The Reading Rainbow theme song really had it right.
One of the best parts of reading is the way in which it opens up a new world to us, whether it’s set in in an unpronounceable ancient kingdom, the far reaches of outer space, ancient history, the distant future, or even the real world but maybe somewhere we’ve never been. It’s an incredible experience to be immersed in an unfamiliar setting.
Still, I’m not sure that all aspiring authors give quite enough thought to setting. The best worlds are more than just the trees that dot the hillsides or the stars in outer space. There’s more to a good setting than simply a place where the novel is set.
There are three important elements to a good setting:
Change Underway
The best settings are not static, unchanging places that have no impact on the characters’ lives. Instead in the best worlds there is a plot inherent to the setting itself: a place in turmoil (Lord of the Rings), or a place that is resisting change but there are tensions roiling the calm (To Kill a Mockingbird), or the sense of an era passing in favor of a new generation (The Sound and the Fury).
Basically: something is happening in the bigger world that affects the characters’ lives. Great settings are dynamic.
Personality and Values
There is more still to a great setting than the leaves on the trees and even the change that is happening within that world: a great setting has its own value system. Certain traits are ascendant, whether it’s valor and honor (Lord of the Rings), justice and order (Hondo), every man for himself (The Road) or it could even be a place where normal values and perspectives have become skewed or inverted (Catch-22).
There’s a personality outlook that throws us off kilter and makes us imagine how we’d react if we were placed in that world. And it makes us wonder whether we have the makeup to thrive within it.
Unfamiliarity
Most importantly, a great setting shows us something we’ve never seen before. Either it’s a place that most readers might be unfamiliar with and have never traveled to (The Kite Runner), or it shows us a place that we are all-too-familiar with, but with a new, fresh perspective that makes us look again (And Then We Came to the End).
When all of these elements combine and when characters become swept up in the broader changes sweeping the world of the novel it elevates the plot by giving it a deeper and larger canvass. Even if the characters aren’t saving the world or confronting the changes head-on, the best plots intersect with their settings (and vice versa) to give us a sense of a character in a world, partially able to control their surroundings, but partially subject to the whims of forces outside their control. The setting is as much a living thing as the characters themselves.
What do you think makes for a good setting? And what are some of your favorites?
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Art: The Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh
You got through that whole post without mentioning Atonement? š I'm impressed.
I like it best when I can smell and feel the setting on my skin, even though all I've done is read about it. And I like when I don't realize that I even feel those elements.
That is tough to convey, for suresies, but using non-visual wording helps.
Great post. In particular, the "Change Underway" section grabbed me because I'd never thought of that. Now I'm considering how that works in one of my WIPs.
Fave examples of good settings: Harry Potter and Narnia come to mind right away. Kite Runner, as you mentioned. HUNGER GAMES!!! And, with some help from my GoodReads account: Martian Chronicles. Brave New World. Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.
The best stories are those that handle setting as though it were a character. Places have personality and the best writers get that.
Houses without people in them degrade quicker than those lived in. You can argue that it's because there's no one to make repairs, but it's also because there's no soul to them anymore. There's no light in the windows or sound so they're blind and deaf.
Terrain isn't a backdrop and shouldn't be treated like one. It requires navigation because of rises and dips. There are snaggling brambles and tree branches that can tickle or torment.
Surfaces have texture. They reflect light or shatter it, sometimes they devour it.
Setting is such a key component to the tone of a story it bugs me when people shrug it off as though it were no more than the shoebox used to house a first grade diorama of the Cretaceous Period.
Writing isn't taking snapshots, it's orchestrating a moving picture of the grandest scale.
Great post as always, Nathan. I think one of my favorite setting-rich novels is 'Troll Fell' by Katherine Langrish. It's steeped in sensory language and every scene has been written with careful thought of the emotions it brings out and the tension it creates.
Angela @ The Bookshelf Muse
"The Grapes of Wrath" comes to mind. Hostile environments bring out the extremes in characters, and from this you get a whole pot of delicious conflict.
I really like that thought about the setting changing along with the characters, or in contrast to them.
Wow. Never really thought about it this way. I'm going to need to look at my story again with this post in mind.
My favorite setting would have to be in Jonathan Stroud's Bartimaeus series. I loved every moment I spent in that book.
Thanks for this post!
A couple favourites:
Duncton Wood – you come to know every inch of that forest as the moles do. The leaves, the ground litter, the trees, the tunnels, the changing feel of the earth, the Stone…
Shadow Country – the setting, the Everglades in historical Florida, saturates the entire story. It shapes it and shadows it and pervades all that happens. The story and the setting are inescapably linked.
Though if I could add in a non-fiction book, I'd throw in Jonathan Krakauer's Into Thin Air. Everest: now that's a setting that shapes a story.
I think a sufficiently alien world has to show readers how it's a little like home.
Just as readers care about the protagonist after we recognize a sliver of shared humanity with him/her, we care about the world of the novel only after we begin to see how it's like ours.
Favorite setting: the world of Arrakis/Dune. This setting evolved and changed as the desert planet was transformed into a fertile world.
