Creating a setting

By Joe Moore

To follow Kathryn’s blog yesterday on voice, let’s discuss another important element of your writing. You’ve got an idea for a story, maybe even a book-length project. You’ve developed a cleaver plot and a strong set of characters. Now comes one of the hardest parts to writing a short story or novel: the setting. The setting is integral to your story. You can’t split the two apart and expect to produce a believable piece of prose in which your readers can relate. Why? Because like real life, your characters don’t live in a vacuum. Just like all of us, your characters are constantly affected by their surroundings. For instance, how would your night scene be different if it took place in broad daylight? Rather than being hot and dry, what if it were raining? Would the weather and other natural elements change the drama of a scene? How would the setting make a scene spooky or funny or dangerous or calming?

Think of some classic scenes in your favorite books or movies and imagine them in different settings. Would they be as strong? Would Indiana Jones being chased down the streets of New York City by a big truck be as powerful as being chased by a giant rolling boulder through a cobwebbed ancient tunnel deep in the jungle? Would Clarice Starling’s interviews with Dr. Lecter have worked as well if it had taken place in a bright, chrome and white, modern prison rather than in the bowels of a dark, dungeon-like mental hospital prison? Beyond what your characters say and do, you must consider how their actions and reactions contrast or blend with their surroundings. And the best way to do that is to consider your setting as another character playing a part in the story. Setting is not just walls and doors and sky and grass, it’s how their surroundings interacts with your characters and their inner and outer actions and reactions to it.

Another element of setting is how characters live within it. By that I mean how they manage life such as eating, sleeping, and other natural human processes. Most of us are familiar with the highly successful TV series 24. Even within the twenty-four-hour premise of each season’s show, people still had to take a deep breath once in a while. While 24 is a rare exception, most novels span more than one day. So during the course of the story unfolding, writers must manage their human characters with time to eat or sleep or at least rest for a moment. If the pace is so intense that the characters never get a break, the reader will become fatigued. Thrillers and mysteries are often described as rollercoaster rides. But even the longest coaster ride has peaks and valleys. Give your reader and your characters a break now and then by using the elements of the story’s setting.

And don’t forget about the passage of time as being an element of the setting. How does time passing speed up or slow down the plot or pacing? Is your story’s passage of time realistic? Or is it too compressed or expanded to be believable. Remember, unless you’re H.G. Wells and your book is called The Time Machine, be sure to manage your story’s clock so that it doesn’t get in the way of the story and give the reader a reason to pause and question it.

Setting is more than the location in which your story takes place. It’s all the external elements that affect your characters and their goals and objectives. If you treat your setting as an additional character, chances are your story will be fully developed.

Can you think of a setting in a book our movie that was as much a part of the story as the characters? One that could not have taken place anywhere else? And what about your own writing. How do you approach the choice of setting?

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THE PHOENIX APOSTLES, coming June 8, 2011.
”An outstanding read!” – Douglas Preston