Road to WriMo 2017: Setting

There has been a slight change in our programming schedule for the month. Have no fear, the Storytime post that was to be on October 5th has been delayed only for a short time and will now appear on November 3rd. Instead, to help prepare those of you who are about to embark on NaNoWriMo, I will be posting a series of blogs I have previously published about writing. This post first appeared in October of 2015 and has been updated with new information. 

How many really great stories have you read where the characters interacted with a living world around them? How many tales have been spun where the world is just as memorable as the characters? Have you ever completed reading a book in a series only to jump right into the next one, excited to see what you will find next? Many young writers will make the mistake of treating their setting as if it were just a background. A fanciful picture hung on the wall, out of the way of the real action. Today I wanted to start off by talking about setting and why it is so very important to your novel.

What are we talking about when we talk about setting? It is simply the world, country, city or building in which a story is told. That is however, it’s most basic definition; your story’s setting can be much, much more than that. Think of the social norms that dictate our interactions with one another, that too is part of a book’s setting. The time period and accepted scientific or religious beliefs can also be part of the setting. So to the political climates of the day, the technology or magic that makes peoples lives comfortable (or uncomfortable). Setting encompasses everything the characters will interact with, everything they will smell and see and do. A setting is much more than just a location; it is a whole world contained within that location.

A story’s setting influences everything around your characters and your characters themselves. Let’s think about our own world, the suburbs of Atlanta, the South side of Boston and the streets of Mortimer NC, are all very different locations just on the eastern coast of America. The differences in these settings would have a staggering impact on your story and characters. A character who is black and gay will behave differently in Atlanta than MortimeR due to the setting they find themselves in. All of your characters will act differently, depending on where they are at, and where they are from. The setting is not just a passive backdrop for the story to be told, it is an active participant in shaping how your characters behave and go about their lives.

Setting shapes not only the physical world but the customs and interactions of its inhabitants. A story set in Atlanta in 1996 will be very different than one set in 1864. The background of events, the things that matter to the people living there, even the social interactions between whites and blacks will vary greatly between these two time periods. If you aren’t writing a modern story, then you will need to look into the goings on of the people of the time period you are writing about. Even if you are writing a modern story you still need to know what matters to the people who are there. No story set in the 80’s would be complete without neon colors and big hair, and those items would never appear in a story set seventy years ago. Even if you are working with a fictional world it is important to know at least some random facts of history that shaped the population that live there. These lend weight to a world, a history, a past, that gives rise to its actions.

Setting is also not just limited to the time and location of your story. There is another element of setting that will have a huge impact on your characters and that is the social norms that govern society. Everyday we make a thousand decisions based off of the societal norms we were raised with. Every society has its own unspoken rules for proper behavior. A master servant relationship from the early 1900’s will be different than an employer employee relationship of more modern times. Some norms dictate who we can and can’t talk to, who would be acceptable marriage partners, who are the haves and who are the have nots. This is also part of your setting. As your characters communicate with one another they are navigating a whole unseen world of social interaction.

Your setting is much more than just a passive background unrelated to your work, it is vital to how your book plays out. Your characters aren’t just standing in front of a backdrop they are navigating through the setting both physically, figuratively and socially. Your plot will hinge upon having the right setting so that the interactions of your characters are seen as relevant and not wholly out of place. The world your characters live in should be as real and solid as the world we live in, and that is hard to pull off if you don’t give it a thought until you are knee deep into your novel. So don’t ignore it or put it off, develop it like you would a character. It has a past, it has motives and it has repercussions on what can and can’t be done by your characters. This week let’s take a moment to pause and consider where your story will take place, after all you and your characters are about to spend a great deal of time there!