Details, Details: How to Write a Rich Setting for Your Story

It’s incredibly exciting to have a new story idea. The characters develop in our mind and seem to be itching to plunge right in and share their story. All the important parts of the setting are complete in our imagination and will flow onto the page. After all, the setting is simply the stuff surrounding the characters. All the author has to do is establish a time and a place.

Sounds simple, right?

It’s not always so.

As writers, we are often immersed in our own story world before we create it. We take familiar elements and weave them in, using past experiences to provide a backdrop for novels.

Because we’re so familiar with certain environments, we risk making the unconscious assumption that our reader knows exactly what we’re talking about. We forget to add little details that bring the story world to life for readers who may not have previous knowledge of our chosen setting.

This can be a particular challenge for authors of young adult fiction, because it’s tempting to skip over details for the sake of word count, but without a firm setting readers can’t get oriented.

Put It On the Page

Make sure there is enough description and detail of the surroundings, the clothing, and the items in your setting to evoke a sense of time and place. Just not so much that the reader will become bogged down and lose interest. At the same time, give enough of the necessary descriptions, pertinent details, and explanations to ground the reader firmly in the story world.

I told you it wasn’t as simple as it sounds!

Why Time Markers Aren’t Enough

Often in novels, a date is indicated at the beginning of a chapter. This is a good starting place to help orient your reader, but the author needs to go a little bit further. Readers expect an immersive experience that walks them through the story, and unless a date has events attached to it, it can be quickly forgotten.

Unfamiliar Settings

Sometimes a story comes into being in a setting completely new to the author. If the region, country, or environment is one the writer isn’t familiar with, it’s best to do the required research, and then have fact checkers go over your manuscript for inaccuracies, both large and small.

Many readers won’t like stories that play fast and loose with inaccuracies vital to the plot of a story, but even little things can be an issue, such as having a species of trees growing in an area that they would never grow, using figures of speech incorrectly, not understanding the customs of the culture, and so on.

Dialogue as Part of Setting

Use dialogue and sayings consistent with the time or the region where your story is set, but without going overboard! Nothing screams “I don’t know what I’m talking about” as much as misused dialogue and obvious mistakes with commonly known details of the region.

Vocabulary

Language is constantly changing. Along with dialogue and how your characters speak, the author’s word choices help establish setting. Words like “ridicule” and “rotund” evoke certain eras, and probably wouldn’t find their way into contemporary, but would be perfect for a story set in the 1800s. The opposite is true. Contemporary vocabulary shouldn’t show up in historical fiction.

As always, there are exceptions. For instance, unusual word choices can work for a quirky character.

Update Your Info

An author may have the utmost confidence they understand their setting. Perhaps their novel is set in another country, and they have lived in that country. Personal experience lends authenticity to the narrative, but make sure you’re working with updated information. In certain settings and fields, things change quickly.

Start With Research

Misplaced details stick out like a sore thumb. The easiest way to ferret out these types of mistakes before they end up in a published book is to get a few readers who can fact check for you. That’s not to say that fact checkers are a substitution for research. Fact checkers are your last line of defense, and like proofreading, they may not catch everything, especially if the gaffes are excessive.

So how much setting detail does a story need?

Whatever it takes to keep the reader grounded, interested, and reading!

Donna Jo Stone writes YA contemporary novels about tough issues but always ends the stories with a note of hope. She blogs at donnajostone.com.