Another month, and another authors’ Round Robin. This month the topic has been set by author Skye Taylor
How do you make real settings, either present-day or historical, feel authentic for readers?
Readers often say an authentic, immersive setting feels like a character in itself. The trick is not to show readers how much research you’ve done, and not even just to build a realistic world, but to create a backdrop for your specific characters to act out their story.
It can help to ask yourself what setting your characters need, and how important this setting is for their character.
Anne Shirley’s story would be completely different outside Prince Edward Island, Bridget Jones’s would be different outside London, and without eighteenth-century Scotland Claire Fraser would be a different character altogether.
Image by Brigitte Werner from Pixabay
The most compelling settings feel lived-in and three-dimensional, and by the end of the story they feel as real to readers as their own hometown.
Here are my 7 tips on making real settings feel authentic
Tip one
Try to give readers some idea of the setting early in the opening. Sometimes, as an editor, I start a manuscript feeling a little confused as to where and when the events are taking place. Readers like to feel orientated early on (unless you deliberately intend for them to wait).
Here are a couple of great examples of authors who have set the real setting from the get-go, and in a compelling way:
‘ There are some men who enter a woman’s life and screw it up forever. Joseph Morelli did this to me – not forever, but periodically.
Morelli and I were both born and raised in a blue-collar chunk of Trenton called the burg. Houses were attached and narrow. Yards were small. Cars were American. The people were mostly of Italian descent, with enough Hungarians and Germans thrown in to offset inbreeding.’
This is from Janet Evanovich’s One for the Money. It’s a great opening, not just because it gives a sense of place straightaway, but it also shows the heroine’s humorous character – and leaves us wanting to know what Morelli did to upset her!
Here’s a second, totally different example:
‘In these times of ours, though concerning the exact year there is no need to be precise, a boat of dirty and disreputable appearance, with two figures in it, floated on the Thames, between Southwark Bridge, which is of iron, and London Bridge, which is of stone, as an autumn evening was closing in.’
This could only be Charles Dickens, master of the realistic London setting, and this is from the brilliant Our Mutual Friend.
Tip two
Engage all the senses
In order to immerse readers properly, try conjuring up all the senses, and not just sight.
What are the distinctive sounds of your setting? In a historical novel, without the rumble of traffic and passing aircraft that most of us town-dwellers live with, what sounds would people hear?
What smells characterise your location? Salt air on the coast? Industrial pollution? A sewage-filled street in Victorian times?
How does the weather affect the setting? And your character’s mood? (I wrote a post previously on the symbolism of the seasons in literature, with some examples.)
Tip three
Remember who is telling your story
A stranger will see a setting differently from a local. I live near the Yorkshire moors. A German friend from the big city of Dortmund once visited and was so struck by the landscape, he told me he was ‘suffering from green shock’. His culture shock stayed with me and was part of the backbone to my novel The Summer of Love and Secrets, in which a group of teenage Londoners visit the moors for a week.
These contrasts can reveal a lot about character. A rich man would react to a Victorian London slum differently to a man who lived there. A character’s mood, or their goals can also affect how the setting will come across to readers. (Are they looking for a criminal? Are they in hiding? Are they on holiday?)
If the setting is familiar to a character, then what details do you need to show? In historical settings, for example, characters wouldn’t point out details that to them are perfectly ordinary.
Tip four
Capture the language and dialect
Dropping in regional phrases and slang can help give a strong idea of setting. Knowing how much and how little is tricky. I’ve edited novels where the author is aiming to give an idea of historical setting, but in trying too hard, the dialogue comes across as overblown, and not something ordinary people would say. In general, less is more – although Robert Louis Stevenson, whose books I love, has been accused of overdoing it.
Stevenson famously said about his novel The Black Arrow ‘Tushery, by the mass! Ay, friend, a whole tale of tushery. And every tusher tushes me so free, that may I be tushed if the whole thing is worth a tush.’ Readers, including me, loved the tushery!
Having said that…
Tip five
Don’t over do it
Novels are about characters and plot. The setting is a vital part of the story, but ask yourself how much description is needed. Is it important for the character development? Does it advance the plot? If the description were cut, would it matter? Readers love to fill in the gaps with their own imagination. Using our own imaginations to picture things and making our own mental images is part of what makes reading novels so much fun.
Tip six
Use subtle context
If characters actually live in a setting, they wouldn’t remark on their normal surroundings. For example, where I live there are too many streetlights to see the night sky properly. When I’ve been deep in the countryside, I’m always struck by the beauty of the night sky – but locals who are used to it wouldn’t remark on it the same way I do. It takes some ingenuity to get across what’s normal to your characters – especially when trying to drop in period detail – but when done subtly the details can add depth to the setting.
Tip seven
Local culture is also part of the setting
Culture is part of setting, and all sorts of things make up a local culture: what people eat, when they eat and who with, local customs and holidays, religious and political influences on daily life. If your novel is set in a Buddhist monastery it’s clearly going to have a different vibe to one set in Las Vegas.
I live in a northern town. It’s only when my London family and friends come to visit that I notice there is a different culture here to the ones they experience. The pubs are quieter. Some pubs stop serving food at eight (the shock!). Londoners and big-city dwellers remark on people in shops/bars being ‘friendly’ here, where to me this is just normal behaviour. (When I go to London, the rich diversity of the culture stands out to me, where for Londoners this is just normal.)
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There is much more to be said about creating settings than I’ve managed in this post, and I’m looking forward to reading the other authors’ take on this topic!
Please click on the links below for my fellow authors in the Round Robin.
Anne Stenhouse http://annestenhousenovelist.wordpress.com
Connie Vines http://mizging.blogspot.com/
Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
Judith Copek https://lynx-sis.blogspot.com/
A.J. Maguire https://ajmaguire.com/
Bob Rich https://wp.me/p3Xihq-3r1
Belinda Edwards https://booksbybelinda.com/blog/
Sally Odgers https://behindsallysbooks.blogspot.com/
Helena Fairfax 
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