Writing vivid setting

Tips de escritura

Writing vivid setting: Mastering ‘place’

Day 1: The core elements of setting

 

Understanding the core elements of setting

Setting is the fascinating ‘where’ of stories. The magical forests, bustling cities, towering fortresses, and interstellar voyages. It’s also the ‘when’. You might want to write a regency romance set in the early 19th Century, or a futuristic dystopian epic set in another galaxy. The core elements of setting, then, are:

  • Place (geography, i.e. planets, continents, countries, cities, streets, mountains, caves, rivers, etc.)
  • Time (past, present and future, i.e. historical eras, seasons, days of the week, times of day)
  • Description: The unique elements (colours, sounds, textures, smells, atmospheres) that give settings their individual character
  • Mood: The overarching feeling evoked by a setting (for example the doom and gloom of Tolkien’s dark, sulfurous Mordor)

Both place and time include, besides the natural or built environment, society. The social rules and customs in a place and time contribute to how a setting affects characters.

In the most evocative and memorable settings, setting itself is almost a character. Like a person it might be bright and cheery, or glum and melancholic. In the next few days, we’ll explore ways to make your settings have these individual, intriguing qualities.

 

Writing vivid setting: Mastering ‘place’

Day 2: Time and your setting

 

  1. Use descriptive details to convey era, period, and season

An action as small as a character shaking snow from their coat gives your reader reference points for picturing what your world looks like. The crunch of red leaves underfoot could convey to your reader your story begins in fall.

If your story is set in pre-electrical times, for example, think about the technology your characters have available.

Descriptive details – from what people wear to what their homes look like inside – convey a lot about time period.

 

  1. Show the challenges and pleasures of your time period

The time of your story’s setting places constraints on characters.

Build the conveniences and inconveniences of your setting, your story’s time period, into your characters’ lives. Show the pleasures too.

 

  1. Show the effects of time’s passage on your setting

Showing the passage of time and how it changes setting can be as simple as having new apartment blocks or nightclubs appear in your character’s city. If your story takes place over multiple years, decades or even centuries, this is especially important. Tying the effect of time on setting to an emotional experience (returning home, for example) makes these changes impact your readers emotionally, too

 

 

Writing vivid setting: Mastering ‘place’

Day 3: Writing place: Geography and environment

 

Elements of place in setting

We can divide ‘place’ in setting into two broad (but overlapping) areas: Geography and environment. Geography in fiction includes everything you can plot on a map, for example:

  • Countries or smaller territories and their borders, routes, and landmarks
  • Distances and other differences (e.g. elevation, climate) between places

‘Environment’ includes not only the physical elements of place (climate, weather, mountains, plateaus) but also the social elements. We speak of characters’ ‘social environment’, how culture and society impact their decisions, and allow (or limit) their freedoms.

In the most memorable novels, geography and environment often have strong effects on characters. Often characters pass from countryside to city or vice versa, experiencing the challenges and surprises of different environments, for example. You’ll find the trope of the city slicker who has to cope with the ‘roughing it’ lifestyle of the country in many novels.

So how do you create a setting that feels rich with environmental and geographical diversity or variety?

  1. Create geographic landmarks that identify your setting

Many places are virtually synonymous with their landmarks. You only need to see a silhouette of the Golden Gate Bridge to know you’re looking at San Francisco, for example. Give your setting key places that convey its mood and atmosphere.

  1. Focus on geographic details relevant to plot and action

You don’t need to include every river, mountain or man-made landmark in your fictional world. Include the details relevant to your story.

Memorable settings from fiction such as these become parts of fan lore – sites of pilgrimage, even, for die-hard fans (when they are set in real-world places).

  1. Use geographic and environmental changes for contrast and intrigue

Movement and direction in stories create interest. If you’re especially creative, you can write a fascinating novel set in a single room or apartment block.

Think about changes in geography and environment and how they could affect your characters. In an adventure novel involving climbing a treacherous peak, for example, challenges would naturally increase as your characters get closer to the apex. It’s colder, more gruelling as they continue. The increase in tension and suspense (will they make it?) keeps your reader riveted.

 

 

Writing vivid setting: Mastering ‘place’

Day 4: Creating vivid setting description

 

The best setting descriptions achieve multiple things. They:

  • Convey tone and mood
  • Establish where events in a scene will take place, and important or interactive elements of characters’ surrounds
  • Create a sense of expectation, colouring the action that follows

So how do you make a setting vivid?

  1. Use the senses

Sight, sound, touch, smell, taste – these are all elements that enrich a setting and make it vibrant and specific.

  1. Create mood and atmosphere that conveys the feel of a place

‘Mood’ and ‘atmosphere’ are two aspects of setting we’ll explore in more detail tomorrow. For the time being, think about the details that make settings feel either bright and cheerful or bleak and menacing. Bright colours vs ashen grey tones; peaceful sounds (e.g. murmuring streams) versus unsettling ones (strange rattlings and thumps).

  1. Use setting description to reveal details about viewpoint characters

Setting description is useful for characterization. What your narrator or POV character sees and describes in their surrounds tells us about their values, their judgments, loves, fears.

 

 

Writing vivid setting: Mastering ‘place’

Day 5: Characterful setting: Tone and mood

 

What are mood and tone?

The mood of a place gives us the general feel of it. A darkening graveyard may be an eerie place compared to the peaceful serenity of a candle-lit banqueting hall. The tone of your writing – the adjectives and verbs you choose, the objects you focus on, contributes to the overall mood of your scene setting.

So how do you create strong tone and mood?

  1. Use expressive adjectives
  2. Reveal mood through characters’  feeling about their surrounds
  3. Play with shifting your setting’s tone and mood as characters change

 

 

By Bridget @ Now novel.