Creative writing - Mike Sanders 2014
Establishing atmosphere
Potent setting
Character, setting, and types of stories
As opposed to photos, atmosphere is abstract and describes the overall feeling of a place—romantic, threatening, welcoming, etc. It depends largely on your word choice, as a room with “oppressive low ceilings and blood-red curtains” feels much different to a reader than a room with “cozy low ceilings and cheerful red curtains.”
DEFINITION
Atmosphere is the impression or vibe a given setting gives off to other characters and the reader.
To be successful, almost any piece of writing needs to develop a strong sense of atmosphere. It draws your readers into your piece so they can vividly imagine the world you’re creating. It also sets up expectations and sometimes gives them information about any characters they’re likely to encounter.
Given their similarities, it’s important to note setting isn’t the same as atmosphere, although atmosphere is a big part of the setting and can help shape the mood of a narrative. A piece set in an old, rundown, river-bottom warehouse immediately evokes a sense of eeriness and isolation; of neglect and dreariness.
Be sure to choose a setting that suits the type of narrative you’re writing. Different settings create different atmospheres. In a ghost story, for example, you want the atmosphere to be creepy and one of trepidation. An ideal setting is an old theater or graveyard. A setting on a crowded nude beach in Brazil, on the other hand, calls for a very different atmosphere. Keep in mind, though, that having the aforementioned glow fairies on hand in either of these settings would seem rather odd. You would really have to stretch your narrative to make that work.
As with setting, you can’t create atmosphere without description. But this doesn’t mean you need paragraphs and paragraphs of clinical observation to ensure your readers can picture the scene. A few powerful adjectives and adverbs will effectively make your readers feel part of the story. Say you’ve chosen a warehouse as your setting; using different words can dramatically vary the atmosphere created. For example, look at the following description from the story “The Shadow Over Lynchburg”:
Though the Lynchburg downtown had been privy to a measured, years-long movement toward revitalization and improvement, there remained whole corners and blocks that were as dark and rundown as they had been three or four decades previous. The rectangular quarter-mile expanse of the Felwealth warehouse complex constituted one such stretch. Built along the Richmond-Roanoke railroad, which roughly paralleled the James River between those disparate municipalities, the complex rested almost upon the water and during periods of flooding it was not unusual for the westernmost building to have brown river muck standing as much as a foot-deep on its ground floor. In the early 1980s Reverend Felwealth had decreed that a flood wall be constructed to protect the complex, but the James had other ideas and, during a week-long period of heavy rains, washed away the preliminary building materials, wrenching them from their platforms and moorings or soaking them into uselessness, before they could ever be utilized.
This passage affords images of darkness and dilapidation, coupled with floods and watery space and a pleasant place. From this piece, your readers can also imagine the type of people a protagonist would meet here, such as working-class laborers and homeless individuals.
The following describes a contrasting view of the city and produces a very different mood:
Early one summer morning Isaac stood naked at the kitchen bay window in Lyra’s townhouse, gazing out—as had become his habit during such clear dawns—at the extraordinary view of the city’s southern mountains. Construction projects had been initiated on three of the ridges, but it still pleased him to dwell upon the range of hills in the early morning light.
Here, although construction is underway, the collective vista before the protagonist is one of pastoral beauty. Your readers might picture bulldozers and loggers among the hills but also deer, bear, and other forms of wildlife.
You’ve already learned about the importance of the five senses, and they should not be neglected in atmosphere. However, something related I haven’t mentioned yet—weather—can be just as important. A gloriously sunny day, for example, immediately conjures feelings of warmth and joy—perhaps even a premonition that something happy is about to happen. This might be the atmosphere you want to create for an occasion such as a wedding. On the other hand, perhaps it’s a wedding doomed not to take place or a marriage destined for dysfunction. Again, you can use the weather to change the mood of the narrative and build a mounting sense of tension, such as when the wind gathers momentum and thick, dark clouds begin swirling slowly overhead.
Like weather, the time of day can make a difference to the type of atmosphere your readers feel as they read. For example, you can darken and intensify a story by setting it at night. There’s always an extra sense of menace, of threat and uncertainty, in a narrative in which most of one’s senses are blunted.