Setting


I love a great setting. Whether it's for the entire book or just a scene setting can make or break a story for me. In high school I gave up on Bronte, Austen, Dickens and company. I still don't read them. All because of setting that for me was overdone. I know most of my friends online and off love these books. I respect that. Please give me the same courtesy. It must have been the way it was done then because they all did it. Told me about every nook and cranny, flower and weed. Reading that someone lives in a cold, dreary run-down castle or cottage, I get it. I can picture that surrounded by an overrun, unattended garden. And unless there's a body or a fortune behind those cracks don't tell me about them every time a character enters the room.

In the past two weeks I've only read two books. (I don't read much in summer.) Both these works had gardens so I'll use hat example. Each was handled differently. In the first, the garden housed certain insects important to the plot. The original picture painted with words was a museum piece in my mind. Then it all changed. Every time the insect was presented it came with a repeat description of the blooms in the garden. Imho there's only two reasons for these repetitions, word count or underestimating the reader. Either way, I stopped reading half way through, giving it more time than I normally would. 

The physical garden could have been left out without changing the plot or the metaphor of life. The second garden is in a work yet to be published. It's a beautiful garden, in my mind's eye. I see it now as I write this. The garden was painted in detail only once. Afterwards small details were mentioned here or there. It doesn't matter because I know that garden. I feel it. No matter what takes place in that garden I will know where to place the action.  It's my garden. The author gave it to my mind, my imagination. Giving me the garden, the battle, the murder that's setting. Do your readers move within your setting or do you force them to see it from the sidelines?