Setting/How to Create and Sustain a Sharp Sense of Time and Place in Your Fiction (Elements of Fiction Writing)

Rating:
Summary: Keeping the Focus
Review: Another Writer's Digest book that offers a multitude of ways ensure that your reader has a visual and sensual focus on place and time in your stories. The author not only tells you why setting is so important in supporting the plot and characters, but gives pleanty of exercises to help you create a clear picture of where and when your story takes place.

Rating:
Summary: Rating the Elements of Fiction Writing series
Review: I've read all the books in the Elements of Fiction Writing series and this is how I'd rank them.

"Scene & Structure" "Characters & Viewpoint" "Beginnings, Middles & Ends"

The above three books are invaluable -- must reads. They are the best of the series, in my opinion, and are packed with good information on every page. Well-done.

"Conflict, Action & Suspense" "Description" "Plot" "Manuscript Submission" "Setting"

The above five books are good, solid reads. Again, they contain good information and cover the subject decently.

"Voice & Style" "Dialogue"

To me, the last two books need to be rewritten. They are by far the weakest of the series. Both suffer from an annoying style, particularly Dialogue, and both are very skimpy on real information. Neither one is very helpful.

This is the order in which I'd recommend reading them.

Rating:
Summary: Solid and Inspiring
Review: With a track record like Bickham--published novelist and author of other writing books--it's hard to get it wrong. This book covers everything on setting--the importance of setting; sense impressions; factual material; plot devices; character casting; viewpoint; and just about every point need in good fiction in relation to setting--There is even a great little section which tells you when 'too much is too much', so you don't over-write your setting. A great book for the novice or the seasonned fiction writer.