Settings in stories can be detailed and lush, or sparse and sketched in, according to the story, the importance of the surroundings, the purpose of the location and many other factors. In some stories, setting is almost another character, such as in survival stories, where the mountains or the desert or the ocean can sometimes be an implacable enemy, trying to kill the characters, or in stories that centre on specific occupations or locations, giving a taste of that life or place.
Your settings might be places you’ve been, locations you know intimately or they might be places you’ve never been, researched with the help of Google Maps and Google Earth, with books and articles read about them, by viewing pictures of them or films set in those places, or they might be places no one has ever been and never will see — except through your story.
Each author has a different preference for the amount of detail to devote to the settings, relating to the purpose of each setting. Perhaps the setting is present day, in the modern world. Do you sketch in the location because it isn’t important to the story? Smalltown, Anywhere with the same problems and benefits of any small town? Does the setting provide an allegory to the story, or allusions or metaphors to what you’re trying to say? Do you like to give the reader strong images to orient them and seduce them into reading on? There is no right or wrong way of creating your settings, luscious or sparse. Only what you, the writer, decide is necessary information to convey your story in its entirety to your readers.
Do, however, bear in mind that within your settings and the way they are conveyed to the reader, you can:
Create depth and atmosphere
Secrete clues and hints through the details to heighten tension
Provide a tone and mood to each scene in the way the setting is shown.
Give detail and depth to characterization in showing the reader what the character notices, how they see settings and cues and clues to their attitude in those things.
Depth and Atmosphere via Setting
Without turning your fast-paced adventure into a travelogue, you can take a leaf from established writers and add a great deal of depth to your plot through vivid and pointed setting descriptions. For action scenes, introducing the setting clearly allows the action to follow without requiring further description, which in turn can control pace and timing. Would your haunted house story be quite as creepy without giving the reader the lowdown on the evil that seeps from the very foundations of the house, the little noises and movements in the corners of the eye that might or might not be significant?
Foreshadowing and Tension
The most effective means of creating tension in a story is by giving the parameters of the situation that allow the reader to participate and anticipate difficulties along with the characters. A subtle technique to do this lies in foreshadowing — giving readers clues and hints throughout earlier scenes that explain or suggest what might happen at a later time; or that convey information that will be important at a later time. This technique allows the reader to anticipate what might be coming, thereby raising the tension. Clues for foreshadowing are most efficiently slipped into the settings on introduction, small, barely noted details that later the reader realizes were a big deal. When tension is built in this way, the reader feels the story has been developed naturally, almost inevitably.
Mood and Tone for Scenes
Establishing mood and tone in scenes also sets reader expectations and encourages the reader to do some of the imagining work required to make the scene come to life — all without them really knowing it. Again, this can be sparely or lushly, depending on the author’s envisaged intent as to effect.
Emotion can be entwined through the scene without ever referring to that feeling directly. This alone can set mood very effectively, with varying levels of description. Pace and flow are both affected by the mood/tone of the scene, as well as the sentence and paragraph construction and both should be aligned to give the greatest effect desired.
Being aware of all the tools of language that will aid in creating memorable, vivid and compelling stories is the ideal for writing. Knowing your tools and techniques allows you to pick and choose when and where you’ll use them, to strengthen your skills and refine your mastery of storytelling.