The Secret to Writing Vivid Settings (It’s Not What You Think)
When most people think of the setting, they see it as just the place where the story is set (that is literally in the word ‘setting’). But to be a truly immersive story and to really pull your readers in, it helps when the setting is so much more than that.
The setting should be its own character. It will even have its own character arc.
If that sounds absolutely ridiculous, then read on. Let me try to convince you.
I’m going to break down setting into three levels:
Beginner: this is the level that most beginner writers will include. It’s typically surface level details that are important to the characters and the story.
Intermediate: this is the level that most writers with some level of experience under their belt will write at. These are the writers who use setting at a deeper level than just what’s on the surface.
Expert: this is where your setting truly comes alive. It is more difficult and often requires work behind the scenes that the reader won’t even be aware that you’re doing, so it’s only with a concentrated effort that a writer will reach this level.
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Beginner Level Setting
The first things people usually think about with settings are simply a description of the places your characters inhabit or visit. Their home, their favourite restaurant, the town they are passing through. A new writer will probably stop there. They may include sensory details—common smells and sounds to really try to engage the reader and show them what it’s like to be there—but include little else.
These things are important, don’t get me wrong. Without them, you’re writing in a white box (trust me, I know all about writing in a white box, most of my first drafts are written this way).
If you’ve not heard of writing in a white box, it’s where you have little to no description of what’s around a character. When there’s dialogue involved, it’s often called talking head syndrome and also lacks any kind of character movement, but it can occur when there is no dialogue. Basically, since the reader isn’t given any description, they picture it all happening in a white box or an empty room.
As someone with mild aphantasia, it’s something I struggle with, so after completing a draft, my first round of edits always includes a deliberate attempt to add more description.
Your genre often dictates what is included at this setting level. If you’re writing a contemporary romance, you first need to decide if it’s going to be set in an actual location or a fictionalised one. And if it’s real, do you need to do some extra research, especially if you don’t live there?
Don’t think just because you’ve decided on a fictional location, or if you’re writing a fantasy set in a made up world, you don’t need to do your research. What you write still has to make a level of logical sense. Readers are willing to suspend their disbelief only so far. Your world may be a medieval fantasy with islands floating in the sky, but if you put a can of cola on the table, unless it’s previously been covered that this exists, it will throw your readers out of the immersion.
While this level of detail is important, it’s also crucial to keep it in line with what your character would actually notice. A hardened warrior is unlikely to notice the details of a friend’s clothing beyond basic colour and maybe the style (red, baggy pants, for example) unless they have a history of working with clothes as a tailor or something. And in the heat of combat, they won’t care about much beyond determining whether the person in front of them is wearing the colours of a friend or a foe.
Intermediate Level Setting
The next level of setting is most often used to convey a sense of atmosphere and emotion. As humans, where we are has a direct effect on our emotions. There have been countless studies on this, not just on how a certain environment affects us, but how our mood affects our environments.
For example, a messy, cluttered environment with little or no natural light tends to cause symptoms of depression and anxiety. Yes, I know, capital D Depression and capital A Anxiety are real disorders no different from any physical illness or injury. But for the purpose of this article, I’m just referring to the sensations those feelings bring about. In this case, specifically a raised cortisol level, among other things. Conversely, if someone is experiencing those kinds of emotions, their environment is more likely to become cluttered and dark because of the effort involved in keeping them clean. It’s a vicious cycle.
As such, the same tricks can be used to tell our stories. A lot can be told about a character by a simple one paragraph description (or even just a couple of lines) about their environment. If a space is clean, white, and sterile with everything in its place, it tends to suggest that a person has control issues. If they cover the walls of their room with art and the spaces with plants, they are likely more creative. As with all things, these examples aren’t prescriptive, but they give the reader a quick snapshot of who a character is.
In addition to building characters, the atmosphere of a setting is also genre specific. A story set in a small seaside town with lots of family-owned stores and people who greet you on the street usually gives us cosy feelings, where an isolated shack in the middle of nowhere evokes a sense of isolation, desperation, and danger.
You can also have fun with atmosphere expectations and flip them on their head. That cosy seaside town where everyone knows everyone can become incredibly creepy by having the townsfolk overly nice and, when something goes wrong or someone disappears, they act like they never knew that person they were just speaking to yesterday ever existed, yet still greet you with a smile and a wave. The shack in the middle of nowhere is an escape, a refuge, a place where the protagonist can truly be themselves without fear of judgement or prejudice.
The atmosphere of a setting builds upon the building blocks of what is where and what it looks like, just as an intermediate level writer builds upon the skills of a beginner level writer.
Advanced Level Setting
Settings exist long before our characters are born and exist long after they have died and been forgotten. Just as this is true in life, so should it be true in our stories. A setting is a living and breathing thing, and that is something that you can tap into to truly enhance your narrative.
It doesn’t matter what genre you are writing—whether it’s a medieval town or a cyberpunk dystopian—the setting is its own character.
Say we are writing a contemporary story set in a seaside small city. If we go back far enough, there was no city, no town, no houses, only land. What did that land look like? Was it especially different to now? That will depend on many factors, like how much the society that settled there valued keeping the landscape as it is (and how that may change over the years and decades) and any natural disasters that may have occurred. Then, at some point, someone decided to settle there. Why? What was it about this spot, as opposed to the one 100kms away? 50kms? 10kms? Was it just a pretty view? Access to fresh water? A shipping lane or a trade route? As humans, we need a few basic things—access to food, access to water, the ability to build shelter—and where we settle always reflects this. How did the town grow? What was its primary industry? Was it on excellent farmland, so fresh food was always abundant, and this was its main trade? Was it located on a gold mine so ore or bars were exported to trade for preserved food? How did the town progress into a city? Into a megapolis? Did it then shrink down again, leaving ruins? Why?
All of these questions create the lifeline of a location, from its conception all the way through to its death.
Of course, the way a location will develop in the future of your story is less important (unless it is, preparing for a drought for example, but for most stories the future of a setting, especially the far future, doesn’t matter). But knowing the history of a place and how it came to be can be particularly influential in your story and can show up in subtle ways. The old and decaying shipyard, alongside the trendy new townhouses built on the hill above it. The paved road through the centre of a town and dirt tracks leading off it. Even what the people are eating and drinking and trading in. All of this is the lifeblood of your setting and brings your story to life.
This is your setting as a character.
Final Thoughts
When I was a teenager, I came across an essay called On Thud and Blunder by Paol Anderson. I can’t remember how I came across it, but I had it printed out, highlighted, annotated, sticky noted, and dog-eared. It was my own mini writing bible, even more so because while I found creating characters easy, creating settings and writing description was hard. I’ve since learned that the reason for this is because I don’t imagine things or see things with my mind’s eye with any kind of clarity and, at the time, I thought this was the case for everyone. Apparently not.
Anyway On Thud and Blunder goes into a lot of these elements and more, so if you’re at all interested I highly recommend you give it a read. You can find it online at https://www.sfwa.org/2005/01/04/on-thud-and-blunder/
Ultimately, the level your setting is told at will depend entirely on your story and the more advanced elements are often brought out through the editing process. But I firmly believe that all stories, from short, hard-hitting pieces, to long, lyrical novels can benefit from keeping these points in mind.
What are you going to be incorporating when you next sit down to write or edit? Let me know in the comments, and I look forward to seeing you with my next piece.
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