Many writers focus on their characters or their plot. Fantasy and science fiction writers will create fantastic and intricate settings that are shown off over the course of their books, like a fancy car they have to show all their friends. But where’s the middle ground? Setting is the stage for all of your plot to take place; your characters are interacting with their environs at all times whether it’s paid much attention or not.
How often do mysteries or thrillers take place at night? That’s part of your setting, right there. The burnt-out lightbulb, the scent of something burning, indeed many of the clues in a whodunit story are provided by the setting. Would the famous scene from Romeo and Juliet where she’s on her balcony and he comes to call on her secretly work in broad daylight? Not particularly stealthy. Thus ends the tale of Romeo and Juliet, never having gotten off the ground, as he’s attacked for sneaking into the grounds of the Capulet family’s abode and stealing close to Juliet, their sainted (and virginal) daughter. The end.
Setting a dramatic scene at a family gathering, such as a holiday meal, immediately gives the reader context. Family engagements come with family drama, there’s always someone who doesn’t want to be as genial as others, maybe a black sheep of the family, maybe someone with a new life event (job, relationship, etc.) that gets talked up whether they are embarrassed or not. All of this is added to the scenery just by stating that your character is going to a holiday dinner. It doesn’t even have to be a real-world holiday, you could make up a holiday that’s specific to a fantasy world or alternate reality… the context still applies.
Suburbia versus inner city. Nearby people speaking more Spanish than English. What music is played on the boombox of the kids playing outside. Small changes can tweak the reader’s perception of the locale without bringing direct attention to it. So the key question is really, have you made the most of your setting choices?
Avoid Lazy Setting Decisions
That may sound obvious, but it’s harder than it might seem. For me, if I’m thinking about writing something realistic, I almost automatically am thinking about suburbia. I grew up in such a setting, I’m familiar with it, and I’m comfortable writing there. (I just did, in fact, with a story last week.) I promptly chose a different character for my next story, because I was somewhat bored with my story set in suburbia.
Question your choices. Did you consciously choose to set the scene where you’re imagining it? Is it simply there because you’re comfortable with the locale? Is this the easiest place to set the scene, or the best place? Consider shifting any scene that’s merely convenient until you have the perfect place. If you set the scene at a bar, will having readily available alcohol affect the way the scene plays out? How would it affect the story if you set it at a park bench instead, where a character can then bemoan not having a drink?
The other keyword to avoid is arbitrary. Arbitrarily setting a scene at a fancy dinner party because you need the character to be in public while they chat up the antagonist is actually adding a lot of minor characters and interruptions (“Can I get you another glass of wine, sir?”). Would having them meet on a street corner work as well, and allow the two to focus on one another with all the distractions remaining in the background? You have other minor characters who can be involved as needed on a street corner just as much as in the dinner party, but without guaranteed conversation being attempted or interruptions being made. Figure out what the purpose of the setting is, and then make sure you haven’t created extra work for yourself.
It’s okay if this isn’t something you innately are conscious of. Most of us aren’t. I’m still struggling with the setting of my first chapter because the first scene simply didn’t work. The settings that come to mind are mutually exclusive, and each would have only some of the information I need to convey to bring the reader into my fantasy setting. So I’m still searching for the right setting. If this happens after your first draft, don’t worry, it can still be done. It’s just easier if you think about it before you start writing.
Worldbuilding
A quick note about worldbuilding. Some writers build their settings as sweeping epic landscapes full of strange creatures and beautiful vistas, all of which they later struggle to include in their text. There’s nothing wrong with this, precisely, but be aware how much you have to explain to your reader, often in the first few pages.
I am not going to try and tell you how to build your setting from scratch; if you’re a worldbuilder, you probably have that well in hand. If you don’t, perhaps consider aspects of your favorite genre fiction. Are there other races, as in Tolkien’s work? Are they all human but they have superpowers? This might be a good place for another list of your favorite elements and perhaps a list of things that bore you, so you can choose to build your setting accordingly.