A great setting makes one feel as if they've been there. We feel the wind, the dryness or moisture in the air, or we feel the damage of a virulent sun as in the Riddick stories, or the Thomas Covenant series (sunbane).
Our senses are titillated when the setting and its description meld together.
Excellent info, Nathan. Love these Tues & Thur writing posts!
A lot to consider in that posts.
A big hmmmm of attempted deep thoughts here. Setting verses action has been my main concern as I start a second revision draft of a book-3 and a prologue to book-1 to add a coherent prologue suggesting the core inner struggle between a group of five characters who have united as small group in a time-mafia conspiracy to survive their own rather mundane lifes. Have to give that post a few looks.
A setting does, I believe, two things: 1. It is the bit of prose where poetry is most applicable. Florid description that sounds like music is mostly found in the description of scene or character. 2. Good setting is paramount for the reader to suspend disbelief — especially important if you aren't writing realistic fiction.
To me, setting is where writers are most able to flex their literary muscles and experiment with fascinating metaphors and curious word choice. You won't get that in dialogue, nor will you get it in action. Setting scenes is the place where the author has complete freedom to do whatever she/he likes.
Favorite examples of setting, perfected:
Banville in THE UNTOUCHABLE. Incredible book. I can almost smell the stench eminating from Boy's room. I know of no other author that has described a black dress as a "beetle's carapice," and meant it as a compliment.
Atwood's HANDMAID'S TALE. This is the first thing I thought of when Nathan mentioned "personality and virtues." Atwood weaves a haunting tale in this dystopian world, and the worst part is, we can SEE IT. I think in another dark world is Phillip Roth's THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA.
Krakauer's INTO THIN AIR. When people say that they couldn't stop reading because it felt like they were abandoning the climbers on Everest, your settings are spot-on.
Poe's "The Raven". Poetry, yes, but incredible and vivid scenery. There isn't much, but what is there is so vivid that I like to imagine it as some of the best. Similarly, also check out some of the short stories like "The Cask of Amantillado" for some good ol' fashioned grotesquery!
Rowling. I mean, let's be honest, she does it so well.
Anyway, there's tons more, but these were the ones that came immediately to mind.
People get tired of hearing Tolkien's name, I suppose, but no one has done it better.
Terrific post, Nathan–you always make me think–thanks…I guess! š
Avonlea is more a character than a place in the Anne of Green Gables books–it made me want to go to PEI. The Limberlost in Gene Stratton Porter's Freckles, Girl of the Limberlost, and The Harvester made me curious about a place in my own state–Indiana…
Josin, your comment "Writing isn't taking snapshots, it's orchestrating a moving picture of the grandest scale" is inspiring–thank you!
I love this topic, Nathan, and what you wrote.
The setting must hold and touch and weave into the story and its characters. When it does, it can transport the reader with a clarity that can be magical.
I am at a turning point in a WIP where the characters move to a new setting. Before I can continue writing, I have to understand how this new setting will support the characters in their story arcs. I need to let this world open up in my imagination and show itself to me, the writer.
bcomet
Love the picture of Mono Lake on the post!
I love settings that take me into the world of the story, whether that's 18th Century Belgium, 25th Century space or Cousin Louise's kitchen.
Some of my favorite books for setting are MOBY DICK, Kim Stanley Robinson's MARS trilogy and Mervyn Peake's GORMENGHAST trilogy. And, of course, anything by Edward Rutherfurd.
One of my favorite examples of a dynamic setting is found in THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES. The way Kidd writes about South Carolina is so beautiful that it takes me right back, yet she added the racial tension of the 1960's and created a world wholly unfamiliar and fascinating to me. The lives the characters lead are intriguing enough without that particular social element, but by putting her characters in situations where they had to confront and react to racism in all its many forms, Kidd transformed an interesting story into something that stays with you and changes the way you see your own life.
In China Mieville's Perdido Street Station, the city throbs and hunkers and wheezes as much, usually to greater effect, as the characters.
Eva Rice's The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets boasts my favorite setting of any book: 1950's London, with dazzling parties, dramatic manors, and the indescribable allure of well-written pasts. It's not my absolute favorite book, but the way Rice makes England a separate character blows me away every time.
The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. That setting was its own character and it helped to change (or destroy) everyone in that book.
Verification word: hanabl
Should I be scared?
Some of the best books I've read are those where setting, plot and characters are so deeply intertwined it becomes hard to distinguish one from the other.
Every place has a personality of its own, and it gives rise to unique attitudes and beliefs. I find that when you take the time to develop your setting, plots and characters emerge by themselves.
I'm not into long flowery setting descriptions. I confess I skim those paragraphs…even in great setting books like LOTR.
The book I'm reading right now is set in Venice and Instanbul and I think this writer evokes very distinct impressions of place without being heavy handed.
I think that might be because it's very character centered: description is based on their sense experiences, their impressions, their interactions in their environment. It's woven in.
I like this kind of setting approach the best…seems light and effortless..yet draws you in…
Whatever the hell Josin said way up above — I agree with that. š
Patrick Suskind's PERFUME-THE STORY OF A MURDERER is another example of superb use of 'setting' as character.
Outstanding post, thank you Nathan.