ive ya’ dis! I don’t suggest that you write like that. I would rather use Frank rose angrily. “Well, if you think that, I’m a gonna give you this!” If you want your reader to know that “t” is “d” to Frank, you can do that in other ways. Can’t you?

In my western novels, Bull and Revenge on the Mogollon Rim. many of the characters are stereotypes of the old west. Still, each character had to be research to some extent. Just don’t assume you know everything when your character is a stereotype. If he is an old west doctor, research old west doctors. People like realism in fiction. But remember that if you bore them with details they will lay down your book.

Conclusion

Well, it’s time to mosey on out of here and hit the old Chisholm Trail.

For practice look up “Chisholm Trail” on the Internet and see what you come up with.

How about “Medieval England?” What did you get there?

Research is not as hard as you think.

Try “Language of the Old West.” Did you come up with the Old West Writer’s Guide?

Put “Puritan customs and dress” into your search engine. What did you get? All of a sudden you learn about the King Philip War and Oliver Cromwell.

Go to http://www.pepysdiary.com/ and read a daily entry from Pepy’s Diary. Old Sam wrote in code in the 1600s but some body finally broke it. How was his language different from yours?

Well, I think you’ve got it!

But go to your library and get a writing book on “setting” and a book on “characterization.” You will get

Newspaper writers like to answer the quad W questions: Who, What, Where, When? I’m surprised to see how often one of these items is either completely left out of a story or not answered adequately to the satisfaction of the reader (me).

Setting is often the key to the success of a short story. Characterization may be less important. The short story reader doesn’t care if a lady likes red shoes unless that is a very important point in the story. Poe invented the short story right after the author of the Book of Ruth in the Bible. Poe used setting to chill our bones.

In novels, both characterization and setting are extremely important. These items are often treated separately by those who like to tell us how we should write. However, the characters must fit into the setting in one of two ways: The character was born and raised in the setting or the character was imported into the setting (by the writer).

The first of these is obvious in my sister’s favorite book, How Green Was My Valley. My sister died when she was eighteen-years-old and I inherited the book. We Jones kids are (or where) one-half Welch and we Welch kids are interested in our heritage. We are half English too, but that half has no significance to a kid with Welch blood running in his veins. My sister could identify with the people in the book.

I’ll tell you how deep this is. When I took my wife and son to England in 1984, I felt that I had finally got back home. When we took the train to Wales and walked where my grandfather had walked, I knew I was home. I had heard my grandfather’s stories many times. I knew about his family, how he was baptized at night in the North Sea, and how he was kicked out of school and sent to he mines when he was only nine years old.

His job in the mine was to help his father prepare and set explosive charges in the coal face. I remember his telling me about the water continually dripping in the mine and the long haul down and up out of the mine. If you have seen the movie version of How Green Was My Valley, you have the picture. I have always thought that my grandfather’s schoolmaster was in cahoots with the mine owners, supplying them workers for the mining of coal.

Importing characters into a setting can be dramatic. Did you read the book by Jack Higgins (or see the movie) The Eagle Has Landed? German paratroopers are dropped into a British countryside. Their object is to capture Churchill and take him back to Germany; Vel, vie are her! Another would be when Godzilla drops into Tokyo.

Back to Setting

Once you have decided to put your characters into a particular setting you must make sure that you have the setting right. I like to draw a map of the setting for reference during writing. If the setting is in a town, I like to layout the streets and mark the locations of important landmarks (like Joe’s house, his girlfriend’s house, and the factory where he works). At times, writers include such maps in the inside cover or in the text of their book.

Now when did the event take place? If it is 1845 in the Salt Lake Valley, don’t have the Mormon Temple on the site map. In fact, you shouldn’t have anything on your site map that hints of civilization. You can have a few Ute Indians hunting ducks out on the shores of Great Salt Lake. You can have Mountain Man Jim Bridger passing though—but the Mormon’s, including my great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather will not be dragging in until 1847.

