The Importance of Setting to a Story

In many ways I feel like setting is one of the easiest aspects of writing and one of the hardest. In some stories, the setting can blend into the background. Sometimes, it stands out as much as the characters. In fantasy, setting can be even more complicated and unique because not all stories reside in any version of our world. Many stories are about worlds that are born from the imagination of the author’s mind. The possibilities are endless which can be both good or bad depending on the situation. I know having too many options can be the hardest situation.

Why is Setting Important?

Setting is the base of any story. There is no way for anything to happen by anyone if there isn’t a place for it to happen in. In order for a story to exist you need a place to hold it. In order for characters to exist, you need a place for them to exist in. In fact, in many ways, setting is easily overlooked as part of the background. It is, indeed, the background, but the influence it has is subtle, not unimportant.

What Does Setting Do for the Story?

Setting creates cultures and characters. Where a person or community lives can change who someone is or the culture of the community. For culture, a community develops different ideas, foods, and living styles based on what is available in the area they live. If the community lives in a desert area where there is little water, they will live with particular beliefs about water and might use it more sparingly than another community that has easy access to it. If the community is small because they live out in the country where everyone knows everyone, then they will likely have more community-based events or rituals that connect the different members together that wouldn’t likely happen in an urban setting.  

Likewise, characters are affected by the cultures they are in and the environment that surrounds them. Depending on what experiences are available to him or her, that will shape what a character likes or doesn’t like. He or she will have different knowledge based on where they grew up or spent a lot of their time. Depending on where the character is in the story, he or she might even struggle with how different the setting current setting is to where he or she grew up if it is extremely different from their normal local.

That being said, setting can create obstacles. This can happen by being extremely different from a character’s normal local. If your hero is from a very dense urban setting, he might have a hard time adjusting to the country side or vice versa. However, setting can also be a physical obstacle. You might pit your character against the setting itself by making them travel through a rainforest with little in way of supplies. Maybe an important magical item lies in a temple on the top of a tall mountain which can only be gotten to by scaling the rock itself. Or maybe it will be more casual of an obstacle where they are extremely thirsty and tired from traveling, but must first seek out shelter and a river. Maybe, your character visits a place where there are so many people around him or her, it is impossible to not be in the presence of others. This means he or she will have a hard time doing anything without someone knowing about it. 

Along with all that, setting can also create connections or relatability to the reader. If the location is similar or has similarities to locations that the reader is used to, knowledgeable about, or likes, then he or she will connect even more to the story you are trying to tell. If the location is a real location, then those who live there or have been there might even be excited to read about places they have been to. I know that I personally get excited when I see a place I know in an urban fantasy book, and it adds to my experience in reading the book, and I have talked to others who feel the same when he or she recognizes somewhere they know as well.

What Kind of Setting to Choose?

Luckily, some questions about where your story should reside have easy answers. The first of which is: our world or fantasy world? This answer will likely be answered right away from the story you’re planning on telling. If your story is oriented around fantasy elements engaging with our world, then you will pick either a real location, or a fake location that resides in or near a real location. If the story you’re wanting to tell doesn’t work within the boundaries of our world, or you want to explore an alternate world, then you know you have some work to do creating a fictional world that will be able to house your story. Depending on which type of setting fits your story, the type of decisions you will have to make will be different.

Once you decide if your setting should be based on the real world or a completely fictional world, you must then decide how big of a setting you want to have. Is your story going to travel over a large area, or will it reside in a more confined to a city or town? Generally, most fantasy world located stories that I have read are more wide spread with the character(s) traveling to many locations while stories rooted in the real world often keep to large cities and the surrounding area. However, it does depend on the story you are trying to tell, and only you as the author can make the correct call on what you feel is best for you story.