How to Write Immersive Setting in your Fiction
Setting is a crucial part of story, but what is the best way to introduce and develop your setting so that it can also help develop your plot and your characters?
In this article I talk about why setting is important in story, what to consider as you craft your setting, and why specifics in setting are key.
Let’s hop to it!
Setting is made up of Time and Location (also referred to as space or place). Both Time and Location are critical points of information a reader needs to help ground them in your story. While some stories will move across many locations and spans of time, other stories will stay constant in one place and one time. This choice will depend on the kind of story you want to write.
Regardless, setting is always a part of your viewpoint character’s experience. This means that no matter where your story takes place, we should become familiar with that location/time through your viewpoint character’s unique understanding.
In other words, if your story takes place in a familiar location such as Boston, a school, or a baseball field, try to present that location through your viewpoint character’s personal worldview. This way, humdrum places are given an extra boost of special because we can experience the space according to your character’s viewpoint and not through what we might normally expect.
SETTING IS MORE THAN A STAGE YOU SET
Setting is a concrete, three-dimensional world that acts like the framework of your story. It’s more than just time and location. It’s a tool that can help deepen and amplify many elements in your work.
ESTABLISH TONE & MOOD
Setting can be used to create tone and mood from one page to the next.
UNDERSCORE TENSION
Setting can reflect or amplify tension in any given scene.
DEVELOP PLOT + CHARACTER
Setting is a wonderful tool to help develop your plots and deepen your characters.
PROVIDE CONTEXT
Setting helps to bring a deeper understanding of your story world through context and depth.
OTHER COMPONENTS OF SETTING
Aside from location and time (both of which can be broken down further into multiple sub-categories, such as geography for the former and seasons for the latter), you can make use of the following components to expand and deepen your setting:
-Culture
-Architecture
-Weather
-Other characters
-Animals
-Props
-Senses
All of the above is just a starting list, as they can all be broken down further into sub-categories. Using a variety of these components in every scene will help prevent your setting from solely being a backdrop.
HOW TO BEGIN CRAFTING YOUR SETTING
Setting is how we immerse our readers into our story world, and description of setting seems to be the most obvious place to start when we begin writing it. But it’s important to keep the following question in mind when you begin crafting your setting:
What is my setting’s purpose—not just in the overall arc of the story, but in every scene?
When we think about describing our setting, you want to remember that you’re describing it from the viewpoint of your main character (or, whichever lens we’re seeing the setting through). That means that description needs to be more than a laundry list of details.
Whenever possible, avoid description for the sake of description because it’s usually not active. Description of setting can absolutely paint a picture for your reader, but unless it’s serving a purpose in the sense of explaining why your character is here—now—then it will remain flat.
Start with description (because that’s usually pretty easy), and then inject that description with meaning and emotion to give your readers a sense of how important this scene is. You want your readers to feel what your character feels, to be right there with your character, sharing the experience as viscerally as possible.
This will help you establish your setting’s purpose.
Let’s take a common setting such as a kitchen in someone’s home. Kitchens are known symbolically as “the heart and the hearth,” and often this is where many a conversation will take place among family members or close friends.
While there’s nothing wrong with choosing the kitchen as your setting, the flaw to this choice is that your readers will automatically fill in the emotions and meanings as expected—because of what kitchens are traditionally known/used for. This can lead to a flat and predictable scene that lacks momentum and surprise.
If you have a kitchen (or other common location) in your story, ask yourself questions like the following:
How does the kitchen define your character’s mood, dissatisfaction of life, story goal, or personality? In what ways can you TWIST this definition so that it reveals something unexpected?
How does the kitchen set the tone and alert the reader to potential conflict? Are you going for the most unexpected detail? Why would your reader be intrigued by this detail?
What aspects of the kitchen can foreshadow a future event? Are they obviously planted, or are they hidden gems that your reader will look back on and admire your sleight of hand?
How does the kitchen set the stage for your character’s journey? In what ways can you bring forth images or motifs that symbolize your theme?
As a matter of fact, you can ask those questions of any setting you want to use in your story, mundane or not. When you can provide substantial answers, you’ll find that your beach, dance club, or courtroom will yield interesting surprises that you can use to enhance your plot and your characters.
THE IMPORTANCE OF SPECIFICITY IN SETTING
Describing your setting can be loads of fun—if you choose to be as specific as possible with engaging details. You don’t want to just give your readers any old town park that could mimic all other town parks in the world. You want to give your readers YOUR town park that YOUR characters interact with.
Specific details create a unique setting that can only exist in YOUR story world. Not only are your readers diving in and exploring that setting, they’ll be able to see how this particular setting is an absolute MUST in your character’s journey. Without this setting, your story would be different in ways that matter.
WRITING EXERCISE
Go through a page of your writing that includes setting and highlight any general, non-specific noun. Some examples include:
House, building, tree, room, car, road, town, clothing, food, animal, weather, person, noise, outside.
Ask yourself if you can swap out any bland word for something that can zoom us deeper into your character’s personal experience. You want to strive for unique, clear, and immersive. You also want to use words your viewpoint character would use, and describe them the way your viewpoint character would describe them. This will help you avoid sounding too “authorly.”
Even with locations we’re all familiar with (kitchen, office building, forest), we’re not familiar with the specific location that your character hangs out in. We want to be. That’s why we’re reading their story.
TROUBLE SPOTS OF SETTING TO WATCH OUT FOR
background
backstory
description
narrative summary
Background and backstory are necessary for grounding and orienting the reader. These two aspects can reveal time, space, character, mood, tone, and anything else that lays the foundation of your setting.
Description and narrative summary are necessary for deepening our understanding of your story as they can both fill in the gaps that background and backstory can’t.
However, we must consider momentum and pacing when we’re using any of these four general aspects of setting. You want to propel plot and character, but setting used incorrectly can become unwieldy and slow things down. Readers want action—not necessarily exploding buildings and speeding buses, but they want to see characters doing something.
Heavy setting that lies there, even though it’s meant to paint the picture, weighs down your character and plot.
Setting without action is wilted prose.
So how do we know when we’re written too much description or not enough background? How do we know what’s right and what’s wrong?
The best answer is it depends. Sorry. I know. Not helpful, but it’s true. Genre will make a huge difference when it comes to deciding how much is enough. Also, reader preferences. Even though there are specific guidelines to follow (such as I’ve outlined here), there are always exceptions. Your book may be one of them.
When in doubt, ask another writer, preferably one who is familiar with your genre and is clear on your storytelling goals. They’ll be able to help you figure out the best balance for your story.
DO YOU ENJOY WRITING SETTING?
WHAT TROUBLE AREAS DO YOU TEND TO RUN INTO WITH SETTING?
HAVE A WRITERLY DAY!