Since I spoke about how place shapes my own writing last week, this week I wanted to share some tips about how you might include place in your own writing.
I love writing about place because I love reading about place. When I think of my favorite novels, I recall the characters, certainly, but I also remember the windswept moors of Yorkshire, the streets of Victorian London, or the small towns, sprawling cities, ancient castles, and remote coastlines that felt so vivid they seemed to exist beyond the page.
As writers, we sometimes think of setting as the backdrop of a story, yet the most memorable places in fiction are never merely backgrounds or a list of names that denote points on a map. The setting shapes the people who live there. They also influence the plot and create atmosphere. Over the years, I’ve come to believe that place is one of the most powerful tools available to writers to help their stories spring to life. Here are a few lessons I’ve learned about bringing places to life on the page.
Start With Emotion, Not Geography
One mistake some writers make is treating setting like a travel guide where they name every landmark or point of interest. While you will need to name certain points of interest that readers need to know, at the same time, readers don’t necessarily need to know every street or architectural detail in the area. When I was writing The Professor of Eventide, I drew a map of the entire college campus for my own reference, but I only mentioned the buildings readers needed to know to follow the story. Instead of a step-by-step map of the area, readers need an emotional experience. As you begin to describe the places in your story, you should consider what emotion you want the reader to feel as they stand beside your character. You can see my map for The Professor of Eventide here.
For examples of places signifying an emotion, a coastal village might feel lonely, a university campus might feel mysterious, a city street might feel energetic, or overwhelming, or hopeful depending on the intention of that moment. For readers, the emotional atmosphere often matters more than factual description. When readers remember a setting, they often remember how it felt rather than how it looked.
Focus on Specific Details
A place becomes real through the specific details that readers can hold onto as they make sense of the scene before them. As a writer, I thrive on details. Instead of calling an old house beautiful, write about the cracked paint on the porch railing or the smell of dust and cedar in the hallway. Where is the light in your scene and how does it illuminate some objects while leaving others in shadow? Outlander author Diana Gabaldon once said in an interview that she begins writing a scene by describing the way the light reflects in that moment. Specific details create the illusion of reality. The trick is to choose to reveal the details that reveal character and atmosphere rather than overwhelming readers with information. What do readers need to know in order to understand your characters in that moment in time? You don’t need twenty details, just the right three. It’s a bit like being Goldilocks where too few details leave the reader wanting more, but too many details leave them begging for mercy. But I would argue that a few well-pointed details are necessary.
Use All Five Senses
This is something I stress to my students when I’m teaching creative writing. One of the best ways to pull readers into your story is to appeal to their five senses–sight, taste, touch, sound, and smell. When you’re considering which details to include, be sure to include sensory details.
Many writers rely heavily on visual description and leave the other senses behind. However, real places are experienced through all the senses. What does the place smell like? What sounds fill the background? What textures surround the characters? What tastes are associated with the location? Think about how different a fishing village feels when you include the scent of saltwater and seaweed, the cry of gulls overhead, and the damp chill carried by the wind than if you simply state that they were standing in a fishing village. The more senses you engage, the more immersive the setting becomes.
Let Place Influence Character
Just as the best characters are not interchangeable, the best settings are not interchangeable either. A character raised in a small New England town is likely to see the world differently than someone raised in New York City. A person living in Victorian England faces different expectations than someone living in modern-day California. Place shapes values, opportunities, fears, habits, and identity in ways we often don’t realize when we’re living there. How has your setting has influenced your characters? As authors, it’s our job to know.
Remember That Every Place Has a History
Even fictional places have histories, especially if they are based on real-life places. Every city, building, neighborhood, or landscape has accumulated stories over time. Who lived here before? What events shaped this place? What traces of the past remain visible? This is especially true in historical fiction and Gothic fiction, where the past frequently exerts pressure on the present. The most compelling settings often feel as though they existed before the novel began and will continue existing after it ends.
Don’t Stop Describing the Setting After Chapter One
Some writers devote enormous attention to introducing a setting at the beginning of their stories and then forgetting about it. The result is a place that feels alive initially but then fades into the background, to the point where we barely remember where the story is set. But settings change over time just as people do. The weather shifts, or the seasons change. In order to give your story a sense of passing time, share these changes with your readers. Continue weaving setting into the narrative throughout the story, and allow your readers to experience the place as a living environment rather than a static backdrop.
Treat Place Like a Character
In all of my favorite stories, and Dickens comes to mind here, the setting of the story, whether it’s an old house, the fog, or even the city of London, becomes a character in its own right. Dickens was a master at personification so that the fog at the beginning of Bleak House seems like a living, breathing part of the story. Think about describing your setting the way you describe your characters. What makes your setting distinctive? How does it affect the people around it? What role does it play in the story? How can you bring it to life so that your readers feel as if they’re part of the story? Some of the most memorable places in literature feel alive because they exert influence over the narrative and create tension. These places become participants in the story rather than scenery.
When writers discuss craft, conversations often focus on plot, dialogue, or character development, and all of those elements are important. But I would make a strong argument that place matters too. A well-crafted setting does more than tell readers where a story happens, but it also helps to define why the story happens the way it does. Place can help to explain atmosphere, it reveals character, and it can strengthen the theme.
Most importantly, by laying out the place of your story in a fully realized, detailed way that is more than simply a map of locations, you’re giving your readers a living, breathing world they can inhabit. That’s why all of my favorite books are so strong on setting up the place, and that’s why those places created on the page have lingered in my imagination for years. If you want your stories to linger with your readers, see what you can do to make the places where your story happens come alive.