Important Tools of Setting in a Novel

Create Memorable Settings Using Time, Place and Circumstance

Nov 25, 2008 Nina Munteanu

Time, place and circumstance form a critical mass that creates the particular setting best suited to a story. Use metaphor to create memorable settings.

Setting fulfills most of the core aspects of a story. Without a place there is no story. Setting serves multipurpose roles from helping with plot, determining and describing character to providing metaphoric links to theme. Setting, like the force in Star Wars, provides a landscape that binds everything into context and meaning. Without setting, characters are simply there, in a vacuum, with no reason to act and most importantly, no reason to care.

Measuring Circumstance

Circumstance, in particular, modifies the nature of time and place. For instance, if one were to consider the bucolic setting of Booker Ranch in Kentucky set in the 1930s, the following circumstances are considered: 1) The Booker Ranch is threatened with receivership; or 2) Amy Booker’s estranged husband returns to the ranch just as she gives birth to a baby boy or 3) George Booker’s horse, Makeamillion, wins the Kentucky Derby in Louisville. In each case the time and place remain the same but the circumstance gives the setting its unique flavor.

Circumstance may be expressed at the character level (e.g., John just lost his job), environmental level (e.g., the community is getting nervous), or global level (e.g., the world economy just crashed).

Amplification and Contradiction

The setting may amplify a character’s emotions or contradict them, depending on the circumstance of the character, her mood, disposition, tendencies, and observational skills. Either way, setting provides an “emotional landscape” upon which a character’s own temperament may play counterpoint or may resonate in a wonderful symphony. The writer should think of the less obvious, of contrast, and how one can increase tension and emphasize the character’s situation.

Weather in Setting

Weather conveys the mood and tone of both story and character. Weather is not just part of the scenery. To a writer, weather is a device used in plot and theme. A good example is Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient and how he used the desert setting and the hot winds to evoke mood, character, tension, theme and ultimately story.

Tips to Consider

The following suggestions will help the writer create vivid, memorable and meaningful settings:

• Make setting an integral part of the story; give it purpose
• Describe selectively through incorporation in “scene” rather than exposition
• Be specific (e.g., soft pink rose, not flower; beat up Chevy, not car; old clapboard cottage, not house
• Use similes, metaphors, and personification to breathe life into setting
• Use the senses like sight, sound, smell, taste, feel
• Don’t tell, show (e.g., don’t say the time is the 1920s; show the cars and dresses. Don’t tell the reader it’s raining; show them by describing the dripping trees, etc.)
• Compare and contrast setting to the point of view characters to heighten dramatic tension
• Don’t describe setting all at once in the beginning; work it in slowly throughout the story; let it unfold as the story does

The copyright of the article Important Tools of Setting in a Novel in Writing Fiction is owned by Nina Munteanu. Permission to republish Important Tools of Setting in a Novel in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Old Book Bindings at Merton College

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