3 Must-Know Ways for Creating Meaningful Settings in Your Novel

Sad but true, setting in novels is mostly ignored. It’s as if writers feel they must sacrifice attention to setting on the altar of getting the story moving, but nothing could be further from the truth. The settings in your novel serve a number of very powerful functions in your scenes, and that’s why setting is an essential pillar of novel construction. Without setting, how can you have a story?

Where Should Your Scenes Take Place?

Many manuscripts by novice writers contain scenes that appear to be taking place in the void of space. The writer seems so intent on conveying dialogue or explaining about the characters that he forgets to mention where his characters happen to be.

And then there are other manuscripts in which setting is occasionally mentioned in passing but almost as an afterthought. In these instances, it’s as if the writer knows he should say something about where his characters are but feels it is so unimportant, he just throws out a few token lines that sketch a vague description.

Or in trying to portray a character in his ordinary life, the writer repeatedly puts him in boring places like restaurants and coffee shops. This is a fast way to dull any scene.
Writers who view settings in such ways miss out on a great opportunity to bring a novel to life. The more real a place is to readers, the easier it is for them to be transported there to experience the story.

3 Key Points When Considering Settings in Your Novel

1. Show Settings Through the Eyes of Your Characters. It is impossible to powerfully capture a place via objective description—at least to capture it in a way that readers will not skim. Only through the eyes and heart of a character does place come truly alive” (Donald Maass,The Fire in Fiction).

You may not have thought about setting in this way, but it’s all about the POV character. Each person reacts differently to a specific setting. If you and a group of your friends traveled to a place you’d never been, you would each notice and be curious about different things. So too your POV character should be noticing and reacting to the settings in your novel based on who she is and how she views her world.

2. Choose Settings That Trigger Emotion in Your POV Character. Think about places in your past that are emotionally charged for you. Recalling specific places that have emotional triggers may help you come up with such places for your characters.

Let’s say your protagonist has just had a fight with her mother over the man she plans to marry. She might visit her childhood home, or go sit in the bedroom in her parents’ house in which she spent her childhood. There, she might remember the vicious fights her parents had before they divorced. She might, at that moment, feel a strong determination to never be like her mother. Or she may suddenly be afraid her marriage may end up just like her parents’.

The place she is in can be a great tool to increasing her inner conflict, which is what you want. Inner conflict emotionally drives the character toward her visible goal in your story, so anything that can “stir up the waters” is going to be worthwhile. If she instead goes to Starbuck’s after having a fight with her mother, she may just order her Americano coffee, blow it off, and get on with her day—and not experience the intense emotions a more personal setting would spark.

3. Determine Setting Based on the “High Moment” in Your Scene Setting should be determined by the high point of the scene. Stop and think what main plot point or character insight you are going to reveal in each scene.

For example, you may plan to show your main character having a fight with her boyfriend over her unwanted pregnancy. You could stage the argument in a restaurant. Fine. But what if you stage the argument in front of a preschool or a hospital nursery ward, where she is visiting a friend who just had a baby? What if this character is conflicted about aborting, and she’s surrounded by cute laughing toddlers? Or screeching babies needing to be fed and changed and cared for? Depending on your plot and character arcs, these settings could add to the tension and hit home the high moment of your scene in a more powerful way.

Just as setting has shaped who you are, let the settings in your novel shape your characters and influence them. Create the settings in your novel with a purpose, and you’ll tell a more powerful story.

Tell me your opinion: What novels come to your mind that contain settings that are emotionally charged for the characters?