The choice of where to set one’s story can affect the tone of the entire book, and often genre will help dictate the scope of locations to be used throughout the story. Let’s say you’ve written a contemporary young-adult novel. Most likely, high school is the obvious overall setting choice for your YA story.
But the whole thing can’t take place at school. Important events in the life of your main character will happen elsewhere: at home, at work, hanging out with friends, on dates, and while getting from one place to another. Settings need to be chosen for each individual scene, and the key to making these choices is knowing the important events in your story. The right setting is like a musical score, giving each scene a deeper emotional intensity through mood, symbolism, and personalization.
Your protagonist will also help narrow down the choices. Is she popular? An epiphany might occur at a house party or on a school trip. Is she shy or introverted? A confrontation could likely happen on the way home from school, at the family ice cream parlor where she’s forced to work, or in her backyard.
When it comes to finding a location for a scene, some writers might feel limited by the range of typical settings within their genre, but this doesn’t have to be the case. Creativity is one place where all writers shine, and we owe it to our readers to find the perfect locales for each scene, ones that can enhance events so they have the biggest impact. This doesn’t always mean choosing a big, splashy location that readers might not often see in novels. Sometimes settings with the greatest traction can be rather mundane.
In Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak, the main character, Melinda, spends most of her time at school, but due to a recent traumatic event, she is utterly disconnected to everything. So Anderson creates an unexpected haven for Melinda: the custodian’s closet. Suffering from PTSD, she goes there repeatedly when she needs to regroup. This unlikely location provides a welcome respite not only for Melinda but for the reader too.
When a setting has an emotional tie to the protagonist, even if at first glance it seems boring or one-note, it can be reinvented, surprising readers and offering them something new to experience. If you are struggling with a choice, try a bit of exploration; test out various places in your mind to see which provides the best opportunities for emotional values and triggers.
Getting the Biggest Emotional Bang for Your Setting Buck
As you can see, choosing the right setting for each scene greatly affects a writer’s ability to characterize the story’s cast and make readers feel part of the action. However, in the throes of plotting, it can be tempting to use a convenient setting that fits with where the characters happen to be—especially when the main action is low-key, like a conversation that needs to take place. Don’t be fooled—to pack the biggest storytelling punch, the setting should earn the right to be chosen, even if the interaction between your characters is nothing more than a simple dialogue exchange.
To illustrate this, let’s look at another example. Say our main character Mary has returned to her childhood home on the advice of her therapist, with plans to confront her aging father about the physical abuse she suffered at his hand as a child. Her goal is to face him and make him know how much it hurt her so she can achieve closure and move past this emotional wound. The nature of this dialogue scene is such that it will contain powerful emotional turmoil regardless of where it takes place, but that’s no excuse for us not to squeeze out even more raw tension by getting specific with the setting choice.
This scene could take place in myriad locations, such as in the car as Mary’s father picks her up at the airport, in his workshop as he sands down his latest hand-built canoe, or at the kitchen table over a meal.
Of all these places, which will hold the most emotional triggers for Mary? For example, if the family zealously followed spare-the-rod-spoil-the-child beliefs due to a skewed view of religious tenets, and this was the excuse for the beatings Mary endured, could this religious symbolism be shown through a cross displayed over the kitchen door? Or perhaps a cross-stitched verse could sit prominently above the family’s kitchen table—a place where Mary was punished if she spoke before finishing her food, even if it was just to ask for water. This might make for a strong setting because the kitchen is drenched with negative memories.
But let’s explore our other options. The scene could also take place in her father’s workshop, where Mary was often dragged to be violently punished, weeping and begging for mercy. This location would certainly put Mary on edge, which would result in amplifying tension for the reader too. The events that took place in this room chain her to the abuse, yet her standing up to her father in this setting would be a strong declaration that she will move into a future that is untainted by past violence.
The third option, a discussion in a car, means Mary has a captive audience. Her father cannot get away from her accusations; he cannot escape responsibility for destroying her childhood. In the car, he must face what he’s done. However, unlike the other two settings, there’s no emotional connection to Mary, which is a missed opportunity to bring a deeper intensity to the confrontation through triggers. But choose the kitchen where she feels the yoke of religion bearing down on her—this is powerful, and will force her to fight feelings of unworthiness caused by her past emotional abuse. Likewise, taking her to the workshop will challenge her resolve as memories from the past bombard her. Both settings are stronger options than the two being conveniently trapped during a vehicle commute.
Choosing a setting that has specific meaning to the characters and provides strong context for the events taking place allows the author to charge the scene with emotion, creating opportunities for the characters to reveal more of themselves in an active and natural way.