For Fiction Writers: Create a Lively Setting in Three Easy Steps

By Jennifer Mills Kerr

Too many writers neglect the magic of good setting. Many editors know that this is a missed opportunity, and a sign of an amateur writer. But this is easy to fix. In your fiction writing, you can create a lively setting through these three easy steps.

First, add sensory details. Visual images are good, but how about the sense of smell? Telling the reader that the man’s room smells of lavender and bleach says a lot. How about using touch/feel? If a character walks into a bar and feels the grit of sawdust under his boots, your reader will swoon with pleasure. I suggest you make a list for each of the five senses, and transcribe all the details of that place. Or better yet, take a field trip if you can to get a first-hand experience.

Second, look at the characteristics of the place. Are they gloomy, inviting, hopeless, claustrophobic, warm? Are there highs and lows of a tourist season? Do the characters endure hurricanes, earthquakes, a scorching summer heat that makes them pant? Use your setting to evoke a specific mood and environment. Think of this place as a person. A setting should be its own character in your story. If you think of well written novels, isn’t this the case? Can you imagine “Jane Eyre” without Thornfield Hall? Or Richard Russo’s novels without Upstate New York. Their stories can’t take place anywhere else.

Last, and most important, your character should be interacting with this place. Some people thrive on the overwhelming energy of a mall during Christmas time, others run for cover. Place in fiction creates the character’s mood, and it also reveals a lot about what kind of person s/he is. Is your character a recluse who enjoys the library? That’s expected. How about taking him to the beach at high season? Allow a different side of the character to be revealed in your story by using an interesting place.

It’s important that your setting is clear, but also that it’s unexpected. Cliches are boring. Why not write about an apartment in a New York City tenement house that’s welcoming and warm? Or that sweet steepled church at the end of the road that’s chilly all the time? If you find that your plot has gone soft, add new energy by putting the characters someplace new, someplace unusual and see what happens. A specific setting used in an unexpected way brings stories alive.

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