a deluge on an isolated tea plantation in colonial Assam:

The rain drops are Lakshmi’s tears. That is what Lalida had said—tears of pity wept by Vishnu’s consort at the sad state of mankind. From the sheltered veranda, Priscilla watched sheets of rain sweep relentlessly across the land. The silver curtain alternately hid and revealed the shapes of the green hills rising in the distance.

Priscilla swallowed the last of her biscuit and leaned back in the rattan chair, drawing her shawl around her shoulders. She knew, from the past week’s experience, that the downpour would end in a few hours. The lush wet bushes would sparkle in the sun, as though someone had scattered handfuls of jewels over their leaves. For now, the muted hues of the landscape matched her mood.

The passage above illustrates an important point about settings in fiction. The primary role of the setting is to provide a physical and emotional context for the characters and their stories. The first two paragraphs from "Monsoon Fever", quoted above, do more than set the scene or draw pretty word pictures. The rainy world that Priscilla surveys from her porch mirrors her emotional state. She is perplexed, lonely and frustrated. In this story, the climate also triggers aspects of the plot, creating unexpected situations that cause the characters to change and grow.

In some fiction, the setting itself becomes a narrative force. Consider a horror tale about a haunted house. The evil-infested dwelling is more than just the environment in which the characters exist. It becomes the prime motivator for their actions.

It's easy to fall in love with description for its own sake. This is a pitfall for many authors, including me. I become so involved in building a vivid, believable world, I lose sight of its role in framing, shaping and driving the characters and their behavior. Well-crafted description of the setting, carefully entwined with paragraphs that reveal character and conflict, will enhance a tale, but many a story has floundered under the weight of excess detail about the setting.

It's a delicate balance. It's not uncommon for me to encounter tales in both the erotica and romance genres that don't provide enough background for me to guess where they take place. I tend to find such stories flat and two-dimensional, even when the characters are engaging. On the other hand, I've also slogged through page after page of descriptive text, trying futilely to discover the relationship between this verbiage and the characters' lives.

Practice and vigilant editing are both required in order to avoid these two extremes. Still, I wonder whether some authors could even tell me where their stories were set, if I asked them. As for me,I find myself considering the question of setting very early in the creative process. Where are these characters from? Where do they meet? How does their physical world influence who they are and what they think? Until I can answer these questions, my story goes nowhere. (I find it interesting that I have much clearer notions of where my characters are located than what they look like.)

Authors differ, I think, in their attention to setting the scene. I'm sure that my relatively rich travel experiences have made me particularly attuned to issues of place. I'm waiting eagerly to hear what the other Grip members have to say on this topic.