Allison Symes's Blog - Posts Tagged "settings"
Settings in Books
Does the setting in a book matter to you?
I was always gripped by Kirrin Island in the Famous Five series by Enid Blyton. (I guess the nearest I got to visiting anything like it was when I went on a day trip to Brownsea Island, just off Poole! I lacked the lashings of ginger beer though... sighs...).
One of the things I love about The Lord of the Rings is the way The Shire is conjured up as a lovely place to live. Mordor is anything but! The films did full justice to this too. (Not always true for film adaptations either).
A really good setting is almost a character in its own right and the authors treat them that way too. This is true for Narnia, Winnie the Pooh (I've just got to say 100 Acre Wood and that will conjure up the world of Pooh immediately - to me at least!), amongst many, many others.
Do I need intensive descriptions of settings? Not really.
What I look for is enough for me to be able to visualise that setting for myself. Also, the characters should fit the setting - Jeeves and Wooster are great examples of that. There shouldn't be any feeling of anything of anyone being out of place. Even the villains in a story should fit (think of the weasels in The Wind in the Willows for example - they still fit in that world).
Which are your favourite settings and why?
I was always gripped by Kirrin Island in the Famous Five series by Enid Blyton. (I guess the nearest I got to visiting anything like it was when I went on a day trip to Brownsea Island, just off Poole! I lacked the lashings of ginger beer though... sighs...).
One of the things I love about The Lord of the Rings is the way The Shire is conjured up as a lovely place to live. Mordor is anything but! The films did full justice to this too. (Not always true for film adaptations either).
A really good setting is almost a character in its own right and the authors treat them that way too. This is true for Narnia, Winnie the Pooh (I've just got to say 100 Acre Wood and that will conjure up the world of Pooh immediately - to me at least!), amongst many, many others.
Do I need intensive descriptions of settings? Not really.
What I look for is enough for me to be able to visualise that setting for myself. Also, the characters should fit the setting - Jeeves and Wooster are great examples of that. There shouldn't be any feeling of anything of anyone being out of place. Even the villains in a story should fit (think of the weasels in The Wind in the Willows for example - they still fit in that world).
Which are your favourite settings and why?
