How to Use Setting in Fiction Writing

Techniques to Make a Novel’s Setting Engage the Reader

Mar 30, 2009

Most writers, both experienced and unskilled, view setting as merely the time and place in which their story takes place, but this could not be further from the truth.

What is Setting?

Setting is a necessary and governing element to any story; not just in literature, but in film and theatre as well. It literally sets the stage. Time and place give the audience a visual for their imaginations to feed on, and they also establish the rules such as physical parameters, cultural customs, and civic laws that dictate the characters’ behaviors and the plot’s direction.

For example, suppose a science fiction story is set during Earth’s first manned mission to Mars in the year 2049. This statement alone with no information regarding the author’s intended plot yields mounds of insight into the characters. The future astronauts will have a feeling of isolation after so long from home. Technologically, the space program 40 years in the future will undoubtedly be more advanced that NASA in the current era.

Now the importance of these elements cannot be overstated because they add realism and believability to the story. The reader’s mind will not so forgiving as to accept a break from the laws of the novel’s setting without some kind of logical explanation. But even with this crucial part of setting’s role understood, is there something more setting can do besides establishing the rules in which the author’s world must obey?

How to Harness Setting

The answer, in literature, is yes. Where theatre and film are limited to showing the spectator the events, the written word, especially when used in the first person point of view, transports the reader into the shoes of the protagonist. The audience actually gets to experience the feelings and share in the struggles of the person they are reading about. This is the great advantage of books.

But how, as a writer, does one accomplish this? Engaging a reader so that he or she feels as if they are right alongside the character is no easy task. It can be done through direct narration? telling how the character feels or using quotations as if his or her thoughts were dialogue. But setting can also be a useful tool for the same goal.

Walt opened the door to the basement where he had heard the laughter. He walked hesitantly down the creaky steps into the darkness where his flashlight flickered out. But at the end of that dark room he could see a closed door that he somehow knew was the source of the disturbance.

Altering word choice and adding more flavorful detail to only Walt’s environment, this passage can become a gateway into what Walt is experiencing:

Notice how the basement itself feeds into the feeling of horror and gives the reader the same sensations as the character. If the protagonist is entering a building for the first time, it is a first for the reader as well. An exotic locale can also be played up to enhance feelings of awe. Even the culture within a story can tap certain feelings, such as injustice when the fictional world accepts what is an unacceptable practice in reality.

Walt opened the door to the locked and supposedly empty basement where he had heard the faint laughing of a child. He walked hesitantly, with unwanted creaks sounding at each imposing step. At the bottom, his flashlight flickered into nothing as if its bright beam was a threat that the room wanted to suppress. He could see a closed door, worn and crooked on its hinges, standing quietly at the end of the dark room. Somehow, by the way darkness seemed to flock to this lone portal, he knew this was the source of the indistinct giggling.

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