Is Your Setting Just a Place or a Character?

On a range of “the setting is another character” to “a few words about the weather and the name of the town is more than enough,” how important is setting to your stories?

Gordon Dymowski: For me, the setting is one of the key elements of making a story work. Even if I’m just writing a modern-day tale, providing an appropriate atmosphere is critical. I’m strictly in the “setting-as-character” camp since it provides a backdrop for the flesh-and-blood characters. Providing that atmosphere enhances both my writing and the reader’s experience.

Vonnie Winslow Crist: For me, setting is almost another character. I choose a setting for my fiction that has an impact on the story. Sensory language is the most important tool in my toolbox for creating a strong sense of location. That said, the sensory details need to carefully selected for maximum impact. No one wants to read pages of sensory observations. Sometimes, one well-chosen detail can define the location, set the mood, and start the action in motion.

Anna Grace Carpenter: I am very fond of setting as character, but fluctuate as setting as a reflection of the central characters, and setting as a contrast to my central characters. (For example, The Gear’d Heart is all rainy and dark and cold as the characters fight otherworldly, serial killers. But the current work-in-progress is a desert setting but with characters who are desperate to live.

Selah Janel: It depends on the story, but setting matters in a lot of my work. I gravitate towards forests and small towns, and both can be portrayed to convey tone and characters. In one form, they can be romantic and comforting, in another they can be suffocating and foreboding. For me, setting can be an extension of my characters or a character in itself, yet another antagonist working against the characters like in Candles or Mooner, or something that’s more supportive like a quiet best friend in a story like Holly or Ivy. Even in my short stories, I use setting to echo the tone and feel quite a bit.

HC Playa: Setting sets tone. It is both little more than background and yet absolutely integral to the story. In genre fiction it can outline the realities and rules of the world, whether there’s magic or aliens or we are reading by candlelight.

I sketch it out through my character’s eyes and senses, dropping things in as they go. IF I am using a real place I may put in less description, but still want to paint an image in the reader’s mind because not everyone has been to the same places.

Herika Raymer: As setting is when and where the story takes place, I agree with HC that it sets tone. Usually setting through a character’s eyes helps, but there is the added measure of setting through a character who had not been in your setting before. That way, not only the character but also the reader are exploring a new area. It allows the reader to (hopefully) connect with characters as well as get the background and events of the Setting to help understand what is happening.

Bill Craig: In my Marlow books, Key West is every bit a character as well as setting.

Bobby Nash: The vast majority of the time, setting is very important to me and my work, especially in a series where the setting is visited and revisited often. Sommersville is a fictional city and county I created that has become an important location in multiple books fronted by different characters. I think it’s a very important character in the stories. I want the reader to have a feel for the settings.

Murky Master: So it depends. In the last two short stories I wrote, they were short so going verbose on the setting wasn’t an option. In my novel, it’s set in San Antonio and I didn’t really think much about establishing setting in that one. But, when I write my fantasy stories, I like to think of it this way.

Ian Totten: Setting is extremely important to me. When I write I see everything in my mind and try to convey that to the readers. Generally speaking, my settings either serve to create a sense of dread (such as the place where a killer is going to strike), a false sense of safety, or an actual area where the characters don’t need to have their guards up.

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