To establish your setting you must do some research. You must establish the time period (which may just be “the present),” the location (real or imaginary), the customs, apparel, hardware, construction, instruments, firearms, and on and on and on. This requires research. When I was writing western novels, I collected a large library of books on the old west. Some of the books were references for writers. I could find out anything from contraception methods to underwear.

When I was writing detective novels, I put the novels in the “present.” Bone China based my detective, Richard Lacey, in York, Pennsylvania and had him working in Lancaster County in the factitious town of Brentonville. There were a couple of minor settings but almost all of the action takes place in the environs of “Brentonville.” I had lived in York but while writing the novel, I took several trips back to Lancaster County and collected all the specifics I could on the location.

In Bone China, a major character is a ceramic engineer working in a ceramic factory. There was no problem of having him talk like a ceramic engineer working in a pottery setting. I am a ceramic engineer and I was working in a ceramic factory when I research the novel. That made my research easy. They say that writers should write about what they know about. I say that writers should write abut what they can find out.

Researching a location is not just important, it is fun. You can deduct the expenses if your trip is strictly business. I never did that, but I think you could convince the IRS to accept the deduction. Okay, I wouldn’t even try it. I’m too honest.

After you have thoroughly investigated your setting(s), you can then proceed to the subject of your characters. How do they fit into this setting?

Placing Your Characters in the Setting

I like to draw my characters or collect photos or illustrations, etc. For example, in Bone China, Detective Richard Lacey was a football player. I didn’t make drawings or collect photos of football players because a football player is what writers call a stereotype. However, the starring lady was different. I looked in slick magazines for such a fine lady. She had to be rich, beautiful, and be handsomely dressed.

Now here is a point. Don’t write long descriptions of your characters. Let the information leak out. By that I mean to let your characters be revealed in normal dialog. George sat back in his chair and said, “Wow! Where did you get that lovely silk dress, Mildred? It show’s you off— Well, I shouldn’t say that!”

Your characters must sound like the folks that live in your setting area. Well, if ya’ dink dat, den I’m a goin’ to give ya’ dis! I don’t suggest that you write like that. I would rather use Frank rose angrily. “Well, if you think that, I’m a gonna give you this!” If you want your reader to know that “t” is “d” to Frank, you can do that in other ways. Can’t you?

In my western novels, Bull and Revenge on the Mogollon Rim. many of the characters are stereotypes of the old west. Still, each character had to be research to some extent. Just don’t assume you know everything when your character is a stereotype. If he is an old west doctor, research old west doctors. People like realism in fiction. But remember that if you bore them with details they will lay down your book.

Conclusion

Well, it’s time to mosey on out of here and hit the old Chisholm Trail.

For practice look up “Chisholm Trail” on the Internet and see what you come up with.

How about “Medieval England?” What did you get there?

Research is not as hard as you think.

Try “Language of the Old West.” Did you come up with the Old West Writer’s Guide?

Put “Puritan customs and dress” into your search engine. What did you get? All of a sudden you learn about the King Philip War and Oliver Cromwell.

Go to http://www.pepysdiary.com/ and read a daily entry from Pepy’s Diary. Old Sam wrote in code in the 1600s but some body finally broke it. How was his language different from yours?

Well, I think you’ve got it!

But go to your library and get a writing book on “setting” and a book on “characterization.” You will get

knew I was home. I had heard my grandfather’s stories many times. I knew about his family, how he was baptized at night in the North Sea, and how he was kicked out of school and sent to he mines when he was only nine years old.

His job in the mine was to help his father prepare and set explosive charges in the coal face. I remember his telling me about the water continually dripping in the mine and the long haul down and up out of the mine. If you have seen the movie version of How Green Was My Valley, you have the picture. I have always thought that my grandfather’s schoolmaster was in cahoots with the mine owners, supplying them workers for the mining of coal.

Importing characters into a setting can be dramatic. Did you read the book by Jack Higgins (or see the movie) The Eagle Has Landed? German paratroopers are dropped into a British countryside. Their object is to capture Churchill and take him back to Germany; Vel, vie are her! Another would be when Godzilla drops into Tokyo.

