How to Create Dynamic Settings: Setting the Scene
- Authors Aflame
- Jul 25, 2019
- 5 min read
Updated: Sep 19, 2019
By Gen Gavel
The Necessity of Settings
Close your eyes and imagine you are somewhere else—anywhere else. If you’re sitting on your sofa with your laptop right now, close your eyes and imagine you are in a breezy field instead. How does that affect your work? Does it make your day easier, harder, or simply more exciting? Does your skin itch? Are you distracted? Or does this new setting give you a sense of joyful vitality that you’d thought you’d grown incapable of feeling?
Now, imagine the scene you’re writing. Take those characters and events and place them in an entirely new setting. Who has started to shiver? Who has grown uncharacteristically angry? How do these small shifts alter the trajectory of the events or conversations in your scene?
Finally, take the setting and characters you already have and ask yourself how they are impacting one another. If they’re not, you either need to go back to the drawing board and select a more appropriate setting for your scene, or you simply need to flesh out the potential that’s already there.
Any Setting Can Be Dynamic
Especially as your novel progresses, it is tempting to begin to rely solely on your series of escalating events to keep the reader intrigued. The reader, however, may not be experiencing your well-crafted events in the same way that you are—or were when you imagined them.
A dynamic setting makes the difference between a series of events and an immersive experience. But that does not mean that you need to move your characters from dreary London to luscious Bermuda.
Dynamic does not mean exotic. Merriam-Webster defines dynamic as: “marked by usually continuous and productive activity or change.” Dynamic settings have an impact. They have the power to change the characters, and therefore, they have the power to change, or effect, the reader.
How to Bring a Setting to Life
Whether it is a common or unique location, you can bring your setting to life by treating it as one of three things:
📚 A character
📚 An obstacle
📚 An escape
Settings as Characters
Believe it or not, settings can be treated as living, breathing story characters. Consider if your setting has an attitude. Does it always start to rain the moment Gary leaves the house without his umbrella? Does Jules slam the door every day, only to be punished by a flurry of dust and shame from the decaying beams she was supposed to replace?
How does the setting speak to your POV character in each scene? Settings that talk back, or comfort, or mock your main characters can be every bit as influential as your cast of secondary characters.
This works best, however, with recurring settings that are carefully chosen to advance the plot and theme of the story, but it can be used spontaneously if there is a recurring theme of several different settings “talking” in a particular way. If you do this, though, it is important to maintain slightly different voices for each setting’s character.
Another way to use setting as character is to make it change and grow. After all, growth is the key element of any character arc. Use it for your settings by having the arms of the sofa grow threadbare, trees leaf out and turn, odors develop, or even memories haunt the halls and speak through the walls. Be purposeful about it, though. Be sure that the setting not only impacts the emotions of the reader but also has a bearing on the trajectory of the story arc.
Settings as Obstacles
Tension is a key component of every novel, every chapter, every scene, as well as many character relationships. Often, tension is a reader’s first reason to turn the next page. So, similarly to treating your setting as a character, you can create tension in an otherwise too-simple scene by treating your setting as an obstacle.
Where this concept differs from treating setting as character is where the setting is not just talking back to the characters, or developing in its own right, but it is fighting. It is a central force in the scene. It is in direct opposition to the goal or goals of the characters.
If Andrew has almost unlocked the secret garden gate with the key that took him eight scenes to procure, but the hurricane-force wind rips the key from his hand, the setting is an effective obstacle. But, be careful; using this tactic carelessly can cheapen your narrative and result in kind of a reverse deus ex machina.
A series though, where perfectly random disasters used simply just to delay the payoff and increase with seemingly little purpose aside from increasing the story’s word count, will just make the reader feel toyed with. Avoid this pitfall simply by being consistent and having your character continually battling one or two particular setting obstacles.
Settings as Escapes
Conversely—or, I should say, completely differently—many writers effectively treat some settings as escapes. They treat them as lush and welcoming locales that offer a place for the mind to hide from the realities of the reader’s life.
An entire novel cannot be simply a meandering walk through Christmas in the Country, but, depending on your genre, it is entirely possible to create a dynamic story set within a relaxing, consistently soothing setting. These settings can still be dynamic (impactful, changing) if the writer is conscious of his or her choice to treat the setting as an escape.
Great attention to sensory details is important here, as is appealing to the reader’s own experiences. It is difficult to escape into a world you cannot visualize, so, whether your world is an exotic fantasy land, a pleasant 19th-century villa, or Grandma’s house on Cape Cod, to bring an escape-worthy setting to life, you must describe it with all five senses and use familiar references.
Most of us cannot quite imagine the fragrance of geranium hair soap, but we can imagine lavender, rose, and probably tangerine. Likewise, most of us do not know the feel of dragon scales, but if you tell us the scales are cold, oozy, or metallic, we might start tracking with you.
Know Thy Setting
However you choose to treat your setting, it is imperative that it be a fully established entity. Easily more than half of the stories I receive in my inbox have underdeveloped settings or no particular setting whatsoever.
Jason and Alexandra are talking. They go out “the door” at some point and find themselves wind up “meeting up” with Harvey who insists they bike to “Jen’s house.”
If I can’t see it, smell it, or feel it, it’s not going to have an impact on me and I might not keep reading. So, take the time to get acquainted with each new setting in your story and make the effort to carefully share that vision with the reader. It could be the difference between a phenomenal story that nobody finishes and a phenomenal best-seller.
Gen Gavel — Editor, Havok Publishing
Lover of meaningful stories and powerful connections, Gen writes and edits with one goal: to draw people together by the power of fiction. She has had several short stories published online and in print, has co-edited a teen authors anthology, and enjoys editing flash fiction for Havok Publishing as well as full novels for her private clients.
www.facebook.com/Gen-Gavel-Editing
“Dynamic” Merriam-Webster. Accessed June 9, 2019
“Seven Tips on How to Write Realistic Settings” Writer’s Edit. Accessed June 9, 2019
“How to Make Your Setting a Character” Writer’s Digest. Accessed June 9, 2019 https://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/how-to-make-your-setting-a-character
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