Prompt: Read Chapter 7, Setting and Pacing. What was interesting/helpful?

Response: Setting, like the author states, is one aspect of writing that is easily forgotten by both reader and writer alike. Yet, setting is critically important, as the characters and plot are tied to their setting. The author gives the examples of how Jay Gatsby isn’t who he is without New York or how Winston Smith isn’t who he is without the gaze of Big Brother looking down on him in Oceania. I knew that setting was important, but this chapter was really eye-opening to the fact that you need the perfect among of setting description within your story without making it boring or sidetracking to the plot. I think it can be easy for someone to over- or under-write their settings. In my own work, I like to think I do a good job at incorporating the setting with the characters and plot, but I think I may overwrite setting descriptions in some points. But, like previous chapters have said, it’s better to start with something overwritten than underwritten. The other topic that the author wrote about was pacing, which is kind of an afterthought to me, although I recognize how important it is. As writers, we need to be able to manipulate time for our characters without having it correspond to readers. If our characters are sitting through a twenty-hour opera, we can’t have our audience reading about every detail of a twenty-hour opera. It seems as though the author of this section recognized how important pacing was, but there doesn’t seem to be any tips besides trial and error. The author says that if a work has multiple flashbacks, then the story may have started at the wrong place, unless the flashbacks add to the artistry of the work. I think that this is an important sentiment to hold, especially when it comes to writing. I’m the type of person that thinks everything needs to be perfect in the first draft, but everything from characters, plot, setting, pacing, etc., needs to undergo some trial and error, or else you won’t develop as a writer.