One of the most important elements you need to decide when you go to write a novel is the setting of your story. The setting plays a major role in everything, down to the language, the culture, the way of life, the religion, etc… Choosing a setting for your story can seem a bit complicated, but there are ways you can figure it out easily in a way that you can maximize the quality of your story.
Personally, I write a lot of fantasy stories where I make up the setting in its entirety. However, I have also written my series, The Fallen Age Saga, which takes place (at least for the first three books) in a modern timeline. My story takes place in real locations like Toronto, Canada, Washington D.C., and more. Of course, picking these locations took some thinking because I had to consider their impact on the story and their impact on my main characters.
Understanding the Importance of Setting
Setting is a very important part of the writing process and determines quite a lot of the essential elements of a story. Where your story takes place will definitely play a role in the overall story’s progression or at least what’s happening in the background. Don’t discount the setting when you go to write! Now, there are a few reasons I want to highlight to prove why setting is so important.
Whether you are selecting your setting from real-life or you’re creating an entirely new setting as a part of the world-building process, the setting can affect the plot of your story. For instance, if your story is set in a warring country, real or fake, that can impact the progression of the plot. Maybe one country has a stronger military than the other, so that will impact who wins or at least who causes the most devastation.
The setting can affect the mood of your story as well. A story set in a more economically depressed country will likely have an overall depressing mood. A story set on an alien planet will have a different mood compared to one on Earth. This is definitely something you should keep in mind when deciding the overall way your story wants to feel.
The setting also plays a role in how your characters develop. Where a character grows up will definitely impact their progression as a person and it will also change how the character interacts with the environment and people. A character raised in a rural farm will have different views than someone raised in a suburb and subsequently someone raised in a massive city.
How to Choose the Perfect Setting for Your Story
So, knowing why setting is so significant to an overall story, how does one choose the right setting? Well, here’s a step-by-step process you can use to help you figure it out.
1. Define Your Story’s Core Elements
Before we even get to choosing our setting, we need to figure out a few things first, namely the “core elements” of our story.
The first of these would be the genre of your story. The genre can genuinely impact the setting that you pick for your story. If your story is fantasy, then you’ll probably go for something more inspired by medieval Europe. If your story is a crime thriller, you’ll find yourself maybe going for a modern-day, urban environment.
Next would be your plot. The key events of your story are really important when it comes to selecting the setting or settings. If we take a look at my first book, Malware, Blide Stevens starts out in Toronto, Canada. He then goes to Washington D.C. when he starts working for the CIA. The story also takes place in other countries, but the main locations are Canada and the United States because of the plot.
On top of the plot, it helps to understand your characters a little bit. Knowing your character’s background, job, lifestyle, personality, hobbies, etc… helps you figure out what sort of setting would work the best for them. For example, Blide Stevens from my book, Malware, would be profiled like this at the start of the book:
Creating character profiles like these actually makes the designing process more fun, so I recommend you do something like thai when you’re world-building to make it more interesting.
2. Real vs. Fake Settings
The next thing you need to do is to figure out if your story takes place in a real setting or a fake setting, and this pretty much depends on your story’s goals. Going back to the example of my book, in Malware, I picked real-world settings but I fictionalized them in a way that fit my story’s time-period and plot.
In another WIP of mine, I completely made up the setting because the story is supposed to be set in a completely different world with different languages, cultures, religions, histories, etc… It’s a high fantasy series meanwhile The Fallen Age Saga is sci-fi and dark fantasy, but it has relevance to the “modern” day, so-to-speak.
When you come up with your own setting, you’ll have to go through more decision-making, as you’ll need to come with basically everything by yourself.
3. Historical vs. Contemporary vs. Futuristic
The next part that you’ll need to consider is the time-period of your setting. If your story takes place within a historical context, then you’ll need to put more effort into understanding the settings. For instance, a story that takes place in World War I will need to have more effort put into historical accuracy to settings than other stories. Now, if you’re writing a fantasy story set in a historical time period like medieval Europe, you can take the “inspired” route instead.
Stories set in contemporary or modern time periods can really be set anywhere. You can come up with a fake city within a real country or you can use a real city. Just be careful when you use real settings in a fictional context, as you don’t want to hurt real businesses or use real people’s names. This could get you into trouble. That’s why the beginning of books always include a disclaimer that everything is fictional.
Stories set in the future can realistically take place anywhere you want, even on a distant alien planet you make up. You can also set it in a real place but with fictional elements and a futuristic twist to make it more unique.
4. Macro vs. Micro Settings
The next thing you want to think about is the big and small settings in your story, or the macro and micro. The macro setting would be the larger environment in which your story takes place. This is a bigger picture idea, like a country, planet, continent, etc…
There’s also the micro setting, which is a specific location within the macro setting, such as a city, neighborhood, or town. In the context of my book, Toronto is in Canada, so Toronto is the micro setting and Canada is the macro setting.
5. Determine the Mood and Atmosphere
As I said earlier, the mood and tone, as well as the atmosphere matters a lot for choosing the setting of your story. If your story is a darker one with a more ominous or mysterious tone, the setting will be more dark and grim. Meanwhile, a lighter and more wholesome story will have settings that are brighter, happier, and bustling. Mysterious stories will take place in more ominous locations as well, but possibly less dark compared to that of a darker story.
6. Research Your Locations
Research is something that I think any writer should have a good background in. It’s important as a skillset and it matters a lot to the overall development of your story and your world. I’ve recommended research before when it came to history and mythology, but it’s also vital for the setting of your story.
If your story takes place in a real location that you’re not personally familiar with, then you’ll want to research the setting. A good way to do this is to pretend that you’re going on vacation to that place soon. What locations are important? What landmarks does that place have?
I personally am familiar with Montreal as a city, so writing about it was easier for me because I already knew all of the major parts of the city, but Toronto is a city I’m less familiar with, so I researched that a bit more.
For imaginary worlds, you will still need to do some research to get inspiration for whatever fake culture or story you’re writing about. If my world is inspired by Babylon, then I’ll need to research Babylon to understand it and then create my fake world based off of Babylon.
9. Don’t Be Averse to Change
Sometimes, our first pick for a setting is not the best pick. It’s OK to change and adjust the setting as you go to fit your story more. I originally was going to set Malware in Ohio–which is where I grew up most of my life–but decided that a bigger city like Montreal and Toronto felt more unique and interesting to my story’s progression instead.
Before you go, be sure to check out my series, The Fallen Age Saga. Also, sign up for my newsletter to get updates on all my latest stories, posts, works and more.