In my opinion, the best way to truly make setting a character is to have some conflict for the characters arising from the setting. It may sound specialized, but the setting probably provides opposition to characters’ goals in some form in almost any work of fiction.

In its most obvious form, setting can provide the main conflict of the story, as in disaster fiction. This use of setting always makes me think of movies like Twister, The Day After Tomorrow, or 2012.

The disaster genre uses setting very effectively on a macro level. A natural disaster—be it hurricane, tornado, earthquake, fire or flood—stands between our heroes and their goals. Often, the heroes’ goal is just staying alive, and, uh, dying really puts a damper on that.

Of course, natural disasters aren’t really characters. They may be the main antagonist in a story, but they’re still no villain. However, we have to establish that the disaster is truly a threat, if not evil (just like with human antagonists). And (also just like with human antagonists), the best way to do that is to show the antagonist in action: someone getting caught by the disaster, or its after-effects or foreshadowing.

Showing the natural disaster’s capabilities can be one form of the other end of the spectrum, a scene-level conflict arising from the setting. This type of setting-conflict is more common, and probably appears in almost any book. It can be something as simple as a traffic jam that makes our characters late for the big meeting.

Sometimes I find myself relying on setting for little conflict like this maybe a little too much, however. A traffic jam or two might not push our readers past their capacity for the suspension of disbelief, but if every time the star-crossed lovers are supposed to meet, the Interstate suddenly backs up, maybe the state DOT should get involved.

What do you think? Do you try to use setting to create conflict? What’s your favorite setting-conflict (that you’ve seen or created)?

Photo by Adam Stanhope

So we’ve figured out what drives our characters, and where they’ll start and end their internal character journeys. So what happens in the middle? Obviously, if our characters start at one extreme (fear, loneliness, naivete) and go to the other (courage, love, wisdom), some pretty extreme things are going to have to happen in the middle. I mean, most of us don’t just wake up one day to have our deepest problems, flaws or hangups magically healed, right?

This reversal can stem from some level of autonomy—the character can recognize the problem and make a conscious choice to change—or we can force them to accept the change, give them no other possibilities than to try this new belief system/opportunity/way of life. But either way, to be believable, it’s got to be prompted by external events. As Alicia Rasley says:

Character-driven fiction is about internal change. Paradoxically, external action is usually needed to bring on this change. External action is the surest catalyst for both internal growth and reader interest. Sure, your protagonist could overcome his distaste for intimacy and his dread of family by going to a psychologist twice a week for ten years…. but who wants to read about that? Even psychologists, probably, would put down a novel about therapy sessions to pick up a novel about a woman who learns to trust by being blackmailed into joining a secret team to rescue the kidnapped clone of Thomas Edison.

To make sure that the external action is prompting your internal changes, Alicia suggests linking the external events and internal arc in stimulus-response units. She also points out that the change comes later—we see the character striving to maintain his worldview/attitude/whatever for most of the story. Until that reversal comes, the character isn’t ready for the change, and he’ll do what he can to avoid it. And those choices are going to backfire, hurt him somehow, perhaps breaking him down gradually, until he is put into a situation where he has no other choice or where he finally sees how stupid he was.

It’s also okay—advisable, even!—to not build the character arc every second. In fact, it’s more compelling to see him take two steps forward and one step back, resisting that change until he can’t anymore. And then at the end, show us how complete the change is by one last external action—have the character prove to us one last time that they really have changed.

What do you think? Where do you put the reversal in your works? How do you prompt it, and how do you prove to your readers that your character has changed?

Photo by Reuben Whitehouse