Back to Setting

Once you have decided to put your characters into a particular setting you must make sure that you have the setting right. I like to draw a map of the setting for reference during writing. If the setting is in a town, I like to layout the streets and mark the locations of important landmarks (like Joe’s house, his girlfriend’s house, and the factory where he works). At times, writers include such maps in the inside cover or in the text of their book.

Now when did the event take place? If it is 1845 in the Salt Lake Valley, don’t have the Mormon Temple on the site map. In fact, you shouldn’t have anything on your site map that hints of civilization. You can have a few Ute Indians hunting ducks out on the shores of Great Salt Lake. You can have Mountain Man Jim Bridger passing though—but the Mormon’s, including my great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather will not be dragging in until 1847.

To establish your setting you must do some research. You must establish the time period (which may just be “the present),” the location (real or imaginary), the customs, apparel, hardware, construction, instruments, firearms, and on and on and on. This requires research. When I was writing western novels, I collected a large library of books on the old west. Some of the books were references for writers. I could find out anything from contraception methods to underwear.

When I was writing detective novels, I put the novels in the “present.” Bone China based my detective, Richard Lacey, in York, Pennsylvania and had him working in Lancaster County in the factitious town of Brentonville. There were a couple of minor settings but almost all of the action takes place in the environs of “Brentonville.” I had lived in York but while writing the novel, I took several trips back to Lancaster County and collected all the specifics I could on the location.

In Bone China, a major character is a ceramic engineer working in a ceramic factory. There was no problem of having him talk like a ceramic engineer working in a pottery setting. I am a ceramic engineer and I was working in a ceramic factory when I research the novel. That made my research easy. They say that writers should write about what they know about. I say that writers should write abut what they can find out.

Researching a location is not just important, it is fun. You can deduct the expenses if your trip is strictly business. I never did that, but I think you could convince the IRS to accept the deduction. Okay, I wouldn’t even try it. I’m too honest.

After you have thoroughly investigated your setting(s), you can then proceed to the subject of your characters. How do they fit into this setting?

Placing Your Characters in the Setting

I like to draw my characters or collect photos or illustrations, etc. For example, in Bone China, Detective Richard Lacey was a football player. I didn’t make drawings or collect photos of football players because a football player is what writers call a stereotype. However, the starring lady was different. I looked in slick magazines for such a fine lady. She had to be rich, beautiful, and be handsomely dressed.

Now here is a point. Don’t write long descriptions of your characters. Let the information leak out. By that I mean to let your characters be revealed in normal dialog. George sat back in his chair and said, “Wow! Where did you get that lovely silk dress, Mildred? It show’s you off— Well, I shouldn’t say that!”

Your characters must sound like the folks that live in your setting area. Well, if ya’ dink dat, den I’m a goin’ to give ya’ dis! I don’t suggest that you write like that. I would rather use Frank rose angrily. “Well, if you think that, I’m a gonna give you this!” If you want your reader to know that “t” is “d” to Frank, you can do that in other ways. Can’t you?

In my western novels, Bull and Revenge on the Mogollon Rim. many of the characters are stereotypes of the old west. Still, each character had to be research to some extent. Just don’t assume you know everything when your character is a stereotype. If he is an old west doctor, research old west doctors. People like realism in fiction. But remember that if you bore them with details they will lay down your book.

Conclusion

Well, it’s time to mosey on out of here and hit the old Chisholm Trail.

For practice look up “Chisholm Trail” on the Internet and see what you come up with.

How about “Medieval England?” What did you get there?

Research is not as hard as you think.

Try “Language of the Old West.” Did you come up with the Old West Writer’s Guide?

Put “Puritan customs and dress” into your search engine. What did you get? All of a sudden you learn about the King Philip War and Oliver Cromwell.

Go to http://www.pepysdiary.com/ and read a daily entry from Pepy’s Diary. Old Sam wrote in code in the 1600s but some body finally broke it. How was his language different from yours?

