Settings often have an undervalued place in our stories. Too often, they seem to be relegated to generic background noise in a scene.
How do most of us choose a setting for a scene? If you’re writing a science fiction novel, you might spend more time world-building and planning out your setting than in planning your characters. Good for you! But for many authors, the reverse is true. The setting is less important (they think) than the characters and conflicts they’re cooking up, so their settings take a back seat.
Most of us are guilty of this at some point, I think. We want to get to the action or dialogue or character-building right away, so we set our scene in… the first place that comes to mind. It’s often an everyday place, like the character’s kitchen, or school, or office. The front seat of a car as they’re driving somewhere is a popular choice. Coffee shops. Restaurants. Bars with cheap beer and information-dispensing bartenders are customary, too.
Too often, we choose our settings because they’re familiar to us, they’re universal to just about everyone’s experience, and they’re easy.
“Easy” is a clue. They were the first location that popped into our head. But is that good enough?
Why do characters so often have deep, meaningful conversations at the kitchen table or in the front seat of a car? Sure, that’s where we Americans often have those types of conversations in real life. But just because lots of people do it that way in real life doesn’t make it exciting. In fact, it can start to have the opposite effect in fiction: a commonplace setting can lull readers into a sense of complacency. Do those ordinary, commonplace locations really add to the atmosphere of the conversation the way you want? Do those ordinary settings help amp up the tension in the scene or are they only slightly better than a gray void?
In other words, are those settings so familiar they’ve lost their impact?
Let’s say you’re writing about a couple who suspect each other of infidelity. They could confront each other in their kitchen, or… perhaps you can find a different location that might intensify the suspicion, friction, passion, or even danger between them. Perhaps a ski lift? Or a crowded audience at their kid’s recital? At the animal shelter while they’re supposed to be trying to socialize a scared rescue dog? Mid-air on a plane being diverted to Billings, Montana, because of a mechanical failure?
Choosing a setting that’s a little out of the ordinary can boost the atmosphere and emotions in your scene.
Another issue with settings is repetition. I’ve read books where important things happen in the same location over and over throughout the book. After the fourth time the protagonist has an argument in the boss’s office, all the arguments start to sound the same. Why can’t they have an argument in the VIP lounge at the basketball game? Or at a “volunteer day” service project at the local Habitat for Humanity construction project, where they both have hammers in their hands and curious onlookers are watching?
As you’re writing (or revising) your novel, consider all your settings. Ask yourself if the settings you’ve chosen seem too ordinary or expected or if you’ve used the same setting in multiple scenes for no reason other than it was the first place you thought of.
Would your story be strengthened with new locations, or even the same location but with a difference (different time of day, empty vs full of people, busy during business hours vs abandoned during a power outage)? If a character is mostly homebound, can they at least move to the backyard, or go to the dentist’s office, or maybe get taken out of the house for a scenic drive or a trip to the hair salon or grocery store?
To get your ideas flowing, take a few minutes to brainstorm potential settings. Jot down any ideas, from ordinary (in the character’s office at work?) to different (backstage at a Cirque de Soleil performance?) to downright wacky (aboard a UFO, surrounded by scary devices with probes?). Consider:
- Where do your characters live and what circumstances might send them out of their routine?
- What places are you familiar with and could write about confidently, such as a concert hall’s backstage area, a school cafeteria’ kitchen, a ski patrol hut, an auto garage, a submarine, or a nail salon?
- Think about where your character works, where they relax, where they’ve vacationed, where they grew up, etc. Mine those ideas for possible settings.
Then write (or rewrite) a scene in that location. Did the setting make a difference?
Finally, file that list in your “Ideas” folder. Even if you don’t use them now, they might be perfect settings for a future story.
Once you start thinking of settings as tools to enhance your scenes with atmosphere, tension, conflict, or character revelations, they’ll step up to the challenge, and you’ll be glad you did. So will your readers!
[Photo by Jake Givens on Unsplash]
Kelley J. P. Lindberg writes YA and adult fiction, magazine articles, essays, and how-to books. Her fiction and essays have appeared in literary magazines such as The Baltimore Review, Wilderness House Review, and The Citron Review; in anthologies including Bizarre Bazaar, This Isn’t the Place, and Journeys into Possibility; and in the Tellables app for Amazon Alexa. When she isn’t writing, she’s traveling as far and as often as she can. Visit her at www.KelleyLindberg.com or follow her on BlueSky, X, and Instagram at @KelleyLindberg1.