How do you decide on your setting?

heza · Apr 10, 2015

A couple of my WIP ideas have come with the setting because of where they needed to be set and because of the technological level in my story.

A couple others have been less dependent on setting, so I just picked one I liked for the first. The second one, I'm wavering a bit. I was trying to choose between historical fantasy and secondary world fantasy. A while back, I read that stories in this particular historical setting are a hard sell, so I decided on secondary world (that looks pretty similar to the historical setting). I'm also playing, weirdly, with the idea of making it contemporary. *shrug*

Hublocker · Apr 10, 2015

I'm not one to seek exotic or historical settinga abroad (ie. in WW1 1914 Belgium, Abyssinia or Hong Kong) and I live on the west coast of British Columbia, a beautiful, exotic location (to foreigners) that I know well, so I set stories here.

Blinkk · Apr 10, 2015

I find settings and characters carve each other. If I took my characters and put them in a space opera with the exact same plot, they'd become very different people. The setting and the characters go hand in hand.

I'd ask your characters. Where do they feel the strongest? Where are they challenged the most? Start writing and pay attention to what they're doing and how they're reacting to the world around them.

Putputt · Apr 10, 2015

Bwaaaaaaaa, thank you gaiz for all the awesome advice! Those of you who said plot usually comes with the setting are right, of course, and that has always been the case...except this time, I thought about the plot set in a contemporary world, then realized how much richer and more complex it could be when applied to different worlds. As soon as I thought that, the possibilities became limitless.

Slhuang - you are right that one of my biggest considerations was body count. It was actually on my list of pros and cons.

Yous are the smartest of all the pencils!

Anyway, after a 20-h flight and lots of delirious thinking and pondering of all the posts here (I must have read every post here at least three times), I have narrowed it down to two possible settings (or should I say genres?) I think what I'll do from here is try to come up with some sort of outlines for both and see where they take me...or maybe a couple of pages of each world to see which voice and setting would work.

Thank you all for the advice! Without you, I'd probably still be spinning around frantically wondering what to do.

Kashmirgirl1976 · Apr 11, 2015

I just write the places I know (e.g. Philly, Pennsylvania, the Mid-Atlantic region - my home town). I'd write Los Angeles, but it's been done to death (where I now live).

Helix · Apr 11, 2015

Gringa said:
Where would you like to go on vacation for a month?

^ This is my technique. (Although I now live where I set a lot of things.)

nomadictendencies · Apr 17, 2015

Helix said:
^ This is my technique. (Although I now live where I set a lot of things.)

I like this advice. For me, plot and setting are so intertwined and related it's hard for me to tell if one determines the other. The stories I write couldn't exist in a different setting; though I suppose some genres are more flexible with setting than others!

Marianne Kirby · Apr 17, 2015

auzerais said:
In a lot of stories, the setting is kind of a silent but ubiquitous main character. You can't really just plop any group of people in any place and expect the story to go the same way, wherever they are. A story in modern day San Francisco is a totally different beast than a story in, oh, say, Ancient Greece. The culture, the attitudes towards POCs/LGBTs/women, etc -- all of this makes for a different feel. Usually, I like to develop my characters first and then figure out where they were, and that helps me to determine where they are.

This rings so true for me.

I always start from a character's voice and that tells me where they are from and where they are at the moment. Everything else comes from that. And in that way, the setting becomes a fundamental part of the story; the environment runs through the whole narrative in support.

How do you decide on your setting?

heza

Hublocker

Blinkk

Searching for dragons

Putputt

permanently suctioned to Buz's leg

Kashmirgirl1976

Recouping My Lost Marbles

Helix

socially distancing

nomadictendencies

Marianne Kirby

Blue Hair, Don't Care