The Importance of Setting

Have you asked yourself why we fall in love with a novel or a short story? I have a theory. We tend to remember and endear stories, (some people can recall almost every detail of it), not only because of their characters, but also its settings. I would venture to say that the reason why the plot of a story stays in our memory is because of a perfect combination of well- rounded characters and the perfect setting. Think of the novels you have in your top ten list and I can guarantee the reason those novels are so vividly fresh in your mind that you probably reread every year (I read Garcia Marquez’s Of Love and Other Demons once a year) because it seems that we were there along with the characters living every minute of the story with them.

Know how to choose the ideal setting for your story is very important to create a feeling of unity, and more important to create the right mood for your story. In his book The Nighttime Novelist, Joseph Bates has great words of wisdom about setting. He says: “setting – the time, place, and space of your story- isn’t simply four walls you’ve dropped your character into so he’ll have someplace to sit, nor is it a larger, objective, impersonal world that only just happens to include the people you’re focusing on, tangentially. Setting is directly related to your character, another way of revealing and deepening our understanding of him and his quest.”

Although the mood and nature of a story can have a setting that doesn’t exactly fit with the genre of the story, (it is always better idea to create a setting according to the mood of your story) give your setting always a sense of place so you can achieve suspense and excitement.

Check out these two novels: Blindness by Jose Saramago

The Shadow of the Wind By Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Watch Carlos Ruiz Zafon talks about The Shadow of the Wind