Where Genres Collide Traci Dowe YA Author

Book Talk 11/1/19: Jack M. Bickham’s Setting

Traci Kenworth

Setting: The Elements of Fiction Writing by Jack M. Bickham 1994 Writer’s Digest Books.

Amazon’s Blurb: Suggests ways of creating an appropriate setting and incorporating it into the story, discussing the function of a setting, how it can affect story meaning, and how it can advance the plot

My Review: It’s been a long time since I read this book and the re-read helped me to see things that I couldn’t when I was a newbie writer. I learned how to use an object in the setting to bring the scenes together such as a clock tower, a restaurant, or a train station. He showed different scenes in books to showcase how important the setting is. It shouldn’t be bland or white noise. On the other hand, you don’t want to purple prose things either. A happy medium will do. This is part of the Writer’s Digest Book Series. They have a lot of fantastic volumes in their inventory. I’m lucky to own quite a few. I haven’t been able to keep up in recent years as much, but these volumes are from when I started out writing. Sometimes, going back in later years points us to a lot of things we didn’t get the first time around.