Setting as Character

Here’s more advice about developing your story’s setting. I’ve discussed setting in several previous blogs: That Can’t Happen Here, Plan your setting, and Creating setting. So you’d think, what else can possibly be said about setting?

How about making your setting a character? Making it so full and richly detailed, and integral to the way the story unfolds that a reader would say, “this story could not possibly happen anywhere else.” You can make it an antagonist (man vs nature) or you can make it an ally (the crucial potion ingredient grows right here, protected in a curated arboretum).

Plot-driven stories do this with characters all the time: a hometown/homecoming plot is at its best when it involves retracing childhood steps, meeting childhood enemies (or friends), dealing with the people who knew the MC’s parents (or knew the MC as the troublemaker and they’re “not like that anymore”). But this is creating characters.

I’m suggesting detail strokes in the setting, not broad setting decisions, like a story about city mouse visiting their country cousin has to take place in a small town. Of course it does. But details is where immersion becomes possible. You want to create plot points that suggest the story could only happen in THIS small town.

A story taking place in a fishing village isn’t going to feel as immersive if the plot points don’t revolve around things to do with the particular people, places, rhythms of life and activities that happen in a fishing village. You can go a step further and distinguish this fishing village from that fishing village by making plot points around its particular place on the river (facing right out on the harsh Atlantic instead of nestled in the corner of a quiet cove).

This is about the fabric of the setting as being essential. This involves you, the author, digging into the culture and rhythm and specifics of your chosen setting (including time and space) to find instant aids and unavoidable obstacles to the main character’s “What I wanna do” story goal. Oxygen supplies going critical are only relevant in stories where getting oxygen is potentially not possible: on a spaceship, for example. Or on a new planet, or deep in the ocean. The setting offers unique opportunities, as well as unique limitations and narrowed choices to the characters.

When researching your setting in order to make it a character, think about your character’s goal and consider how things you discover in your research can be aides or obstacles to them. Then introduce them early, as an aside, so that they don’t seem to pop-up as a contrivance.

In a story where a character wants a thing, you’re looking for when shops close, when they’re open, what is available at the farmers market on Saturdays (or is it Sundays only?). Things that can create limitations or narrow opportunities for success: “it only blooms once a year on the hill over yonder” or “there’s this winding road that turns back on itself and has an intersection where it meets itself” (*true thing, right in my home county – heck of an obstacle when getting directions if you’re not utterly familiar, wouldn’t you agree?)

You’ve got a character trying to do something that requires them to line up this, this, and this thing in this place and time in order to achieve their goal. With the detailed information about the setting, you can quickly see how possible, or impossible, their task is, and write that elation or frustration into the emotional arc of the story. Once you’ve tied the setting to a character’s emotions, it has become integral. One without the other would feel hollow, but together, it completes the immersiveness of the story.

Instead of “that can’t happen here“, you end up with “that CAN happen here-if you’re inventive” or “that can only happen here, where all the MC’s history is entangled”). Readers can then immerse themselves in a story that could not happen anywhere else. Your story will be the most memorable, and stand out from the crowd.

What are some of your thoughts about setting as character? Share them in the comments.

~ Lara