Tools
Drafting: Setting Checklist
Revision: Setting Checklist
Resources
Rebecca Makkai, “On the Most Underutilized (the correct word choice would be “Used” since utilized means that an object is used in a way that in not its normal function, such as drive a nail with a screwdriver, but okay) Tool in Fiction: Setting” (Literary Hub) (Makkai argues that setting is doing more than we give it credit for, and pushes back on the easy “setting as character” shorthand)
Leila Mottley, “Can You Truly Write a Place You’ve Never Been?” (Literary Hub) (the novelist on why visiting a place in person changes the writing, and why research alone falls short (because you can’t smell Google Maps)
Shannon Bowring, “Letting Places Grow Like Characters” (Literary Hub) (turning a Maine hometown into the fictional town of Dalton across two novels)
Naomi Xu Elegant, “The Fact and the Fiction of Philly” (Literary Hub) (writing Philadelphia in her debut novel through research, memory, and intuition)
Kristy Woodson Harvey, “Unforgettable Settings in 5 Simple Steps” (Writer’s Digest) (sensory detail, emotional weight, and giving a setting a personality)
Kim Hooper, “4 Tips for Setting a Novel in a Place You Don’t Know Well” (Writer’s Digest) (visit, map, read the local news, and find a local beta reader)
Caroline Cleveland, “Creating a Sense of Place in Fiction” (Writer’s Digest) (a Southern novelist on five moves she “borrowed” from writers who do place)
Liz Michalski, “5 Tips for Writing Setting as a Character” (Writer’s Digest) (using all five senses, first impressions, and environment to reveal character)
Mary Buckham, “How Writers Can Craft an Effective Setting” (Jane Friedman) (the author of A Writer’s Guide to Active Setting on grounding a scene fast without over-describing)
Ayşe Papatya Bucak, “Person, Place or Thing?: Characterizing Setting” (Fiction Writers Review) (five techniques for treating setting as a dynamic character)
Exercises
Exercise 1
If you had three characters walk into a new location at the same time, they will each notice something different.
Choose a picture. Imagine your hero is a
1. Criminal, plotting a job
2. Child getting away from fighting parents
3. A cat
Exercise 2
1. Get your POV Character and your genre.
2. Write the opening paragraph of a scene that starts in the pictured setting.
