Writing Great Fiction

Setting to Evoke Time and Movement
z Setting can also be used to evoke the passage of time and the movement
of characters through a landscape. Tolkien is especially skillful at
evoking the geography
of Middle Earth—in part,
simply because he delights
in evoking the natural
world but also because
these passages literally slow
the narrative down, which
has the effect of evoking
the slow passage of the
characters, moving on foot
through a vast and often
spectacular landscape.
o A passage in
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in which Frodo
and Sam pass
through the land
of Ithilien evokes
both the vastness
of the landscape
through which they
are moving and
their own sense
of wonder at it.
The fact that the reader is required to slow down during this
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the slowness of their journey.

o Among other techniques, the passage effectively shifts

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mountains as “a long curve that was lost in the distance,” but

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and cedar and cypress.” Finally, we see individual harbingers

In a chase scene, Rosemary Sutcliff

skillfully evokes both motion and the

landscape of the Scottish highlands with

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of bog.”

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