(From Goodreads:)
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What is the setting thesaurus? It's the next book in the thesaurus series by authors Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi. Years ago I discovered the book The Emotion Thesaurus and have loved and used it ever since.
I'm so excited about this book as a writer resource. Often times setting gets over looked as an important key element in fiction. Setting can be the main cause of conflict, or can be the obstacles in the way causing the character to not achieve her goal, or it can be its own character. Setting can create or add to the tone or mood of a piece of writing. |
The Rural Setting Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to Personal and Natural Places
Within the pages of a book exists a world drawn from a writer’s deepest imaginings, one that has the ability to pull readers in on a visceral level—but only if the realm and its inhabitants can be described well. This can be achieved by providing readers with a unique sensory experience via the setting. So much more than stage dressing, the setting can build mood, convey meaning through symbolism, drive the plot by creating challenges that force the hero to fight for what he wants, and trigger emotions which will reveal his most intimate feelings, fears, and desires.
Inside The Rural Setting Thesaurus, you’ll find:
• A list of the sights, smells, tastes, textures, and sounds for over 100 settings revolving around school, home, and nature
• Possible sources of conflict for each location to help you brainstorm ways to naturally complicate matters for your characters
• Advice on the many effective ways to build mood, helping you steer both the character’s and readers’ emotions in every scene
• Information on how the setting directly influences the plot by acting as a tuning fork for what a character needs most and by testing his dedication to his goals
• A tutorial on figurative language and how different descriptive techniques can bring settings alive for readers while conveying a symbolic message or deeper meaning
• A review of the challenges that arise when writing description, as well as special considerations that apply specifically to rural and personal settings
• Downloadable tools that encourage a deeper sensory and emotional exploration of each setting
The Rural Setting Thesaurus takes “show-don’t-tell” to new heights. It offers writers a roadmap to creating fresh setting imagery that impacts the story on multiple levels while keeping readers engaged from the first page to the last.
The Urban Setting Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to City Spaces
Making readers care and feel like they’re part of the story should be the number one goal for all writers. Ironically, many storytellers fail to maximize one of fiction’s most powerful elements to achieve this: the setting. Not only can the right location become a conduit for emotion, it can also provide conflict, characterize the story’s cast, reveal significant backstory, and trigger the reader’s own emotional memories through sensory details and deep point of view.
Inside The Urban Thesaurus, you’ll find:
• A list of the sights, smells, tastes, textures, and sounds for over 120 urban settings
• Possible sources of conflict for each location to help you brainstorm ways to naturally complicate matters for your characters
• Advice on how to make every piece of description count so you can maintain the right pace and keep readers engaged
• Tips on utilizing the five senses to encourage readers to more fully experience each moment by triggering their own emotional memories
• Information on how to use the setting to characterize a story’s cast through personalization and emotional values while using emotional triggers to steer their decisions
• A review of specific challenges that arise when writing urban locations, along with common descriptive pitfalls that should be avoided
The Urban Setting Thesaurus helps you tailor each setting to your characters while creating a realistic, textured world readers will long to return to, even after the book closes.
Below is a sample entry (from the writer's blog):
Setting Description Entry: Barn
Sight
Hay, stalls, water trough or bucket, food trough, pens, seed, grain, blue salt lick, curry comb, tools (shovel, pitchfork, broom) feed buckets, flies, spiders, spider webs, dust, rusty nails, pen gates, horse hair pinched in cracked boards/stall rails…
Sounds
The rustle of hay, creaking boards, stamping, thumps, whinnies, squeaks, grunts and other animal-specific vocals, huffing breath, snorting, rubbing noises as animals scratch against posts or rails, the clatter of grain spilling into a trough, the scrape of a shovel against the rough floorboards…
Smells
straw (clean and dirty), urine, manure, salt, animals, hay (dusty & slightly sweet-smelling), grain (dusty & earthy)
Tastes
Dust & chaff in the air, spit
Touch
Prickly hay and straw, chaff sticking to the neck, getting into your shirt, rough boards, sweat trickling down your face, sides and back, a band of heat where your hat sits, swiping dust and chaff from clothes and hair, pulling on heavy work gloves, the dry & hairy tickle of horse lips nibbling up a treat of apple…
Helpful hints:
–The words you choose can convey atmosphere and mood.
Example 1: Dara woke from her nap, wide-awake with the vague remembrance of an unpleasant dream. Her skin itched from a dozen hay pricks; the strong smell of animal assaulted her nose. As her eyes grew accustomed to the dark, she made out rough wooden stalls with milk pails stacked against the wall. She pushed away a rusty pitchfork and decided to be more careful next time she fell asleep in the barn…
–Similes and metaphors create strong imagery when used sparingly.
Example 1: (Simile) I stepped into Uncle Amos’ barn and the unholy stench of manure and filthy straw almost knocked my boots off. It was like entering a free standing public toilet in the height of summer…one that had gone weeks without being emptied…
Think beyond what a character sees, and provide a sensory feast for readers
You can also find other examples from the setting thesaurus here.
Both of these books will be released June 13th! To find out more, visit author's blog: http://writershelpingwriters.net/
Also, check out this interesting article about teaching setting: https://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordshop/how-to-teach-setting-beyond-time-and-place/
How important is setting in your own writing?
