Setting - Finding Your Fiction: Concise Steps to Writing Successful Fiction

Look for previous hubs in the series, "Finding Your Fiction: Concise Steps to Writing Successful Fiction" titled Introduction, Plot, Character, Point of View, Dialogue, and Style. This page, like others in this series, are derived from my Louis Writers Workshop and St. Louis Writers Guild "Finding Your Fiction" workshop. The next Hub will be the conclusion. The complete series will be published as an an ebook, likely on Smashwords and Kindle.

Setting is character. Almost everything that applies to character applies to setting.

Science Fiction and Fantasy often rely on unique settings. However, setting is no less important for realism, romance, commercial, literary, women’s fiction, and so on. A teenage girl can confront organized crime in the hills of Missouri, the slums of Chicago, on Mars, Pluto, or in a parallel universe. "Any setting can potentially acquire this vividness. It slowly arrives during the period of research, until it is as immediate to me as my own real surroundings." -- Rose Tremain

Creating Your Setting:
1. Choose a familiar place
2. Research unfamiliar locations
3. Create your own world
Or, combine familiar places with unfamiliar locations and create your own world.

Better to give too little than too much. Choose specific details that will help readers form their own image. Of course classics such as Charles Dickens "Tale of Two Cities" (or almost any eighteenth-century novel) can take several pages to "set the stage" for the action. Most modern readers, however, expect the setting to blend into the action. Your characters should interact with the environment, each with their unique perspective.

Example A
The four-foot high metal railing was painted black, bordered the apartment courtyard, and was bolted into the concrete with three-quarter inch bolts. The concrete was cracked. Past the railing was an open field full of weeds, some rye grass, and some bluegrass, and a bare spot of dirt where a structure must have stood at one time but was gone. The wind was blowing from the North at 20 miles per hour and Canadian Geese with their gray and white fluff and distinctive beaks flew over the field. A fluffy white cloud drifted in the blue sky which made it look warm but the temperature was 32 degrees. The landscape was dark and the day gave the impression of being undecided on whether to be spring or still winter.

Example B
She leaned against the wobbly railing and looked up at the old apartment building - three stories, L-shaped, yellow brick with streaks of dirt stained down its walls like permanent black tears. The sun broke through the clouds. Self-pity, she thought, was getting her nowhere. Time to go. She leapt over the railing and ran, splashing through the muddy vacant lot, nearly falling but determined to go on.

Activity: Look around you right now and list objects quickly. Create a scene with the first three objects (or observations) using a first person narrative with yourself as the main character. Use the same three objects, or others further down your list, to create a scene with someone else as character.

I was going to be self-indulgent by providing the opening to my novella "Cynthia and the Blue Cat’s Last Meow," which adequately demonstrates the importance of setting. (And it sets up the conclusion to "Finding Your Fiction: Concise Steps to Writing Successful Fiction.") However, I had forgotten that I had provided it online at one point, and therefore the hub was rejected by Hubpages. However, I was able to include the first paragaph.  (I apologize for the potential inconvience, and intend to include the entire passage in the ebook.)

Cynthia’s cabin is nestled among trees next to a blue river. The river is alternately deep and shallow, running smoothly over amber stones, mottled by an occasional pearl white stone. Cynthia fishes the blue river. The path to her cabin is matted yellow and the nearby grass bright green.