Setting: How to Create and Sustain a Sharp Sense of Time and Place in Your Fiction

This is probably one of the best books out there on Setting. Some of the chapters get a bit long winded, but all in all this is the worth getting.

Bickham's Setting is an easy read with a lot of valuable information to help your writing come alive. While I do not recommend every book in the Writers Digest/Elements of Fiction Writing series, this is one of the better books.

Another excellent effort by Jack Bickham. Unfortunately his last book as he died afterwards. Many nuggets of information that are indespensible for the writer. Here are a few: When writing multi viewpoints you may want to introduce each viewpoint with a bit of setting to re-acquant the reader. For example. When Brenda, who just finished that horrible exam in History, left the classroom. . . . Setting can set the mood. ie The dark clocktower with its crumbling facade rang yet again signifying Joe's soon demise. . . . Setting should be brief and never stop the movement of a story. Setting can provide a metaphor to underlie your story's theme. How important it is for the setting to be factual. When setting can be made up. I could go on, but you should see the point. This is an excellent reference that will push your writing from hack to salable.

Another Writer's Digest book that offers a multitude of ways ensure that your reader has a visual and sensual focus on place and time in your stories. The author not only tells you why setting is so important in supporting the plot and characters, but gives pleanty of exercises to help you create a clear picture of where and when your story takes place.

As a "mature" student I was in awe of the insights the author was giving us which he has obviously learned on the anvil of experience. As an avid reader I was able to relate to his comments and advice and found myself nodding in agreement. This book is easy to read and full of practical advice, and examples, just the book for budding writers.