Bring Your Story to Life through Believable Setting

Setting, the time and place of your story, is an element that brings to life not just the scenery but also the characters. You want to pay attention to your detail to make sure that it does something more than simply describe the area where the scene or the whole story takes place.

In this article I discuss the basics and components of setting to help you bring your story to life and create a believable world that your readers want to dive straight into.

Let’s hop to it!

PURPOSE OF SETTING

Your setting is your opportunity to ground your reader before making them want to plunge right in so they’re part of your story world. Not only should place, time, and cultural events help set your story apart from others, they should also influence your characters’ behaviors, moods, traits, actions, and choices.

Setting can also be used to affect reader emotions and expectations. If we choose to read a romance set during WWII, there will be certain aspects of that era we’ll come to expect in the pages, certain emotions we anticipate to feel—certainly, our expectations will differ if we choose to read a thriller set in 1900s Australia.

Your choice of setting directly impacts your book on multiple levels, so be sure you’re choosing the best time and place that will maximize reader engagement.

MAJOR ASPECTS OF SETTING

PLACE

Where does your story begin? Does it evolve in the same place? What other places do you include? Where does it end?

Place will include anything from the planet your characters are conquering, to the city they’re protecting, to the fields they’re torching, to the church they’re hiding out in, to the ballpark they’re winning games in, to the sea where they’re stranded, to the kitchen where they’re practicing for a baking contest.

Any physical location is your “place” of setting. Most stories involve multiple settings, from cars, to grocery stores, to schools, to bedrooms, to swimming pools.

GEOGRAPHY + WEATHER

The details of your place include geography and weather. The way your places look should include animal/plant life, rivers, mountains, borders, forests, ponds—and what kind of weather patterns come through.

Can you have too many or too few “places”? Yes. Yes, indeed. Not something to worry about in your rough draft, but it’s a good idea to make a list of all the places where your story happens, and ask yourself if you’ve chosen wisely. If at any time, you can use one place for multiple jobs, do it. You get so much more depth and richness from your story when you can show a place’s value from varying perspectives.

TIME

Not only should you know the time period of your story, you might also need to know the days of the week that certain events occur, or perhaps what the span of months are, or what hour of the day two characters battle it out in front of a saloon.

Time grounds your reader because this is how we are able to track your story against our own knowledge of world events. Even genres like fantasy and science fiction use time to help define cultural events, political systems, agriculture, and advances in technology.

SEASONS

Seasons could legit be added to the Weather sub-category, but because modern society marks seasons by a calendar rather than by a geographical or meteorological signpost, then seasons tend to be considered time-based. However, if it’s easier for you to assign it under “weather” go for it!

CULTURE

Culture is represented in setting because it covers a wide range of daily living practices that differ from region to region. Customs, traditions, laws (including magic systems), national holidays, education, technology, social systems, history, family systems, transportation, political systems, agriculture, prejudices/biases, financial systems all fall under culture.

Elements within any culture need to be organized on a world/national level all the way down to a family or individual level.

ARCHITECTURE

The buildings and physical constructions (bridges, roads, boundaries, etc.) in your story lend to setting by impacting the mood of your story, as well as marking origin of time and place. Be mindful about research if you’ve chosen a setting that exists or has existed. Architecture, like everything else, evolved with time, so you want to be sure your descriptions and how people interacted with the architecture are accurate.

PROPS

Your scenes will be flatter than Flat Stanley if you don’t include props. These are the physical objects that bring your setting to life and further ground your reader in the truth of your story. Characters should interact with their surroundings, such as picking up broken pieces of a plate, caressing a weapon, petting a stray dog, biting into a mouth-watering pepperoni pizza. There is a point where props can interfere with the story though, so be sure to add them in wisely and with purpose.

BACKGROUND CHARACTERS

These are the unnamed, barely described characters that work your setting for you. The cashiers in the market, the policeman holding back the crowd, the crowd being restrained by the policeman, the students milling in the hallway between classes. You need them to enliven and enrich your setting.

Sometimes, one of these characters might vie for a bigger role than the guy who pumps the gas, and maybe there’s a good reason for it. Like the spokesperson for the collective. Totally depends on your story. When you run into exceptions like that, it’s okay to go with the flow and see where it takes you. Just be sure that character isn’t trying to steal the show!

OVERLAPPING OF ELEMENTS

There are a lot of elements that could fall under more than one category. For example, Transportation is listed under Culture, but it could easily be filed under Architecture or Geography. It really depends on how these elements are being used in your story.

The easiest way to go about defining your setting is to list all the details that appear, even if it’s just once, in your story. Then ask yourself how they function in your story. If, for example, your train system is limited to North-South routes because of an impassable mountain range on the west, then it would stand to reason this particular component of Transportation should be filed under Geography instead of Culture.

When you know your story inside and out, and the reasons behind all your decisions, you’ll have a much easier time framing your setting so that it’s believable and plunge-worthy for your reader.

CHECKLIST OF SETTING CONSIDERATIONS:

• Choose setting wisely—make sure it actually fits your genre, characters, and plot.

• You’ll be describing your setting through your POV character’s judgment, which can reflect back on that character. Setting can work to reveal more about your character that your character might not be able to do on their own.

• Setting is a wonderful tool to affect mood.

• You can have multiple settings, but be sure that each one you use is necessary. Setting should be chosen based on the needs of your story.

• Setting is as broad as location and as specific as props. Each scene can provide deeper detail and new information depending on how it’s used.

• Think about other elements of setting that may fit your story: culture, political system, social system, architecture, technology, holidays, financial system, commerce and trade, defense/military, agriculture, etc. Don’t include mention of such aspects if they don’t impact or influence your story—but don’t miss an opportunity to enhance your setting if any of these categories could be used in some way.

• Use the five senses in your setting to help bring it to life.

• Be consistent with setting and make sure your characters interact with certain aspects of the physical locations they’re hanging out in.

For those writers of non-fiction, memoir, and blogs—setting is a huge part of your writing. Use a variety of setting aspects to help connect readers to your experience.