Well, I think you’ve got it!

But go to your library and get a writing book on “setting” and a book on “characterization.” You will get

45 in the Salt Lake Valley, don’t have the Mormon Temple on the site map. In fact, you shouldn’t have anything on your site map that hints of civilization. You can have a few Ute Indians hunting ducks out on the shores of Great Salt Lake. You can have Mountain Man Jim Bridger passing though—but the Mormon’s, including my great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather will not be dragging in until 1847.

To establish your setting you must do some research. You must establish the time period (which may just be “the present),” the location (real or imaginary), the customs, apparel, hardware, construction, instruments, firearms, and on and on and on. This requires research. When I was writing western novels, I collected a large library of books on the old west. Some of the books were references for writers. I could find out anything from contraception methods to underwear.

When I was writing detective novels, I put the novels in the “present.” Bone China based my detective, Richard Lacey, in York, Pennsylvania and had him working in Lancaster County in the factitious town of Brentonville. There were a couple of minor settings but almost all of the action takes place in the environs of “Brentonville.” I had lived in York but while writing the novel, I took several trips back to Lancaster County and collected all the specifics I could on the location.

In Bone China, a major character is a ceramic engineer working in a ceramic factory. There was no problem of having him talk like a ceramic engineer working in a pottery setting. I am a ceramic engineer and I was working in a ceramic factory when I research the novel. That made my research easy. They say that writers should write about what they know about. I say that writers should write abut what they can find out.

Researching a location is not just important, it is fun. You can deduct the expenses if your trip is strictly business. I never did that, but I think you could convince the IRS to accept the deduction. Okay, I wouldn’t even try it. I’m too honest.

After you have thoroughly investigated your setting(s), you can then proceed to the subject of your characters. How do they fit into this setting?

Placing Your Characters in the Setting

I like to draw my characters or collect photos or illustrations, etc. For example, in Bone China, Detective Richard Lacey was a football player. I didn’t make drawings or collect photos of football players because a football player is what writers call a stereotype. However, the starring lady was different. I looked in slick magazines for such a fine lady. She had to be rich, beautiful, and be handsomely dressed.

Now here is a point. Don’t write long descriptions of your characters. Let the information leak out. By that I mean to let your characters be revealed in normal dialog. George sat back in his chair and said, “Wow! Where did you get that lovely silk dress, Mildred? It show’s you off— Well, I shouldn’t say that!”

Your characters must sound like the folks that live in your setting area. Well, if ya’ dink dat, den I’m a goin’ to give ya’ dis! I don’t suggest that you write like that. I would rather use Frank rose angrily. “Well, if you think that, I’m a gonna give you this!” If you want your reader to know that “t” is “d” to Frank, you can do that in other ways. Can’t you?

In my western novels, Bull and Revenge on the Mogollon Rim. many of the characters are stereotypes of the old west. Still, each character had to be research to some extent. Just don’t assume you know everything when your character is a stereotype. If he is an old west doctor, research old west doctors. People like realism in fiction. But remember that if you bore them with details they will lay down your book.

Conclusion

Well, it’s time to mosey on out of here and hit the old Chisholm Trail.

For practice look up “Chisholm Trail” on the Internet and see what you come up with.

How about “Medieval England?” What did you get there?

Research is not as hard as you think.

Try “Language of the Old West.” Did you come up with the Old West Writer’s Guide?

Put “Puritan customs and dress” into your search engine. What did you get? All of a sudden you learn about the King Philip War and Oliver Cromwell.

Go to http://www.pepysdiary.com/ and read a daily entry from Pepy’s Diary. Old Sam wrote in code in the 1600s but some body finally broke it. How was his language different from yours?

Well, I think you’ve got it!

But go to your library and get a writing book on “setting” and a book on “characterization.” You will get

ceramic engineer and I was working in a ceramic factory when I research the novel. That made my research easy. They say that writers should write about what they know about. I say that writers should write abut what they can find out.

