The Insecure Writer's Support Group Book Club discussion

Discussion for Preparing to Write Settings that Feel Like Characters



Hello Writers and Readers!

If you posted a review of Preparing to Write Settings that Feel Like Characters, please feel free to share it here.

Ask the Author: Author J Lenni Dorner is up for answering questions about their book and about writing settings, so please feel free to post any questions to them or send them a message in the comments.

Let us know your overall thoughts, ask questions, and reply to comments to create a conversation.

To get you started: How do you treat settings in the stories you write? What was your favorite piece of advice from J Lenni’s book?

Just dropping in to say: Hi, J Lenni! Thank you for agreeing to answer any questions readers/members may have. :)

I learned a lot from J's book and made notes to implement in my next project. You can check out my review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I updated my review on Goodreads earlier. I found the concept very interesting. I was thinking earlier today that I hadn’t really put any of it into practice with my new book I started last week, but maybe it should be part of my second draft routine. Rule 1 for me is ‘get the words down’.

I have a question for J. I remember you mentioning things like bird baths, and the atmosphere created by ‘dead flowers around the house.’ Have you any examples of times in your own work where you really struggled to find any defining thing to make a setting into a character?

Ronel wrote: "I learned a lot from J's book and made notes to implement in my next project. You can check out my review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show..."

Thanks for sharing your review, Ronel!

Jemima wrote: "I updated my review on Goodreads earlier. I found the concept very interesting. I was thinking earlier today that I hadn’t really put any of it into practice with my new book I started last week, b..."

Yes, doing this in your second draft is a perfect time. :)

Jemima wrote: "I have a question for J. I remember you mentioning things like bird baths, and the atmosphere created by ‘dead flowers around the house.’ Have you any examples of times in your own work where you r..."

Great question, Jemima!

I enjoyed J's book. Using some of her advice will make my settings even more developed. I'd like to get to the point where readers will feel immersed in my setting whether it is a room or a small town.

D. wrote: "I enjoyed J's book. Using some of her advice will make my settings even more developed. I'd like to get to the point where readers will feel immersed in my setting whether it is a room or a small t..."

I'm glad you enjoyed their book and got a lot out of it!

Jemima wrote: "I updated my review on Goodreads earlier. I found the concept very interesting. I was thinking earlier today that I hadn’t really put any of it into practice with my new book I started last week, b..."

That is excellent advice. I'm ready to start my first round of revisions, I had not thought to use this book for that purpose. I am going to do that!

My favorite advice was about having something unique to the setting. The 'visual oddity' and the 'something overlooked' are as important as having a quirky hobby or well established flaw for a character.

@Chrys Fey and @D Dominik Wickles -- Please correct the pronouns "her." I'm an advocate of the #HeForShe movement, and will answer to "he/ him" or "they / them." Thanks.

@Jemima - I initially gave Xavier's apartment and office building a character description in Fractions of Existence. The trouble was that both appeared early in Chapter 1 and were not vital enough to the plot, at the time, to justify keeping. (Now I've rewritten some scenes in book two that keep falling apart because the reader wouldn't have this information, so the scenes fail it kills the pacing to add it now.) So the struggle is to not have too many characters introduced in the first 5000 words; and if a setting will be a character it has to be counted. Lumber Of The Kuweakunks made it easy for the setting to be a character, though the reader might not realize it at first (part of the mystery).

Actually, this pronoun error brings up an interesting point to the discussion.

What, in a description, defines the gender of a character for you? Take away all pronouns, titles, and honorifics. Assume the character isn't stark naked and that there aren't medical scenes to check chromosomes.

This is something that fascinates and irritates me. (Because I have ABSOLUTELY no idea.) I wrote a short story for WEP once, based on a true event that happened to my friend. I changed his name to well-known male deity (apparently not as well known as I thought). Everyone who read it assumed he was a woman. Granted, he is a gay man, but other than being attracted to men, he did nothing "girly" in the story. (Skydiving, getting dumbed, flirting with someone. That's all stuff any gender can do.)

