Setting and reality

How much does setting affect the course of a story, and the characters in it?  Could the setting itself be considered a character?

These are a couple of questions that were recently brought up on Jen's Blog  that have had me thinking the last couple days.  But to add to that, I've been cleaning up a house recently that had been lived in by a couple of rather heavy smokers.  Yeah, really not pleasant, but it added to that thinking about setting today.

As I was wiping down some walls, I noticed that, while at first they didn't seem to be all that dirty, except in a couple places, as I went, WOW there was a big difference in colour.  What had at first appeared to be a light taupe-ish coloured wall was in reality, really a dark cream colour.

I'm sure you can all see the horribleness of this in the present place and time (mainly the living in a place like that, and having to clean it), but what does this have to do with writing, you might be asking.  Well, if that's the result from simply smoking in the house, how clean (or really, no where close to it) should all of the houses and buildings be in the stories we write?  Especially, for those who write in historical and fantasy settings. 

Forget about the cigarettes for the moment and just picture the fires in the kitchens for both cooking and heat.  Imagine all the candles, torches, or gas lamps that would be used in a single household for light.  Even if the chimney for the fire is incredibly efficient, and the lighting (whether candles or lamps) are remarkably clean burning, there's still going to be smoke in the air in the house, still going to be soot that could be smeared around.  How much of that is going to end up on the walls of the house?

Now think about your fictional house: the walls are probably a fairly light colour, or else they're made of wood.  Either way, they probably shouldn't be as light and bright as you'd first imagine unless there is someone there actually cleaning the walls on a regular basis.

What other sorts of things have you found authors to have overlooked in terms of setting?  What details to a setting would help add realism to a story?  Share your thoughts, and maybe the next book you read won't be missing those details.

Quick review

I have to say, it is incredibly nice to have a book about vampires it is not 90% about Dracula and Anne Rice.  That's not to say that Dracula and Anne Rice aren't very important in vampire history and legend, but to be honest, if I'm going to the trouble of researching vampires, I would really like to learn about more than simply Dracula and Anne Rice is vampires.

Because of this, Real Vampires, Night Stalkers, and Creatures from the Dark Side by Brad Steiger  was rather refreshing.  Steiger does have an interesting thought on what "real" vampires, though; that they are parasitic spiritual force that will possess humans and give them vampiric tendencies such as drinking blood, or that they are demons, the children of Lilith, who drain people's blood or energy, thereby working at possessing their souls.

Overall the first 200 pages of the book gives some interesting insights, thoughts and ideas about vampires, the kind that are often difficult to get at in other books because of the focus on the "traditional" vampire in literature.  The end of the book becomes more difficult to read.  In places, the writing seems stilted, though it's possible that these stilted sections are accounts from others in their own words; Steiger doesn't always make these sections clear as to who the writer is, sometimes flipping back and forth between reports sent to him and his thoughts on them.  And at the very end of the book was something I really wasn't expecting, a section on extraterrestrial beings.  Sure, I suppose they could fit into the night stalkers or creatures from the dark side, but I was really not expecting to read about aliens in a book titled Real Vampires.

Still, despite these shortcomings in the end of the book, I am still glad I read it as it gave me ideas for my book.

Contests

Not mine, but ones I've won.  And one I hope to win.

I'm sharing this, not only because it's awesome that I've won a couple of contests in the last week (even though it most definitely is awesome), but also because the blogs I've won these contests off of are pretty awesome themselves.

The first book I won was The Demon in Me (A Living in Eden Novel) by Michelle Rowen.  Margaret Fisk held the contest on her blog, Tales to Tide You Over.  Definitely a Blog you want to check out, for she posts a lot of different things, from interesting links she's come across each week, to book reviews, and thoughts about writing.  Her blog also links easily to her website, which also has a lot of good links and tools for those with writing interests.  Plus, she says that she might be holding more contests in the future, so well worth repeated visits.

The second book I managed to win is The Body Finder (though she didn't name the author, I believe it is The Body Finder by Kimberly Derting).  This prize comes from a giveaway on The Secret Life of a Bibliophile.  Her blog is mostly reviews and discussions about books she's read, but just going through some of her recent posts, I've found a number of books to add to my to-read list.  Never mind the contests she seems to hold with regularity, it's well worth checking her blog out simply to find something new to read.

And with those two wins, we come to the contest I am currently entered in and hoping to win something.  Wringing out Words, a blog written by soon to be published Shannon Mayer, is holding a contest this week where you can win books or coffee (in the form of Starbucks gift certificates).  I mean, how awesome is that?

I found her, and her blog, via Twitter as she was promoting this contest, and let me tell you, I am very glad I did so far.  She has recently scored herself an agent, who is about to start sending her novel out to publishers.  But by finding her at this time, I've also found an author I'll follow, likely for many years to come, since she writes Urban Fantasy, with a bit of traditional and science fiction.

So check out these women, these blogs.  I'm sure you'll find at least one thing of interest.