The world you create for your story is like the background in a photograph. It gives you a context in which you can put your characters. Your setting depends on your plot and the characters. If your character is a convict and your plot revolves around the time he spends at prison, then your setting has got to be a prison. Having a prison as the setting works well for a short story, but for longer works of fiction, you need a larger geographical location like a city or a town. Larger the canvas, the more details you include in it.
Your setting should have a geographical location, culture, climate, society, animals, streets, rivers and people. Remember, your characters are a product of the society you present in your story. They will talk, behave and think the way their culture allows them to. If you want to set your story in New York, then you need to know its culture, its people, its streets. It is best to choose a place, which you have visited and about which you already know something.
Research your setting wellIf you do not want to set your story on the city you live in, then get ready to do some research. It is important that you visit the place you are going to write about. Some writers do it with characters too. If they are writing about a murderer, they will go and interview one to know his psychology. For your setting too, you need to know the psychology of the city, town or village in which your characters live.
Below is a broad guideline on what all to include in your research:City – Small town, city, countryside, country, village
Geographical aspects – Mountains, rivers, beaches, desert, forest, ocean, hills, plains, vegetation, animals
Culture – Clothes, shops, streets, people, religion, language (dialect)
Climate – Hot, cold, moderate, desert, tropical
There can be more than one setting in your book. For shorter works of fiction, having one setting is best, but for longer works, you can have more settings than one. In Life of Pie by Yann Martel, there were three settings, the zoo in India, the ocean and Mexico (the last one was only a glimpse). He dealt with all the settings brilliantly. That is because he had visited India many times and knew it well. Of course, the writer cannot experience everything he wants to write about. Yann Martel never experienced a shipwreck, still he wrote about it. That is what research does. In one of his interviews he said that he researched about animal behavior for months on end on the Internet after he decided that the story would involve lots of animals.
In science fiction, of course, you can’t really research your setting. That is all imagination.
Some writers begin with a description of the setting and some with dialogues. If you choose the former, keep the description short. The reader will get bored reading a page long description before he is introduced to any of the characters. As a writer, that is the last thing you want. Even when describing, try to be innovative and use startling similes or use two or three senses to keep the reader hooked.
Description of your setting should complement with the genre in which you are writing. Your chosen genre can be science fiction, romance, literary fiction, horror or adventure, what you need is an appropriate world, which will intensify the believability of the story. If it’s a murder mystery, you need to give the reader details about the ambiance. You only have to concentrate on the scenery that is helping in adding mystery and suspense to the story, like a dark, narrow escape route or the blinding headlights and blazing horns on the road as your hero tries to catch the murderer.
Peculiarities and characteristics are what differentiate us from others. The same holds true for the setting. Lend it a personality by including details, which are typical of that place. It can be a particular structure of the houses, the texture of the earth, too much rain, general behavior of the people etc. It’s not that you have to stick to it no matter what. You can use innovation and exaggerate an element a little for creating a dramatic effect.
A page long description about the setting bores the reader. To avoid that, couple it with a character’s actions.Thanks to Orr, his roommate, it was the most luxurious tent in the squadron. Each time Yossarian returned from one of his holidays in the hospital or rest leaves in Rome, he was surprised by some new comfort Orr had installed in his absence – running water, wood-burning fireplace, cement floor.
The extract has been borrowed from Catch-22 by Joseph Heller You can also have a character describe the setting. Even a half page long third person narration of the setting can be used. Give it to the reader in installments.