Granted, I am an actual person, not a character. But every now and then, someone online calls me she/ her. (I have my pronoun preference on my Twitter profile.) One person, I swear I am not making this up, said that all people with vowels at the end of their name are female. (Someone alert the Italians.) Lenni is my tribe, the Lenni-Lenape. (You just mispronounced Lenape in your head, unless you've heard it said correctly by some chance.) Our tribe has males, females, and even people of multiple genders (held in high regard in this culture). I'll also note that there are more than just female Iraqi people, Saudi people, and Israeli people. Thus, I find it hard to believe that anyone honestly thinks the placement of a vowel indicates gender.

Still, this is important to think about. There are obviously ways to make readers think a character is a certain gender. I've never been mistaken in real life, even though my hair is long enough that, yes, I sat on it again just minutes ago. (Can Covid be over already? Seriously, this hair is out of control. I'm about to take a knife to it, much to the horror of my spouse.)

So, anyone want to discuss guessing character genders? Or what parts of a description can get a reader to determine the gender of a character?

J. wrote: "@Chrys Fey and @D Dominik Wickles -- Please correct the pronouns "her." I'm an advocate of the #HeForShe movement, and will answer to "he/ him" or "they / them." Thanks.

@Jemima - I initially gave..."

My apologies. Corrected.

J. wrote: "Actually, this pronoun error brings up an interesting point to the discussion.

What, in a description, defines the gender of a character for you? Take away all pronouns, titles, and honorifics. A..."

I don't think I know the answer to that. But even interacting with someone online, you can build a picture of someone as female, until you are corrected and get to say 'he'. And that can take a long time to switch the feeling of that person from one pronoun to another.

It is definitely 'feeling' although some semanticist might point out the difference in use of words. I was told, for example, that men tend to use more latinate words, and women anglic words.*.. but that's only in English - what happens in French - old French versus latinate French? I assume there is such a thing, because English, French and German got thoroughly mingled and borrowed from each other in the Middle Ages.

On the other hand, I remember I used to do some 'personality testing' in business courses I ran, because it was popular in recruitment at that time. When I was trained in this stuff, there were two women and four men on the course, and the tutor decided we should look at aptitudes using the test for technical skills and engineering. One of the men protested it wasn't fair to us gals. Naturally, we scored much better than the guys.... hidden aptitudes for the women unfulfilled v non-aptitudes leading to a non-technical career, which was the men's choice.

Back to the course I ran. I used to start off the discussion of personality and statistics by proving I'm a man. My height means I'm more likely to be a man, my managerial rank meant I was more likely to be a man, and a couple of other things which I forget now. But as I'm obviously a woman it got the idea across.

But the point is, there are men who 'act' more like women and women who 'act' more like men, maybe due to the culture and norms in which they grew up, maybe personality. It isn't Man... other.... woman... it's fifty shades of gender.

And from where I sit in Europe, sometimes I think some other countries have some very straightlaced ideas about what makes a man or a woman.

Behaviour is not down to gender.

* and I think this language choice is a throwback to men having received education to a higher level for centuries more than most women!

Definitely makes it more complicated when considering gender presumption alters based on continent.

Still, as writers, we should strive to find the words that can make our characters more clear for the reader, right? Though that can result in discussions about gender conformity.

You know what's great about a setting? It doesn't have to have a gender at all!

I've only just started the book, but I loved the worksheet at the start, and I'm enjoying this discussion. As for gender... I guess it's not something I've given a lot of thought to. Most of my characters have names that are pretty clearly male or female, and I have stuck to the standard pronouns... so far. You never know.

In my flash fiction a lot of the time I leave the gender of the MC (especially 1st-person narrator) unspecified, or don't make it clear until late in the story. So I guess i'm enjoying playing with it.

I enjoyed this book. So far, the discussion here has been very enlightening. I too wrote a piece for WEP where the gender of the characters was in question, but I did leave them vague intentionally. This is a fascinating topic to explore.
As far as settings go, as soon as I finish the first draft of my current WIP, I'll go back to give the setting some attention using this book as a reference.
See my review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I'm glad you like the worksheet!