This is my response to theinkwell's fast and furious festival day two task. The festival challenges writers to spend 25 minutes/day (or more if you'd like) writing a post based on a creative prompt.
Today’s prompt and challenge revolves around setting and asked us to write from a choice of four prompts, responding to as many of them as we'd like. I chose to respond to two of the setting prompts.
Task 1:
Describe a room (eg kitchen, bedroom, living room) in a character's house in such a way that it tells us about a person's greatest hopes and fears.
Quote from The Ink Well Fast and Furious Festival - Day Two
My response:
Dust hung in the fading light. A large mahogany wardrobe loomed next to the window, door half open with clothes spilling out from its packed depths. A faded white tutu caught my eye and I glanced down to see torn ballerina's shoes. In the mish-mash of hangers dresses mingled with jumpers, trousers with t-shirts, blouses with crop tops.
Next to a large oak bed stood a dressing table, a lone picture sat on the dresser with an empty glass and a box of pills. Framed in that picture a young woman smiled as she pirouetted in the sun. Sand kicked up from her spinning feet as waves crashed behind her spraying crystalline diamonds into the sun-drenched air. Blue sky shone vividly, mirroring the flash of her eyes.
A single crutch lay on the floor next to the bed, its metal frame stark against the polished floorboards.
Task 4:
Write notes for a story setting inspired by the image above.
Quote from The Ink Well Fast and Furious Festival - Day Two
My response:
The curse of Thang Lan
The town of Thang Lan in northern Vietnam is now known simply as the rainy place. The streets used to be bustling with market tellers selling Pho and Goi cuon. Women would wave as you passed by, beckoning you to peruse the rainbow arrangements of fruits in straw baskets. Mangosteen, Star Fruit, Dragon Fruit and the furry pink eyes of Chôm Chôm winked out from the emerald cascade of limes. The smell swayed the senses like a snake under the spell of the charmer. Citrus tang sang a mingled melody with the sour reek of fish, and the hoot of drunken revelers serenaded the night.
It was around the time the stranger moved to town that the rain started and never stopped. It got more intense, like Kinh Dương Vương wept for the sorrow of the earth. Street stores were washed away, buildings started to rot and soon you could canoe down main street. Now the stranger walks the streets every day weeping for who knows what. The rain continues to wash away crops, spoil fruit and swell the river like a bloated python.
As you can see in my response to task one, a lot can be inferred by describing the setting of your story. What are the items in the room telling the reader? Are they painting a picture of the characters that drive your story forward? This technique is part of the 'show don't tell' rule. Instead of writing passages that state (tell) the history of a character you can instead describe (show) the setting to hint at that history. If you think about it, this is often how we form our first impressions of people in real life, through deduction.
As I talked about in my last fast and furious festival post, it becomes a satisfying moment for the reader when something they have deduced through the hints in the setting, such as their possessions, are clarified as true later on in the story through actions or dialogue.
In my response to task two I tried to show how setting can be used to build a strong atmosphere that informs an important part of the plot structure. I don't want to elaborate too much on this as it might colour your impression of what is happening in the fictional town of Thang Lan. Let me know in the comments what impression this setting description gave you, and if it did hint at any future plot in your mind.
Thanks for reading 🙂
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