Enhance the Setting of the Story You're Writing

by PeggySue Wells @PeggySueWells

Setting is where your story takes place. Settings come in four types: passive, active, functions like a character, and when setting is the story.

Setting is

• Time 
• Place
• Surroundings
• Mood
• Cultural nuances
• Historical period
• A backdrop for a story

Placing your story in San Francisco? I Remember Mama’s sweet family connections and Old Country traditions is a completely different setting than the City by the Bay experienced by Sam Spade in Dashiell Hammett’s Maltese Falcon. San Francisco for Mama and her family is a place of honest work, a male cat named Elizabeth, visiting authors, and seeing her children come of age. San Francisco is much darker for the gumshoe who lurks in shady hotel rooms, betrayed by a mysterious woman, and given a package by a dying sea captain while he seeks to solve the murder of his partner. 

Wherever a story is placed, a writer sets the tone and mood by what is included and what is left out of the setting. Images of a high-performance race track, the serene canals in Venice, a country inn in Vermont, a castle in England, a kibbutz in Israel’s desert, and a French child kissing the cheek of a World War II soldier each present a unique background, time frame, mood, and cultural nuances.

Setting is a playground for foreshadowing. Sunny weather reflects peace, resolution, promise, and hope. Inclement forecasts predict bad news, heartbreak, challenges, and difficulties. 

• In Chasing Sunrise, as Hurricane Hugo bears down on the island, the antagonist becomes a stronger threat, and the stakes rise for our hero, Michael Northington, and those he cares about. 
• “The leaves fell early that year,” described Hemingway in A Farewell to Arms. 
• Dorothy sings Somewhere Over the Rainbow just before the tornado whisks her away in The Wizard of Oz

A setting where common actions that go awry, wardrobes malfunction, and routines are interrupted alert readers that something is brewing.

• The parachute doesn’t open during a HALO jump in Chasing Sunrise.
• While in the shower, the wife of an astronaut nearly loses her wedding ring down the drain in Apollo 13.
• In The Patent, as the FBI makes a plan to stop America’s enemies from stealing the nation’s best designs, the boss misses his target when he tosses his coffee cup onto the trash. 

Incorporated into setting, color symbolism effectively adds layers of mood and nuance. 

• Blue and orange are neutral in their symbolism
• Black indicates death
• Red points to violence and pending bloodshed
• Green is for new life
• White shows life
• Gold represents wealth 
• Purple signifies royalty
• Pink is indicative of femininity
• Yellow means bright, summer, hope
• Brown symbolizes earthiness (Think Farmer Brown)

The Lone Ranger is dressed in white and rides a white charger, assuring viewers he is the good guy. At the Royal English Court, everyone is in pastel colors except Paul Chauvelin who is entirely in black in the made-for-TV Scarlet Pimpernel.

What do the colors of the dresses of Disney princesses say about them?

Use setting to touch the emotions of your reader. 

• Take your character through a cemetery, near a ravine, by rushing water, across a busy highway. 
• Give a view of a peaceful beach, a baby nursery, or the cheering crowd at the end of an athletic event.
• Have things in your setting malfunction from a non-working phone to the sudden flat tire, the delayed commuter train, and the grid that loses power.
• Insert into your setting a cat that steaks across the path, a legend, an eclipse, a glimpse the character talks themselves out of thinking they saw.

Weather, odors, music, art, food, customs, routines, holiday traditions, and animals are all aspects you can craft into your setting to bring a sense of time, place, and mood. When struggling to make your writing work, change the setting so the story could not happen anywhere else. 

TWEETABLE

Enhance the Setting of the Story You're Writing, insight and tips from author @PeggySueWells on @EdieMelson (Click to Tweet)

Tropical island votary and history buff, PeggySue Wells parasails, skydives, snorkels, scuba dives, and has taken (but not passed) pilot training. Writing from the 100-Acre Wood in Indiana, Wells is the bestselling author of thirty books including The Slave Across the Street, Slavery in the Land of the Free, Bonding With Your Child Through Boundaries, Homeless for the Holidays, Chasing Sunrise, and The Ten Best Decisions A Single Mom Can Make. Founder of SingleMomCircle.com, PeggySue is named for the Buddy Holly song with the great drumbeat. At school author visits, she teaches students the secrets to writing and speaks at events and conferences. Connect with her at www.PeggySueWells.com, on Facebook at PeggySue Wells, and LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/peggysuewells