A good setting is a core trait of a strong work of fiction. There are many ways to approach setting, and some writers are more inclined to write stories with a strong sense of place than others. A Sport and a Pastime, by James Salter, is a good example. Setting is nothing without strong description. In this article, we’ll focus on the purpose of setting and how to write great description.
Why Setting?
Your story must take place somewhere. It may be in a dream, in outer space, in the depths of nothingness—characters are bound by space and time. The environment gives the reader contextual information to help evince subtle story qualities like atmosphere and suspense. Think of two very different places and consider the associations we create in our minds; let’s say the beach and a boat in the middle of the ocean. We would probably think of the beach as sunny; we imagine people roaming and laughing, splashing in the water, and building sandcastles.
Just as well we might imagine a tsunami silently brewing, threatening disaster. A boat in the middle of nowhere is a more open concept. It could be sunny, or maybe it’s foggy and dark; the waves imperceptible, or perhaps shaking the boat wildly. Maybe the character is alone under the deck with no windows. Setting don’t always have to have these strong associations; but we tend to think of certain places as having certain qualities. As writers, our job is to bring these places to life; infuse them with substance, and use those associations to our advantage. To betray or accede to them.
Scene Description
It’s easy to think that all you need to establish setting is a few words here and there. That may be true in some cases. But most of the time we want our setting to be a character of its own; we want it to be involved in the story; have the illusion or the reality of influencing the story in some way. Really strong writers will make the scene come to life using small indicators of environmental anthropomorphizing. A good example is Shirley Jackson. The environment is her bread and butter. We feel the objects that amalgamate and exist in isolation as characters deserving of our respect and consideration. But we don’t always feel their presence distinctly. Take an example from The Haunting of Hill House; Eleanor isn’t even at the Hill House yet and we begin to build a sense of what it might look like, and how it might feel to be in its presence.
“Over the trees, occasionally, between them and the hills, she caught glimpses of what must be the roofs, perhaps a tower, of Hill House. They made houses so oddly back when Hill House was built, she thought; they put towers and turrets and buttresses and wooden lace on them, even sometimes Gothic spires and gargoyles; nothing was ever left undecorated. Perhaps Hill House has a tower, or a secret chamber, or even a passageway going off into the hills and probably used by smugglers—although what could smugglers find to smuggle around these lonely hills? Perhaps I will encounter a devilishly handsome smuggler and…” (23)
Point of View
Point of view often gets pushed to the side when discussing setting and place. But it’s important to acknowledge the roles that it plays in how we shape our scenes. There are a number of ways to go about using point of view in a way that complements your scene description. In part, it will depend on your story and writing style, but some strategies are more suitable than others depending on the premise.
There’s a reason I chose the passage above to demonstrate this concept. Notice how the character’s preconceived notions about the place they are about to arrive at infuse with objective facts about the environment. We almost can’t separate these two things; they are one, as far as the reader is concerned, and they begin to absorb the character’s sentiment regarding the foreboding atmosphere that the house produces.
What the character thinks about a place, or how they perceive it, will dictate how readers receive your scenes. Some writers will prefer to have an objective third-person narrator. They will run through scenes almost scientifically, noting the temperature, the color gradient, and the visibility; others prefer to sketch an outline of the setting, infusing it with elements of the character’s perception. A first-person perspective won’t necessarily give the author more opportunities to play around with these approaches. You can just as easily animate a scene with a narrator who has their own biases, or who reports the biases of the characters through which they’re speaking.
How Strong Does Setting Need to Be?
In some stories, the setting is incidental and only crops up as a necessity; that is, the plot and/or character(s) are the main focus. As readers we wouldn’t care much about where the action is happening when there are more important things to think about. In these cases, a passing mention of where the characters are should suffice. A neurosurgeon is performing a 16-hour emergency surgery on a patient; we don’t care much for the room itself, we only need to know that they are in the operating room so we don’t get confused.
We can briefly run through some of the options we have as far as creating an effective setting for our story. Remember, your choice will depend on a variety of personal and practical factors:
Basic and generic: the setting is brief and uninvolved. We don’t take pains to detail it beyond what’s necessary, because it isn’t significant to the story. Someone’s backyard, a room in the basement, the vacuum of space; these could be examples of settings that are implied more than described in detail.
Pure fantasy: some settings are completely fictitious and elaborately mystical. These writers will certainly need to be very imaginative and detailed with their scene descriptions in order to entice readers into the verisimilitude of the world they’re building. We want them to accept our vision, this reality; part of this means relying on certain genre conventions but betraying them intelligently.
Realistic: I call this type of setting realistic, but it encompasses several degrees of realness. The setting that relies heavily on the character’s feelings and imagination could be just as real, or at least seem that way, as a purely objective report. The scientific, objective report of the setting is the counter; you would use this approach if you didn’t want your readers to question it. You want them to accept the narrator’s authority on this matter. Realistic settings can also vary in their level of intimacy of detail; the setting can say something about the character. Some settings are already well-known. You may want to leave things up to the reader to imagine based on previously described elements.
Reading List - My Picks for Setting
I’ve created a list of a few books I think have a really strong sense of setting. These are just from books that I’ve read; there are certainly better options out there, I’m sure, but these are the ones that I’ve remembered over the years for this element. Also, you may not prefer the writing style or genre/focus of these books, so of course, reading almost anything will help you learn some of the techniques discussed.
A Sport and a Pastime - James Salter
The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson
The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula Le Guinn
The Bloody Chamber - Angela Carter
Giovanni’s Room - James Baldwin
Exercises
Write a paragraph of description that occurs right before the character enters their boss’s office to discuss “a serious matter.”
Write a brief scene describing what a doctor sees as he stares out the window of the hospital after failing to save the life of a patient. Don’t mention the patient or the failed procedure.
Set the scene for a character who has just awoken from a 20-year coma.
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