How to Write the Setting of a Book

Readers love to imagine themselves in a different place. The more sensory detail you contribute helps to place the reader firmly in the story, following along with a hero or heroine or villain. Often a trip to the locale where the actual takes places is helpful to root readers familiar with the area into believing the author's expertise. The key to writing setting is to make it clear and not intrusive.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Photographs
• Reference Books
• Maps
• Notebook
• List of Unique Places
• List of Unique Modes of Transport
• List of time(s) and seasons

1. 
   Use a Map to Define the Scope of Your Novel

   Identify the full scope of your setting i.e. the furthest extant in which the action will take place.
   
   Using a map of the area can help identify specific features where different scenes will take place. Depending on the story, the full scope of your setting my include just a house or room, an entire town, an entire state or province, an entire continent, the world or even the whole universe.
   
   Action : Build a list of novel places important to telling your story

2. Research the setting for each scene and document the details.
   
   Make your novel setting rich with as many places as possible and use a map or sketch or photograph to provide details, see the next steps for more details. Plan to write each scene from a different place in your setting. If your story is limited to a house, make sure that you vary your scenes from room to room. If your setting takes place in a city, include both well known places and unique places that only locals are likely to know.

3. Take a photograph of a specific place you use in a scene.
   
   If your story takes place somewhere you know, take a photograph of the place. Alternatively, search online for photographs of an area you've never visited to get a sense of the place. This step is useful as long as the place where you novel occurs is real.
   
   Action: build a sketch or find or take a photograph for the first time you visit a place in the novel.

4. 
   Drawing Skill isn't Required to Build a Rough Map Sketch of a Apartment

   Build a map of rooms, gardens and other places you are making up.
   
   The purpose of a map is to show where you can see outside, to ensure that your character always walks up three steps when they enter their home. Maps eliminates errors. With a room map, you know whether your character is feeding fish in the livingroom or kitchen.
   
   Action : build a map for your scene for the first visit in the novel.

5. 
   Reference Books Help Make A Setting Unique

   Research the details of a place and find specifics that enrich the setting with sensory data.
   
   Use reference materials to help explain what color of leaves the elm turns in fall, to select a style of livingroom that cues readers who the characters are, and again, to not make mistakes.
   
   Action : provide a list of specifics to include in each scene.

6. Write the scene setting.
   
   The setting for a scene is what the character sees. When entering a room, show the specifics that place every object of importance in the place and its extent and explain why they are of importance. Use the list of specifics, map, photographs and the like as input.

7. Write the scene sensory details.
   
   Sensory details are what the character hears, smells, tastes, touches as well as sees. Is someone cooking? Is there a church nearby with a bell that tolls? Does the character's legs stick to the plastic couch?

8. Write the character's emotional state into the scene details.
   
   Characters feel. As the story progresses, the character will see different places differently. If scared, shadows and startling noises come into play. If the character is intent on love making, everything in the setting contributes i.e. the couch will be soft, grass tickle. If the character is angy, everything will seem like a weapon, the book edge weighty, the lamp smashable.

9. Edit the scene's setting.
   
   Setting in a scene should not intrude on the story. Instead it should support the story. Feed out the details of the setting in small bunches starting from the biggest perspective to the littlest -- show the door or walls to a room before you show the table or soccer ball sitting in the corner.

10. Check you scene setting for uniqueness.
    
    Number the facts in your scene setting. Verify that you don't repeat the same detail five times. Find a different way of saying the same thing by using it as a point of sensory information.
    
    Example: The character is on a beach with sand and waves crashing. To reuse the waves, instead use foam from the wave sticking to the character's shoe, the sting of salty air, or the pelican splashing down for a fish. To reuse the beach, include the crunch of a clam shell, the wind whipping sand into the characters eyes, the beach ball bumping into the character's head.

11. Check that your character interacts with the scene setting.
    
    Instead of using a dialogue tagline, i.e. "she said", provide details about the setting by allowing the character to spill the coffee beans, fluff the pillow, throw the channel changer.

12. Check that at every sense is used in the scene.
    
    An Italian restaurant setting can be indicated by the smell of garlic, the clink of wine glasses, a character bumping his head on a pizza tray carried by a waiter, the red and white check tablecloth, or the taste of rosemary olive oil on bread.

Tips & Warnings

• Useful books to use when writing setting include travel guides, garden books, guides to wildlife and birds, home decorating manuals.
• If writing a historical book, look for paintings from the era instead of photographs. Also look for clothing books and guides to inventions.
• If writing a science fiction book, look for engineering documentation.
• Keep track of seasonal and time specific details for places.
• Limit the number of scenes that take place in a bedroom, restaurant or kitchen. Readers like unusual action and that means unusual places.
• Don't start every scene with setting unless the setting hooks the reader or transitions from another scene.
• Keep the setting tuned to the genre. Don't have all your setting occur in pastel if you're writing a horror. Gently increase the shadowing and gloom and creepy features as the story ensues.
• Don't clutter a scene with unnecessary setting details that never come into play in the story.
• Check that your characters interact with the setting every three lines or so.

Resources

• Must have Books for Writing the Bestselling Novel

[Rockney]

on 8/18/2009 great article! 5*!