Setting is one of the strangest elements of writing. If a writer isn’t under-using it, you can bet they are probably overusing it. In my early days of scribbling I would often veer wildly from one extreme to the next, either saturating the page with a descriptive setting or not including it at all.
Consider these two examples from one of my first short stories.
He walked to the bus stop.
I wrestled with this sentence for a long time, rereading it over and over until I finally concluded it needed to paint a better picture in the reader’s mind.
As he walked to the bus stop he noticed that it had rained the night before. The grass was shiny and it glistened in the morning sun. On the far side of the park the trees were stripped bare of leaves and only bony branches were exposed. The estate was quiet, not a sinner moved since it was a Sunday. He could hear a car or two drive along the motorway beyond.
This version depicts a definite sense of place. A picture comes into focus and the reader can deduce many details.
* It’s morning.
* The story is set in winter.
* The man is walking in a housing estate that is next to a park.
This paragraph made the final cut and, even today, I’m kind of proud of the descriptive, albeit clumsy, sentences. That said, if I were to do the whole thing again I would delete that whole paragraph and go back to the first sentence.
Before including any descriptive passage the writer needs to ask himself/herself one question: What purpose does it serve? If the only reason for the inclusion is to display fancy writing skills it should be removed immediately. The reader’s attention is valuable and finite and it shouldn’t be wasted. In my case, the story I was writing was about an office conflict so a descriptive street scene on his way to work made very little sense.
There are, however, perfectly legitimate reasons to describe a setting in detail. In a horror story, for example, it may be necessary to depict a creaking step or a darkened basement in order to provide an eery atmosphere or give a sense of mystery.
There are also times when setting can play a pivotal role in the plot and can behave more like a character than a location. Consider our protagonist visiting a forest. If he or she is enjoying the walk it might be important to include one or two lines of description. If our character gets lost, however, all details are now important. The writer will need to depict the disorientation caused by the endless sea of trees. The strange noises. The fading light behind the canopy of branches. The forest is now not just a location, it has become an antagonist, an obstacle the character must overcome.
In the past I wrote a story about a character being suffocated by his small home town. He was conflicted by the place. It was a place he loved but he had to leave as he saw it as a small-minded town with gossip and petty vendettas. Now the location was now behaving more like a ex-lover than a place, and provided motivation for the characters arc.
Finally, setting can be used as an extension of the main character’s personality. Describing our character Tom’s room as a place with clothes scattered on the floor and a desk littered with stained coffee cups is a much more visceral and memorable method of saying he was untidy. In the same way we could describe his room as clinically clean, all clothes hanging neatly in the closet and readers can form another different opinion about his personality. But all this needs to be consistent. His personal setting needs to match his characteristic traits.
The way in which a character behaves and reacts in a setting may also be telling.
Tom flung his arms from side to side and kicked his legs to the music.
If Tom is in a nightclub at 1am we might see a man enjoying life. But if Tom is in the middle of an office or on the street we might look at him a little differently. We could be in the presence of a man in crisis.
Whatever way you choose to use setting in your story it must be sparse and tight, and it should be embedded seamlessly into the story.