One evening, not sure when, I attended a presentation given by the author Monteen Gordon. She is very nice advice about setting. Following are some of my notes from her lecture.

–          Get over the guilt of not writing as much as you would like to all of us are busy people.

–          One story can be very different as influenced by setting.

–          Setting can be a geographical location.

–          A story can have a main setting and the other scenes can take place in other settings as writing a story.

–          Suggest book: the false prints by Jennifer Nelson. This author will deposit little tidbits of description in the early part of the book that will later become more relevant in later sections of the

–          Don’t miss anything of story.

–          Here is an example of famous settings, Hogwarts; tale of 2 cities.

–          Some settings are for emotional impact. Another that does this is John Grissom

–          Some settings can conjure up images that live with you.

–          When you describe things. It will require more words certainly to be careful that doesn’t overcome the story.

–          Exercise where we described the different details of the Canyon:

• brisk breeze.
• Smell of the alive.
• Smell of things alive crush of pebbles underneath the feet.
• Cascading waterfall.
• Cold dampness of the air.
• Scent of pine.
• A sense of up and down because of the short walls of the Canyon.
• Animal trails.
• Dust in the air when Wendy
• bright spots from the sun or shadow areas.
• Quiet bears.
• We were then told to use any of the above items to do a scene and he is my sample. I’m sure you won’t be over. Tell this a first draft: I left the bright sun in exchange for a thicket of trees. The brisk breeze whistled through the browse. My steps slowed as I moved up the sharp incline night was in less than a hour away and the sun was cresting the Western rim.

–          The level of details in a scene is influenced by if the story is driven by setting.

–          A suggestion from a member of the audience: If you want to learn about a place in a different country, that you not familiar with. You can twitter people who live in the country and tell them you’re an author. Ask them if they know about the bridge you want to know about. They will often give you wonderful details.

–          Setting can be added after you write the original draft.

–          Remember setting should not overcome the story.

–          A fellow writer told me about Google image, which is apparently a video chat resource where authors can videoconference with one another.