A story is nothing without setting. Even the most basic of tales include some elements of world building. Little Red Riding Hood went into the woods, Old MacDonald had a farm, the chicken crossed the road. Every novel - from fantasy to the most contemporary or contemporaries - benefits from a deeply imagined setting.
World building can, however, be a tricky thing. There's a lot of discussion below on using world building and setting to add depth and complexity to your writing, as well as ways to approach world building as a tool for generating even more content. There are also articles on the importance of setting to POV and tone, and ensuring your world building is grounded in something tangible for readers to seize. As always, there's a wealth of information in the AYAP archives... and we've collected the best of it below.
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We're thrilled to welcome New York Times Best Selling Author C.C. Hunter to the blog today. She's here to share with us some wonderful insight into how to fully utilize your setting. Be sure to check below for her upcoming release in the Shadow Falls series: Unspoken!
Put Your Setting to Work: A Craft of Writing Post by C.C. Hunter
Setting. It’s just things, just the backdrop, just descriptions to prevent the reader from feeling like they are in a blank room, right? Wrong. If you aren’t putting your setting to work, then you are missing out on a great opportunity to add layers of richness to your work.
Where we are and what surrounds us helps define who we are. The same goes for your characters. Setting shows character. Our homes are supposed to be decorated in a way that expresses our unique style and personality. For sure, it expresses our incomes. What does your character’s home say about them? The clothes we wear are reflections of our personalities and even our moods. What do your heroine’s clothes say about her?
Let’s say you are writing a scene, and you show your character sitting down at a table, and she pushes something aside to make room for her glass of tea. Wait, is she drinking tea, or is she drinking a beer? Or is it hot green tea with a touch of mint? Or is it a glass of expensive red wine? Maybe a glass of wine that she just poured out of a box container? Or is it a Mason jar filled to the brim with Jack Daniels? Now, what does she push aside to make room for this drink? Is it her to-do list? Her Smartphone that her job requires she keep close at all times? Is it a stack of unpaid bills? A stack of romance novels? A gardening magazine? A magazine article on how to please a man in bed? Pictures of the cruise she just returned from? Her unsigned divorce papers? An unopened letter from her mother she hasn’t heard from in twenty years? Or is it a Colt .45?
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