III. Setting

“Alright, Byul, what’s the next thing we need to think about once we have our characters?” Yongsun said through a mouthful of fried chicken. Byulyi looked up from her phone for a moment, then quickly glanced back down.

“Wait, unnie, Hyejin wants to know if we want to do something tomorrow since we have the day off. I was thinking that I’d like to start writing or something, but if you want to…I can…do whatever…you want to do,” Byulyi said, waving one hand around as she became increasingly flustered.

Yongsun grinned. “I guess it will depend on whether we can get through everything today. We’ve just kind of scratched the surface a little.”

“Okay, I’ll let her know.” Byulyi tapped out her message, flipped her phone over, and leaned back with wide eyes.

“What’s wrong?” Yongsun asked.

Byulyi shook her head. “Aish, I don’t know if I can face Hyejin after this experiment. I keep picturing her in my head as a barbarian now.”

The innocuous comment, said in all seriousness, prompted a loud snort from Yongsun, which sent her into a fit of howling laughter. She dropped the chicken onto her plate and doubled over, gasping so loudly that Byulyi could only look on for a brief moment before joining her. She wasn’t sure Yongsun understood the infectious effect of her squealing laughter, but in that moment, nobody seemed to mind.

“Okay, okay,” Yongsun finally said in between the residual chuckles, “let’s switch gears. We’re not going to write about Hyejin and Wheein anymore.”

“Eh, I thought we were writing the story together!”

“We are! Sort of.” Yongsun picked up her piece of chicken again, and gestured with it erratically as she spoke. “I want to start over because everyone’s process is different, remember? It’s not really a step-by-step thing, so I don’t want you to think that everyone designs their character first, then moves on to the next part. It’s not really that easy. Usually, the character, plot, and setting are really closely tied together.”  

Byulyi reached for a piece of chicken of her own. “Does that mean that we’re doing lesbian space barbarians after all?”

“Byul! No! Okay, I want you to close your eyes. Yes, you can keep eating. Just don’t get sauce everywhere, alright? Close your eyes and listen to the sound of my voice. No peeking! Aish. You’re listening to the sound of my voice right now, and I’m talking to you through dialogue. What are you picturing?”

“What do you mean what am I picturing? You’re not describing anything.”

“No, just listen. What are you picturing when you hear me speak to you?”

“Um, nothing? You? Your face and whatever you’re saying?”

“Good, you can open your eyes now.”

Byulyi opened her eyes and was greeted by a mischievous smile. She glanced down at her empty plate and cried, “Unnie! You took my chicken! If you wanted my piece, you could’ve just asked!”

Yongsun laughed, but happily chewed on. She swallowed and continued, “Believe it or not, I was trying to make a point. When you have characters interacting, it’s easy to get caught up in the dialogue and the body language and all that stuff and forget where your characters are. If you want your characters to be believable humans who do not randomly teleport, you and your reader need to know where your characters are. When I wasn’t describing anything, it was hard to know what to picture, right? People have very good imaginations, but you need to have creative constraints.”

“What does that mean?”

Yongsun held a piece of chicken between her fingers. “Close your eyes for me, Byul, and describe this piece of chicken.”

Byulyi complied. “It’s brown, and covered in gochujang, so it’s reddish, kind of shiny, and it has onions on it.” She opened her eyes, and smiled when she saw that she was spot on.

“Good! You can have this piece of chicken as your reward. You listed four details about this piece of chicken, which you were able to see beforehand.” Yongsun wiped her fingers on a napkin, and reached over to retrieve the note paper with the bear drawings on it. Byulyi silently ate her reward, her eyes dutifully following Yongsun’s movements as she picked up the pencil from earlier, walked over to the electric sharpener to sharpen it, then returned to her seat. “Now,” Yongsun resumed, “I want you to draw a whale above my bear here.”

“Uh, you know I’m not a good artist, unnie. Are you trying to trick me?”

“Just do it.”

“Fine,” she groaned. “Just let me wash my hands.”

