The Where of it All

We all know that settings are important to a storyline. It’s more than a backdrop. It can set the mood and atmosphere. It can give us a cold feeling or a warm fuzzy one. It can give us a sense of place so that it doesn’t feel like the characters are living in a vacuum. In other words, setting is like an anchor to the whole work.

Setting can be as simple as a few words, or it can almost be considered as another character. The feel of New York is going to be completely different than that of Fairbanks Alaska. The culture is different, the foods will be different, their social makeup is different. Where your characters live will determine a lot of who they are.

So use your setting to your advantage when you write. Think of it as a silent character that looms in the background affecting all of your story people. To give you an example, the hypothetical storyline I’m creating on the character page is set in a religious area of northern Indiana. That plays a lot on who my characters are and the choices that they make. Marlin Shrock wants everything to look good. He wants to be accepted. He does so in the confines of what his religion believes is correct.

Not always do we use real places for our stories. I have a totally fictious town that I’ve created for a series that I’m working on. It’s been helpful to flesh out the town before hand, just like I would with another character. I found a website that I’m going back to use to flesh it out even better. The website is: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/worldbuilding1.htm Not all of it applies to my needs, so I’ll use what will. I figure who better to know how to build a fictional town than a fantasy writer.