LEVEL UP YOUR WRITING (LIFE)

Setting

Consider this: Evocative writing in which characters come to life so fully that you’d recognize them as readily as, say, a neighbor or aunt.

Now consider: Did that literary wondrousness take place in an amorphous place and time, a setting so vague that the characters might as well be floating around on a cloud?

I think I know the answer: nope!

Yet, setting is too often underdeveloped in both works-in-progress as well as, truth be told, in some professionally published work. Setting is the element we tend to ignore in favor of the more supposedly exciting components, character and plot. We relegate setting to simply serve as a backdrop for story.

One reason writers tend to ignore setting is that we’re so often warned not we’re told.