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Setting Is the Character: Writing Compelling Settings in Short Fiction by Holly Lyn Walrath
by Writing Workshops Staff
4 days ago
“Places are never just places in a piece of writing. If they are, the author has failed. Setting is not inert. It is activated by point of view.” ―Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House
In my speculative fiction classes, I suggest starting worldbuilding by creating a character first. To establish the setting, try writing about the character’s physical interaction with the world or environment. This approach is less tedious than simply describing the setting and helps establish it more effectively.
As humans, we don’t just experience spaces through our eyes but also through our other senses. For example, in a park, we can touch the grass, taste water from a fountain, smell the freshly sown earth, and hear children playing. While it may be challenging, incorporating all five senses in a short story can create a vivid and detailed world for the reader.
The world of the story should be closely connected to its plot. As a poet, I often find it challenging to determine which details are important. I must construct a setting through metaphors that reflect the story’s theme.
A helpful technique for selecting details to include in a story is to associate them with emotions. Humans have a tendency to attribute emotions to inanimate objects, known as the pathetic fallacy. However, this can sometimes come across as cliché to readers, as it is based on the false idea that humans can make sense of the randomness of nature by applying emotion to it. For example, having rain fall when a character feels sad.
“Objects . . . derive their influence not from properties inherent in them . . . but from such as are bestowed upon them by the minds of those who are conversant with or affected by these objects.” ―William Wordsworth
Setting is complex because it can be biased by the character’s perspective. Each character’s unique background and world context can influence how they view a situation. According to science, humans perceive reality by creating a narrative. The same applies to characters in a story.
“It’s really important to understand we’re not seeing reality. We’re seeing a story that’s being created for us.” ―Neuroscientist Patrick Cavanagh, a research professor at Dartmouth College and a senior fellow at Glendon College in Canada.
When a story has a really great setting, it can feel like a character unto itself.
“When I start writing a new story, I often begin with setting. Before plot, before dialogue, before anything else, I begin to see where a story will take place, and then I hear the narrative voice, which means that character is not far behind. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about landscape painting and literature, and perhaps as an extension of this I have started to think through this idea of character and landscape as similar things, or at least as intimates, co-dependent.”
―Amina Cain, A Horse at Night: On Writing
Wonderbook, a book on writing by Jeff Vandermeer, outlines several features of a well-developed setting. Here are some examples, excluding those specific to a speculative world.
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The setting should have a logical and consistent structure, with all its pieces fitting together to some degree. If the story is set in a room but then suddenly describes the sky, readers may need clarification. The setting should be easy to understand, especially in flash fiction, where there are fewer words to work with.
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The setting should have a wider context that readers need to comprehend. I refer to this as world-level stakes. The setting should feel like it’s on the verge of eruption, otherwise, readers may question its significance.
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Details in the setting should contribute to the story and not be extraneous. The selected details should relate to the story’s theme, a larger metaphor, or be relevant to the plot.
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The setting should have a surprising and intriguing impact on the characters’ lives. Our upbringing, hometown, and city all influence our worldview.
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The setting should feel expansive and profound. This can be conveyed by what is left unexplained about the setting. Even in a flash fiction piece, the suggestion that something else is happening outside of the current scene can add depth to the story.
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The setting should be personal to the writer, although this is not a requirement. If a writer is describing a place they have never been to, such as Paris, the reader may feel that the story is not authentic. Writing about familiar settings makes them feel more genuine on the page.
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Certain objects in the setting can function as extended metaphors. The selection of objects, places, and other elements of the setting should be purposeful.
“The setting anchors the characters and their actions. When you demarcate the space of a narrative, you set the boundaries of the narrative’s imagined world.” in Short Form Creative Writing
Let’s look at a story example.
The Carousel by Eliza Gilbert at Flash Fiction Online is unique in that it explores two contrasting settings in one flash fiction story.
The story’s title infers that we will eventually reach the setting of a carousel.
First, I love the opening sentence of this story. Talk about a hook! It immediately shows that the story’s speculative element is the Grandmother swallowing a piece of the sun (a popular trope in surrealist literature).
But it also misdirects the reader, who is expecting a carnival setting. We are not *in* the carnival, but instead being told about it by an unreliable narrator, the Grandmother.
The children playing on the bedside commode and bars of the home-hospital bed give us an immediate sense of the current setting, which is the Grandmother’s sickbed. This establishes the narrators’ familiarity with the setting, as they are accustomed to the Grandmother’s illness. To them, the commode and bed are like jungle gyms that they can play with.
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Then we are told about the setting of the carnival by the Grandmother. The people at the carnival are “buzzing,” and the false unicorns have a smell the Grandmother doesn’t like. In her memory, the tent of the carousel looks like a gumdrop. The Grandmother is wearing a red frilly dress indicative of older times, and the music is spelled out in syncopation: “Bum-da-dee-dum, bum-da-dee-day.”
As Grandmother’s freedom at the carnival is explained, it is juxtaposed with the more drab elements of chronic illness: “Grandmother tells the pulse oximeter on her finger.”
The story shifts when we learn the Grandmother never lived in a town, and of course, the sun is still intact. The most beautiful moment in the story, to me, is when the two settings converge: “The night outside the window is a blackberry sprinkled with powdered sugar. Grandmother’s rickety ferris wheel voice spreads through the room, across our chests, burning hot and cold like the mentholated goo Mother rubs into our sternums when we’re sick.”
Why do you think Eliza Gilbert set the story not directly at the carnival but in a story told by the Grandmother?
A talented writer can make the setting a vital part of the story—so much so that it becomes its own character. Despite the short word count of a short story, setting is still an important tool in the writer’s toolbox.
Instructor Holly Lyn Walrath is a writer, editor, and publisher. Her poetry and short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Fireside Fiction, Analog, and Flash Fiction Online. She is the author of several books of poetry, including Glimmerglass Girl (2018), Numinose Lapidi (2020), and The Smallest of Bones (2021). She holds a Master’s in Creative Writing from the University of Denver. In 2019, she launched Interstellar Flight Press, an indie SFF publisher dedicated to publishing underrepresented genres and voices.