Minutes later, a simple line drawing of a whale appeared above the bear. Byulyi smiled, satisfied with her work, and handed it back to Yongsun. “There you go,” she said.”

“Now describe to me what a whale looks like.”

Byulyi raised a brow. “It’s…large,” she said slowly, tracing the shape with her finger in the air. “The tail is kind of like this…It has a spout, and fins, and a huge mouth.”

Yongsun grabbed Byulyi’s phone from the table, typed in a couple of words, and presented her a photograph of a humpback whale. “Now tell me,” she said, holding up the phone in one hand, and the drawing in the other, “which whale were you picturing when you were describing it to me?”

Byulyi blushed, and pointed to her drawing. “You did trick me!” she cried.

Yongsun shook her head, and returned the phone to its original place in front of Byulyi. “I didn’t trick you, jeez. I was just trying to make a point. When I asked you to draw a whale, you immediately thought of the kind of whale that you can draw so you can put it on paper. Like you said, you’re not a great artist. I won’t fight you on that.”

“Hey!”

“But if I asked Wheein to draw a whale, she would definitely have a very different interpretation of the whale. I would guess that hers would look more like the photograph than a grade schooler’s drawing.”

“That’s rude, unnie.”

“Either way, your brain will most likely imagine something that fits your way of thinking, and not everyone will have the same way of thinking. If I had not asked you to draw the whale beforehand, you probably would have described a very different whale, maybe even as accurately as you describe the chicken in your tummy. So if you want to create a world for your story, even if it already exists, your job will be to know exactly what things look like so that you can transport your readers to the same place.”

Absentmindedly, Byulyi shaded in the curve of the whale’s head as she listened. “I don’t know why you didn’t say so in the first place, unnie.”

“Yah! I told you I wanted to make a point. Now close your eyes again. Yah! Don’t look at me like that. Just do it. I promise I won’t steal your chicken. Good. With your eyes closed, I want you to describe the room that we’re in. As much detail as possible.”

Byulyi squeezed her eyes shut and imagined herself sitting across from Yongsun in bird’s eye view. “We’re…sitting at a white, rectangular dining table with a glass top. There are…flowers at the centre. You’re sitting on my right. There is a plate in front of each of us, and you probably have a piece of chicken on yours because I heard you take it from my plate just now. The take-out container is beside the flowers. We each have a glass of water in front of us too. Oh, and my phone is here. Um, we’re sitting in your dining area, which is in your living room. The kitchen is behind me, and the couch is somewhere behind you in front of the TV. You have a stack of dramas on your coffee table. Ah, your coffee table is wooden, and it has a wobbly leg because I broke it a while back. Um, and you have a bookshelf beside your TV, and there’s…stuff in it. I don’t remember. Books and…other stuff. I think you have a clock in it? And…”

“Okay, that’s good. You can open your eyes now. And yes, there is a clock in it. You picked it out with me, remember? Here is a piece of chicken for your efforts.”

Byulyi frowned. “You ate half of this.”

“Anyway! That was really good. You remembered way more than I thought you would. Now that you’re more aware of the room we’re in, if I asked you to picture my voice talking to you, you would probably picture yourself in this room rather than just the words. If I asked you to describe a living room, you would probably picture this exact one. That’s what I mean by creative constraint. If I did not show you the limits of your imagination by giving you specific pieces of information…ah, well, in this case I showed you specific information, then you may end up imagining totally different things than what I intended. If you’re specific enough, then the reader will be right with you in the place you want them to be in. You don’t want people floating around in white space and imagining words and faces flying around. Details are—”

“Wait, unnie, does that mean that I should describe everything in detail? Wouldn’t that take forever?”

Byulyi leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. Yongsun waved a hand around the room and said, “You don’t need to include all of this.” She pointed to the bookshelf beside the television. “You can simply say that there is a bookshelf beside my TV. Unless there is an object that is significant or symbolic in your story, then you don’t need to bore people with every object on that shelf. Let people’s imagination do the work.”