There’s simply too much on the topic of worldbuilding for me to cover it all in this blog post. I’ll try to get an article written later on, but I won’t have time before NaNoWriMo starts on November 1st. For now, I’ll point you to Janice Hardy’s blog, where she describes the differences between setting and worldbuilding, and how each affects the other. I will also direct would-be Tolkiens-in-training to this blog post about the strengths of Tolkien’s process and how that affects (or should affect) those desirous of emulating him.
How Much to Include
I like this article by Jody Hedlund that has broken it down into some basic steps that can be kept in mind while you’re writing. Some of this is just good advice on description, such as using all five senses. That’s not setting specific, precisely, but it is most often applicable to the sights, sounds, and smells around whichever character is narrating. I find the most interesting details that stand out to me are often the ones that are based on the other, lesser-used senses: taste and touch. Is a perfume so strong the character can taste it? When they remove their gloves, does the scene change in some small way, as they find the dust on the desk, or the roughness of the worn wood beneath it?
Many of you may be familiar with Chekhov’s Gun—a dramatic principle that states that every element in a story must be necessary, and irrelevant elements should be removed. Elements should not appear to make “false promises” by never coming into play. “If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.” I might hedge a little on this one for writing instead of theatre, simply because a gun display says something about the character that owns it, but if that character is already established, if the gun display provides no new information, then I agree with Chekhov. This is a critical line to draw for anyone trying to describe but at risk of putting too much into their scene, for both too many and too few details will disrupt the flow of the story. Have you described the parts of the scene that matter? You can’t have a character pick up a cookie and eat it later on if you haven’t established either a plate of cookies or at least the smell of cookies baking. With the latter, at least the reader isn’t surprised when cookies arrive later, but you’d still need to include that arrival. No cookies out of thin air, please. (Actually, if you are capable of making cookies out of thin air, let me know. I have a job offer for you.)
It can be hard to differentiate between what’s detailed enough without being overwritten, and it takes practice. First drafts for most of us rarely get it right, no matter how long you’ve been writing. (Perhaps authors like John Grisham may have it down, but I’ll admit no familiarity with such levels of talent.) In first chapters, especially, but any new setting location needs to be described well enough to ground the reader without throwing too much at them, and then add details to give the focus to what you want them to take away, rather than what speaks to them.
Your Task, Should You Choose To Accept It…
This week, go back through any notes you’ve made about setting. If you haven’t made any, brainstorm. How many of your scenes have to be set somewhere in particular? Develop those settings with sights, sounds, and smells that you can use in both your first description of the area and in later, shorter descriptions as you interact with the setting.
From the few must-have places, brainstorm some alternatives. What’s the transitional place between place A and place B? Is there a street the character must walk down, or a highway they must drive along? Transitional places may not be settings for entire scenes, but there’s something to be said for a scene that starts with a phone call in the car on the way home, because the main character is running late. What sounds might be audible to the other caller on the phone? Transitional settings are also great idea fuel, because interruptions of routine can be as telling as dramatic conflict. I really enjoyed a moment in It’s a Good Day to Die Hard, where a random comment about traffic patterns during a taxi ride turns into a clue later on for Bruce Willis’ character Jon McLean to realize something’s up. In addition to transitional settings, alternative settings might be the back yard instead of the living room of the main character’s house, or the captain’s cabin instead of the bridge of a starship. Similar, yes, but they add slightly different tone, have slightly different sensory stimuli, and even different etiquette.
After broadening your setting thoughts with alternatives and transitory places, go back to the characters and any scenes you may have planned and pick out places which would add tension for that character (at their ex’s favorite cafe, or a job site they were fired from) or to those scenes (a robbery right next to the police station). Can you change any of your setting decisions based on these thoughts? Do any of these add the right level of tension for the scene? Anything that makes a scene too tense can be thrown out, because there are scenes that deserve to be relaxed. But many scenes need some sort of conflict driving the story forward, and these minor changes can add a level of tension that keeps things moving.
Marie Efromson 
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