How Your Setting Can Affect Your Characters

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Your setting can help you craft better scenes. 

Setting is an often underused tool. We all create one, usually more than one, but we don't always take advantage of what the right setting can do for our novels--the setting is just "a place where the novel takes place," not something crafted to serve the story.

This is a missed opportunity, because setting can bring out subtleties in the story and deepen an entire scene. It can evoke both character and reader emotions.

Let's say you have scene where you want your protagonist to feel uncomfortable, because she's confronting a co-worker who just stabbed her in the back at work, and she dislikes both the co-worker and confrontation.

Where would you set it?

The most obvious choice is at work, since that's where she interacts with this person. If you were picking a spot for yourself in this same situation, you'd likely do it somewhere familiar, because you'll want a position of strength for this confrontation. But in a novel, that means the protagonist will be in familiar and safe territory. It'll help keep her calm and lessen her apprehension of this meeting. Calm and safe are not the emotions we want for this scene, so the setting is doing nothing to help us.

So let's move this meeting to a location that puts the protagonist at a disadvantage, so the stakes go up and the tension is raised. Instead of work, let's choose a place that makes her uncomfortable as well so the setting reflects the emotions we want both the character and the reader to feel.

(Here's more on Creating Story Tension: Rooms with an Unexpected View)

If she wants to do this in private, we'll force her to confront her co-worker in a public place where anyone might overhear. If she's a recovering alcoholic, we'll send her into a bar where drinks are flowing heavily. If she dislikes kids, we'll make her attend a birthday party for twenty-five ten-year-olds.

If we use the setting to push the emotions of the protagonist to new heights, we'll also make her goals harder to accomplish. 

It'll add more conflict, and raise the tensions since it's far more likely something will go wrong.

(Here's more on If You Can Make it There... How Setting Can Affect Your Story)

Look at the settings in your scenes and ask:

• Does the setting reflect the emotion of the character?
• What emotion would make the protagonist's goal harder to accomplish? Is there a setting that evokes this emotion in the character?
• What emotion would add more conflict?
• How would the opposite emotion affect the scene?
• What is the worst setting for a scene to take place in? What happens if you move the scene there?
• What setting would push the protagonist out of her comfort zone?
• What setting would give the antagonist of the scene the advantage?
• What setting would put the protagonist at a disadvantage?

Seize every opportunity setting offers to affect the mood and tone of the scene. The right sense of place can layer in emotions and create conflict to deepen a scene and make a character really have to work to resolve her goal.

What settings have affected you emotionally? Why? 

Find out more about setting and description in my book, Fixing Your Setting & Description Problems.

Go step-by-step through setting and description-related issues, such as weak world building, heavy infodumping, told prose, awkward stage direction, inconsistent tone and mood, and overwritten descriptions. Learn how to analyze your draft, spot any problems or weak areas, and fix those problems.

With clear and easy-to-understand examples, Fixing Your Setting & Description Problems offers five self-guided workshops that target the common issues that make readers stop reading. It will help you:

• Choose the right details to bring your setting and world to life
• Craft strong descriptions without overwriting
• Determine the right way to include information without infodumping
• Create compelling emotional layers that reflect the tone and mood of your scenes
• Fix awkward stage direction and unclear character actions

Fixing Setting & Description Problems starts every workshop with an analysis to pinpoint problem areas and offers multiple revision options in each area. You choose the options that best fit your writing process. It's an easy-to-follow guide to crafting immersive settings and worlds that draw readers into your story and keep them there.

Available in paperback and ebook formats.

Janice Hardy is the award-winning author of the teen fantasy trilogy The Healing Wars, including The Shifter, Blue Fire, and Darkfall from Balzer+Bray/Harper Collins. The Shifter, was chosen for the 2014 list of "Ten Books All Young Georgians Should Read" from the Georgia Center for the Book.

She also writes the Grace Harper urban fantasy series for adults under the name, J.T. Hardy.

When she's not writing novels, she's teaching other writers how to improve their craft. She's the founder of Fiction University and has written multiple books on writing.

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