Setting: Character and Setting – Complementary Factors
Good afternoon, writers.
I’d like to kick off our discussion of setting by addressing one of my favorite aspects of the subject. Setting is inextricably related to character. This shows up in two ways.
First, the characters you populate your story with have to fit into the world you’ve put them into. For example, your southern belle heroine won’t ring true if you put her in the Great White North without explaining why she’s there. Geography and culture manifest themselves in many of the aspects of our characters. On an external level, setting shows up in speech patterns, word choice, and vocal inflection. On an internal level, setting expresses itself through values characters of certain areas or cultures share and talents people in certain areas learn that others don’t (think skiing).
Second, setting provides an opportunity for you as a writer to showcase and develop your characters in the eyes of the reader in an interesting and relevant way. For example, say you’ve got a hero who you want to demonstrate his love for the heroine. There are many ways you can do this, but some are more interesting than others. You could have him declare his love, buy her something nice, or show him practicing what he’ll say to her (among may others). Or you can do something that brings the reader back to an awareness of the setting. For example, you could give the hero a fear of snakes and then have him face the snakes in a Louisiana bog to save her later.
So why is it important to give the reader such a distinct awareness of setting? I mean, where your story happens isn’t nearly as important as WHAT happens and WHO it happens to, right? I’d make two arguments for setting. First, the reader is always looking for a unique experience. We don’t like stories that blend together with the others in their genre and seem predicable. A unique setting helps orient the reader to the here-and-now of YOUR story and keep them engaged. Second, unique setting are interesting to readers. We all wonder about places we’ve never been and people we’ve never met. A well-written setting can draw us in and keep us turning pages as surely as a well-crafted scene.
There it is, my argument for focusing on setting. With that said, I’m not a big fan of thinking about setting in my writing. I find it hard to discern which details create a more complete world and which are just superfluous description. So I’ll end this post with a question:
What are your favorite techniques for developing setting? Do you write “what you know”? How to you research places you’ve never been? What is your favorite example of setting-done-right? Why did you love it so much?
