Choose Your Camp: How to Make Your Setting Breathe

Camp NaNoWriMo begins in April! In the spirit of friendly camp competition (and inspired by one of our favorite scenes in Scott Westerfeld’s Afterworlds), we asked our friends to Choose Your Camp. Today, Renée Ahdieh, author of the forthcoming The Wrath and the Dawn, shares how to make your setting a breathing character of its own:

There are many important aspects to creating a wonderful narrative. Character and plot are, of course, absolute necessities. Without a cohesive story to tell or people to live the tale, any novel would be a tough sell.

But an often overlooked aspect of a book is its setting. After all, another word for this is “background.” By its very nature, it’s meant to set the stage. To fade into the distance and never, ever overtake its counterparts.

I chose the Setting Cabin because I often make a character out of setting, and I think it should be a just as big an element of a novel as character or plot. To me, setting helps to establish voice just as much as a character’s backstory. It’s a chance to add color to a world, and sparkle to something that might come off as ordinary otherwise.

After I create character profiles and establish a plot arc, I often spend a great deal of time establishing setting. Since I write fantasy, this entails a good bit of research and world building—aspects of the process I greatly enjoy. When undertaking this endeavor, I typically turn to other novels and resource materials written about a particular time period, but I will also read poetry and other forms of prose to help me along the way.

I also think it’s of tantamount importance to appreciate other books that handle setting well. Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles always come to mind in these instances. She makes New Orleans writhe and seethe with an undercurrent of dangerous sensuality all its own. Isabel Allende and Diana Gabaldon are two other writers who go to great lengths to make characters out of their settings. In young adult, I adore Libba Bray and Leigh Bardugo for their lush depictions of their respective worlds. Bray’s A Great and Terrible Beauty has always been a personal favorite for this very reason.

If you’re struggling to find a means to impart more aspects of setting into your work, I would begin with the senses first. It’s the most natural and unobtrusive way to introduce setting into your writing. Always shy away from lists whenever possible. 

See if you can impart a sensory facet into a character’s action. Maybe your main character doesn’t merely take a sharp breath. Maybe your main character can take a sharp breath of the sooty London air. In these ways, you can bring your setting to life as you bring your character into being.

And your reader will be right there with you at every moment.

Renée Ahdieh is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In her spare time, she likes to dance salsa and collect shoes. She is passionate about all kinds of curry, rescue dogs, and college basketball.  She lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, with her husband and their tiny overlord of a dog. Her debut The Wrath and the Dawn will be available from Penguin/Putnam on May 12, 2015.

Top photo background by Flickr user Christian Mountain-Hawk.