Photo by Michael Emonoon Unsplash
Where you set your story matters.
It matters to your character, of course. It also matters to your reader. It gives them a grounding. A place to imagine themselves.
It’s part of your job, as a writer, to guide their imagination.
A big problem I see with new writers is that they put a little block of description somewhere near the beginning of the story that gives a very sterile or generic setting description.
Or they’ll leave the setting out all together.
But think about your favorite books. I mean your real favorites. The ones that have had a big impact on you. Changes are good that the settings are important to you.
Narnia is important to me. Not just because it’s magical. Narnia is important to me because I saw it through Lucy’s eyes when she first pushed her way through the fur coats. And I saw it when I was ten and my own parents were going through an ugly divorce and I needed Narnia.
It would have meant something entirely different to me if the first time I read it, I was forty, reading it to my daughter.
It’s your job to paint a picture and then tell a story within the picture — but leave enough room in the picture so that the reader can create their own sensory images.
Try this exercise. Just look outside. Describe what you see. Describe it from your own perspective, as if you were a character in your own story.