How to Create Setting in Fiction
A sense of place and time is essential to good fiction, whether that place is a bookshop in Victorian England or a factory in a Martian colony in the year 2400. The reader becomes immersed in a story which is anchored somewhere that can be pictured, in a time that at least brings forth a vague idea of yesterday or tomorrow in the mind. Where and when a character lives will dictate much of his or her action and thought, so that creating a setting becomes not simply an afterthought but an integral part of a work of fiction.
- Difficulty:
- Moderate
Instructions
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1
Start (before beginning your story) by deciding upon and then clearly stating your setting in detail. Write a couple of sentences which you can constantly come back to as your definitive idea. For example, “The story will take place in the invented town of Martinsville, Maine, between the years of 1945 and 1947. Martinsville, Maine, is actually based on the town of Bartlesville, Maine.”
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2
Research the “where” of your setting to provide you with enough detail to enrich your story in a way that will put the reader right there. You might want to talk to people who live(d) in the town where your story is set, you might want to read newspapers from that town, and you might want to go there yourself and walk around for a couple of days. Take copious notes. In the case of a place for which you cannot do any of those things—ancient Rome, for example--do some hard research, not only for major facts but for details as well: How did the people get their food and water? What was the average person's daily routine? In the case of an imaginary setting, literally sketch it out on large sheets of paper; draw in lots of details.
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3
Find as much information as you can about the time in which you are setting the story. Make sure you have chosen exactly the right time for your story to unfold. World War II in France is too vague—was it the end of the war or the beginning? If your story takes place in the present day, during what months will the story take place?
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4
Avoid putting all the information about the setting of the story in one place. Spread details throughout the story. Perhaps the reader learns early on that the story takes place in Iowa because a policeman notices the license plates are local. Perhaps later a character is reading a copy of the Des Moines Register—while sweating profusely under a large tree. We have now gotten to the exact town and time of year: it’s summer. Later, a character says something like, “When the Great War ended three years ago, I thought . . .” And now we know the year is 1922.
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5
Add details to give emphasis to the setting: “Nan was listening to Elvis’ newest release.” “The gleaming living quarters on the planet had been completely modernized since the first colonists landed twenty years earlier.”
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1
Tips & Warnings
Using any anthology of short stories, go through with a highlighter and mark passages where the authors inject setting into the stories.
