The Importance of the Setting
If you’re a writer, chances are you fall into one of two camps: either you’re a hardcore worldbuilder, or you write stories grounded in our world that don’t need much worldbuilding. It would be easy to assume that crafting an enrapturing setting wouldn’t be that important for the latter but, in truth, your setting is important regardless of which camp you fall into.
Setting and Atmosphere
Perhaps the most obvious element your setting brings to the story is the atmosphere it creates. The location and time period of your story can greatly impact the expectations your audience has for the tone of the plot and can directly influence the mood of the story.
A stormy night in the Britain of 1941 is going to carry with it certain tonal expectations. Your readers will associate a storm with turmoil, drama and danger because of how prevalent that symbolism is in our storytelling. That sense of grit, hardship and danger will only be exemplified by the historical context of World War Two. Summer of 2025 in a quiet town on the beach somewhere is going to create a comfortable, relaxed tone. Major events rarely happen in small towns and summer on the beach is associated with relaxation and recreation. This setting could even trigger the blue mind state in some people. Midnight in a run-down part of a large city, fog filling streets where most of the streetlights are flickering at best or dead at worst is a spooky atmosphere ripe for horror. We instinctively know that predators can hide in dark places or areas where we don’t have visibility, so we are on high alert for threats to pop out and assail our characters. In this scenario, the setting itself adds to the tension and implicit threat in a very different way to the first I gave you.
Of course, what you want to do with the atmosphere of your setting and the expectations it creates is up to you. You can work with the atmosphere to further heighten those particular feelings, or you can deliberately subvert your audience's expectations and craft a story that highlights certain elements by contrasting them with their setting. Coraline by Neil Gaiman creates a quirky, bright and whimsical setting which helps feed into the twist of the Other Mother’s true intentions. In this story, the contrast between plot and setting makes the truth of the plot feel even more like a betrayal. However, in The Haunting of Hill House, the setting itself is almost an antagonist. The titular house is twisted, dark, abandoned and altered - distorting the idea of home and safety in ways that create an uncomfortable feeling even before the ghosts start showing up.
Leaning into the atmosphere or using it for contrast are both viable options and both can cause a powerful reaction in the reader. It just comes down to how and what you write.
Setting and Conflict
Stories are almost always driven by some sort of conflict and conflict is, in turn, typically character driven. However, a setting itself can be a contributing factor to the conflict in a story or even its source.
Sometimes conflicts are more complicated than just a dispute between two people or factions. The physical location of a story can generate conflict between two opposed parties and the histories and cultures of the people within those locations can develop because of that conflict or in a way that causes more. In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, the setting places a key role in the conflicts that develop. A lack of law and oversight, unfamiliar landscape and limited resources causes tensions to rise as the boys struggle to survive their ordeal and gradually slip into more volatile and dangerous mindsets, culminating in tragedy. The story is a dark contemplation of and statement about human nature and this is enabled by the setting.
In The Expanse, based on the books by James S.A. Corey, we enter the story in the middle of an escalating cold war between Earth, Mars and the people of the asteroid belt and a fraught, tense political tension. This situation is built upon a history of oppression. Earth still views Mars as a colony and resents their independence, Mars views Earth as an enemy that wants to keep them under the thumb and both groups oppress the Belters, using their economic power and resources to exploit them for the valuable minerals and ores they produce. This a setting with a rich history, steeped in political tension and violence and every major conflict in the story is rooted in the divides built into the setting. Even the addition of alien technology to the plot only serves to further exacerbate the political tensions in the story.
In Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, the setting is both a contributing factor to the plot and symbolic of it. The story is set during and in the wake of the Great Recession that occurred from 2007-2009. Nick and Amy, the perspective characters, lose their jobs and their savings as a direct result of these events and this causes the cracks in their marriage to show, inadvertently leading to the crime the plot of the book is centred around. Meanwhile, much of the story is set in a small town that looked to be growing into something impressive but that collapsed economically before the recession even hit. That town is now full of impressive but dilapidated buildings, mirroring the decay of Nick and Amy’s marriage.
Of course, the setting’s role in a conflict can be far more direct. Sometimes the conflict in a story isn’t between people, but between a person and the environment. In The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King, a little girl becomes lost in a forest. The vast majority of the conflict and danger in this book is simply this child’s struggle against nature and her efforts to survive. It is entirely unclear if the supernatural elements Trisha experiences are even real, or just a byproduct of her imagination, starvation and dehydration. Although, the appearance of the bear at the end suggests that the supernatural elements are in Trisha’s head to me.
A story’s setting can interact with the plot in a few different ways - as a precursor or instigator, a contributor fanning the flames, symbolically or even as the direct source of the conflict. Often, multiple forms of this interaction will occur within the same story. Keeping the setting’s role in a conflict in play helps make the world feel more tangible and real and further enhances not just the atmosphere of the story but the experience of the audience as well.
Setting and Characters
Although it is easy to overlook, there is a direct relationship between characters and the world they inhabit. This isn’t necessarily something we think about often as either audience or writer - and writers often intrinsically work with this relationship even if not actively considering it - but it is always present. Where you come from, where you are now and the people you surround yourself with all have an impact on how you think and behave. The same is true of every character.
The Expanse, again, is a story that does an excellent job of making use of this relationship. Every character in the story is directly influenced not only by the current political landscape and their place within it, but also by their personal upbringing and history. Marco Inaros, the antagonist of seasons four and five of the TV version, is a prime example of this. He is a terrorist and revolutionary. His methods are unquestionably evil, but his rise to power is explicitly described by the show as effectively being inevitable. The oppression and exploitation of the Belt by the inner planets invites violence in the form of revolution, giving rise to a reactionary madman who is willing to kill millions of Earthers in retaliation.
Revisiting Gone Girl, not only does the setting play a prominent role in developing the eventual conflict between its characters, but the backgrounds of Nick and Amy contribute a lot to who they are as people and why they eventually find themselves in opposition. Nick comes from a working class, rural and traditional background. His expectations and beliefs for what his life should be like and how Amy should behave are borne from this background. They are also in very stark contrast to Amy’s background; growing up wealthy, with a lot of pressure placed on her to succeed and be perfect (like her counterpart in her parents’ books) and with very liberal politics. As their masks are gradually stripped away, it becomes very clear that they have very different expectations for the world and each other and that is because the different settings they originate from have influenced who they are.
Nobody is an island. Everyone is affected by where they are and where they come from. A well-rounded and narratively deep character should, therefore, be the same. Generally speaking, a character should not feel like their place in the world is distinct from their place in the narrative. Instead, their beliefs and values should be shaped by the setting they exist in.
Conclusion
In my experience, setting is one of those things that both authors and audiences either think a lot about or not much about at all. Regardless of which group you find yourself in, there’s no denying that while setting often takes a back seat to character and plot (as it arguably should), it is still an integral part of any good story and can be used to great effect by a writer to craft the story they wish to tell.
