Getting to Know the Setting of a Story

The Setting of a Story is just like a character - to get to know it, you must flesh it out on paper before you write a word of your novel.

With characters in a novel, you write mini-biographies for them - listing their physical characteristics, what clothes they wear, their favourite food, and so on.

With the setting of a story, you do a very similar thing.

Largely, of course, you will concentrate on describing the externals of your fictional settings - how a place looks, in other words. But don't forget that towns and buildings and the like also have a character, an atmosphere, a soul - call it what you will. This needs to be put into words, too.

The aim of the exercise is to get to know your novel's setting like you know your own neighborhood. If you actually set your novel in your neighborhood (or in a fictional setting based upon it), you won't have much work to do. If you set it somewhere you've never visited before, or in a different era, you'll have plenty.

Getting the Setting of a Story Down on Paper

Here is an idea of the kind of preparatory work I would suggest for fleshing out your story settings. It involves five steps...

• Begin by making a few notes on your novel's principal location as a whole (the town, the suburb, the village, the city district - whatever). Describe the houses and the style of architecture. Describe the shops and the bars and restaurants and the open spaces.

  There is no need to go overboard here. Just jot down a few general impressions, like you are trying to describe an entire community to someone in a few brief sentences. If it helps, draw maps. If the setting has a real-world counterpart, take photographs.