Researching a location is not just important, it is fun. You can deduct the expenses if your trip is strictly business. I never did that, but I think you could convince the IRS to accept the deduction. Okay, I wouldn’t even try it. I’m too honest.

After you have thoroughly investigated your setting(s), you can then proceed to the subject of your characters. How do they fit into this setting?

Placing Your Characters in the Setting

I like to draw my characters or collect photos or illustrations, etc. For example, in Bone China, Detective Richard Lacey was a football player. I didn’t make drawings or collect photos of football players because a football player is what writers call a stereotype. However, the starring lady was different. I looked in slick magazines for such a fine lady. She had to be rich, beautiful, and be handsomely dressed.

Now here is a point. Don’t write long descriptions of your characters. Let the information leak out. By that I mean to let your characters be revealed in normal dialog. George sat back in his chair and said, “Wow! Where did you get that lovely silk dress, Mildred? It show’s you off— Well, I shouldn’t say that!”

Your characters must sound like the folks that live in your setting area. Well, if ya’ dink dat, den I’m a goin’ to give ya’ dis! I don’t suggest that you write like that. I would rather use Frank rose angrily. “Well, if you think that, I’m a gonna give you this!” If you want your reader to know that “t” is “d” to Frank, you can do that in other ways. Can’t you?

In my western novels, Bull and Revenge on the Mogollon Rim. many of the characters are stereotypes of the old west. Still, each character had to be research to some extent. Just don’t assume you know everything when your character is a stereotype. If he is an old west doctor, research old west doctors. People like realism in fiction. But remember that if you bore them with details they will lay down your book.

Conclusion

Well, it’s time to mosey on out of here and hit the old Chisholm Trail.

For practice look up “Chisholm Trail” on the Internet and see what you come up with.

How about “Medieval England?” What did you get there?

Research is not as hard as you think.

Try “Language of the Old West.” Did you come up with the Old West Writer’s Guide?

Put “Puritan customs and dress” into your search engine. What did you get? All of a sudden you learn about the King Philip War and Oliver Cromwell.

Go to http://www.pepysdiary.com/ and read a daily entry from Pepy’s Diary. Old Sam wrote in code in the 1600s but some body finally broke it. How was his language different from yours?

Well, I think you’ve got it!

But go to your library and get a writing book on “setting” and a book on “characterization.” You will get

ive ya’ dis! I don’t suggest that you write like that. I would rather use Frank rose angrily. “Well, if you think that, I’m a gonna give you this!” If you want your reader to know that “t” is “d” to Frank, you can do that in other ways. Can’t you?

In my western novels, Bull and Revenge on the Mogollon Rim. many of the characters are stereotypes of the old west. Still, each character had to be research to some extent. Just don’t assume you know everything when your character is a stereotype. If he is an old west doctor, research old west doctors. People like realism in fiction. But remember that if you bore them with details they will lay down your book.

Conclusion

Well, it’s time to mosey on out of here and hit the old Chisholm Trail.

For practice look up “Chisholm Trail” on the Internet and see what you come up with.

How about “Medieval England?” What did you get there?

Research is not as hard as you think.

Try “Language of the Old West.” Did you come up with the Old West Writer’s Guide?

Put “Puritan customs and dress” into your search engine. What did you get? All of a sudden you learn about the King Philip War and Oliver Cromwell.

Go to http://www.pepysdiary.com/ and read a daily entry from Pepy’s Diary. Old Sam wrote in code in the 1600s but some body finally broke it. How was his language different from yours?

Well, I think you’ve got it!

But go to your library and get a writing book on “setting” and a book on “characterization.” You will get far better explanations there. If you want to buy a book, get used copies at Amazon.com or Alibris.com.

Your library will have a copy of Writer’s Digest. There are some very good articles on the subjects in that book.

And last, there is software to help you write your novel. One example is at http://www.newnovelist.com/

Good Writing!

The End

copyright©2007 John Taylor Jones, Ph.D.