“But you just said—”

“Byul-ah, creative constraints does not mean shutting off people’s imagination. All they need is enough information to see how my living room might be specific. If I was the main character, for example, this space might be used to show details about my character. The dramas on the table might show that I like to watch dramas, and the wobbly table leg might show that I’m too lazy to fix it, which is true. Or that I have a very clumsy friend who comes into my house and breaks this, which is also true. But! You don’t always need to be very specific unless it’s important. Maybe my stack of dramas are all romance dramas, which might show you that I’m a romantic.”

“You do watch a lot of cheesy dramas,” Byul offered, nodding toward the stack of DVDs. “Also the fact that you own DVDs might say something about your character. Probably your age.”

“Now who’s being rude?” Yongsun huffed. “There are some things you can keep to yourself as well. As long as you are familiar with the room, it’s okay to let readers fill in some of the gaps in detail. In fact, too much detail can sometimes bog people down. It’s a balance, and, especially if you’re writing a story that’s not set in your understanding of the world, you need to make sure people are on board with you. Let’s clean up and move over to the couch. Take the notebook too.”

Byulyi dropped the dishes into the kitchen sink, where she gave them a practiced scrub and rinse. Once all the dishes were put away and the chicken packed neatly into the fridge, Byulyi found herself curled up against the arm of the couch with Yongsun curled up on the other end. Though they faced each other with only a cushion apart, Byulyi held tight onto the pillow in her arms and wished she could move to the other side. Unbeknownst to her, Yongsun faced a similar dilemma as she held her knees up against her chest. They exchanged a smile, relaxed, and shook off the silly ideas in their heads.

“So,” Yongsun began. “Shall we continue? Where were we?”  

Byulyi bit her lip. “Um, you were talking about details, I think. And the room and stuff.”

“Right. We,” she said, gesturing between them, “were at the dining table, but now we’re on the couch.”

Byulyi raised a brow. “Thank you. I didn’t notice that.”

“Ha-ha, very funny,” Yongsun said, poking Byulyi’s leg with the tip of her toe, “But you know, it’s possible not to notice that if you were reading this situation in a book. One moment, we were chatting at the table, and the next, we’re chatting on the couch. If you had not described the couch beforehand, the reader may be confused. ‘Where did the couch come from?’ they might ask. Or maybe they missed something, and they were picturing the table when, all of a sudden, you start talking about the arm rest. Either way, it’s usually not a good idea to walk into situations where people’s imaginations don’t line up with yours.”

“So you need to know where your characters are and what your room looks like. That doesn’t seem too hard.”

Yongsun shrugged. “Maybe for some? People have different weaknesses, after all. I’ll admit that sometimes I’m not very good at using the space around my characters. It’s easy to get caught up in the action and the dialogue, and maybe you’re already picturing the setting in your head, but you forget to describe it. Or maybe you don’t want to describe it because it ruins the moment. That’s why I suggested writing things down earlier, because you’re holding entire worlds in your head, and within the worlds are photographs of time, place, and character, and you’re thinking about how to convey those photographs by painting a picture. I kind of think that writing is a lot more like painting than photography. I’m sure some photographers would disagree, but the point is that we are capturing tangible things and turning them into abstract things, and every part of that process is deliberate. Ah, I guess I’m getting a little off-topic now. Anyway, there are lots of ways that the setting can mess you up, but if you use it well, it can be a very powerful part of your story.”

“No, I think you’re right, unnie. I guess I can see that,” Byulyi said, picking up the bear drawing from the middle cushion. “I mean, we started with this vague kid’s drawing as our world, then we started thinking about it in different ways. Maybe if we added water here next to the bear the scenario would turn out differently. Ah! Maybe…maybe where Barbarian Hyejin lived or grew up will change her whole personality and change how she approaches the bear entirely. She could even be a whole different person! Woah…”

Yongsun shuffled over to the middle couch cushion, one arm wrapped around her knees and the other stretched out with her palm in the air. Byulyi lit up and brought her palm forward to meet Yongsun’s in a perfect high-five. “You got it,” Yongsun said with a grin.