Have you ever put down a book and felt like you needed a moment to return to your real world because you had been transported to a different time and place? Do you encounter things in the real world that instantly trigger images of great stories you’ve read? For instance, if you see a train station, it might conjure thoughts of Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. Or the sight of an old-fashioned lamp post on a snowy day might remind you of your first exploration of Narnia.
So mastering setting is an essential skill in creating a memorable story.
What is setting?
Simply put, the setting is the time and place a story happens. It can be an actual time period and geographical location or an unfamiliar time in a fictional world. In addition, the setting may include landscape, climate, weather, society, and culture. Fantasy and science fiction settings may also have rules of magic and science (actual or fictional).
Six Keys to Developing Setting
C.S Lewis uses a real historical time and place for the beginning and end of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. However, most of the story takes place in the fictional world of Narnia, where it is “always winter, but never Christmas,” making Lewis’s story an excellent example of how to develop actual and imagined settings. So, let’s see what we can learn from his work.
Write what you know OR do your research.
Lewis did both! C.S. Lewis begins his story by telling the reader that the Pevensie children were “sent away from London during the war because of air-raids,” and they went to the “house of an old Professor who lived in the heart of the country.” Lewis was a soldier in World War I, so he was familiar with that period. After the war, he became a professor who lived in a large house. And as a child, he grew up in the countryside. So these were settings that were quite familiar to him.
As a professor, he studied and taught literature. His areas of expertise were mythology, legends, and medieval and renaissance literature. So, he used his reading and research in these areas to produce the fictional land of Narnia with its White Witch, fauns, minotaurs, talking animals, and more.
Show, don’t tell.
When the Pevensie children arrive at the Professor’s house, they discover it is enormous. However, Lewis doesn’t just tell the reader that the house is big. Instead, he shows them in this line of dialogue from Peter as the siblings are talking in one of the bedrooms:
“It’s about ten minutes’ walk from here down to that dining room and any amount of stairs and passages between.”
This clues the reader into the house’s size and establishes a picture of what it looks like inside.
Show the setting through the point-of-view character’s eyes.
Showing the setting through the point-of-view character’s eyes helps connect the characters to their environment. For example, as Lucy crawls through the wardrobe, the reader learns “there was nothing Lucy liked so much as the smell and feel of fur.” The reader also gets a feel for her inquisitive nature through her interactions with her surroundings as Lewis shows her with outstretched hands, always expecting to feel the wood at the back of the wardrobe. When she doesn’t find the back, Lucy continues to push through even though it’s become clear this is no ordinary wardrobe. When Lucy experiences curiosity and wonder in response to her surroundings, we, as readers, also experience curiosity and wonder.
However, when Edmund enters the wardrobe for the first time, it is an altogether different experience. The reader discovers that he “did not much like being alone in this strange, cold, quiet place.” This difference in how Lucy and Edmund experience Narnia leaves the reader curious but slightly unsettled. We aren’t sure what is yet to come.
Include things that are familiar to the reader.
This is especially important when writing fantasy, science fiction, dystopian, or the like. Narnia is very different from the world we know, but Lewis includes familiar things to help ground the reader. For example, the Professor’s wardrobe is a closet-like piece of furniture. When Lucy visits the faun’s home in a cave, she has tea with buttered toast and honey. While she is trying to explain where she is from, the faun says he wished he “had worked harder at geography.” Lewis uses these familiar things to help the reader connect more deeply to an unfamiliar time and place.
Use the five senses.
Of the five senses, sight and touch are the easiest to use. Make sure to include hearing, smell, and taste whenever possible. Challenging yourself to use at least three senses per page is a good rule. In Lucy’s walk through the wardrobe, the reader experiences sight, touch, smell, and sound. First, she smells and feels the furs. The cabinet grows quite dark. Then she feels the prickly tree needles and hears the crunch of snow under her feet. Lewis’s use of so many senses creates the natural feeling of being in a wardrobe but also helps the reader accept the transition into a new and unfamiliar world.
Deliver backstory details gradually.
To help establish the time of a setting, it is often necessary to impart backstory details. Lewis slowly teases out from the very beginning the essential information. For example, it is revealed early on that the war has separated the children from their parents. Later, when Lucy meets the faun, we learn that it has been winter for quite a long time in Narnia. It is three pages later before he reveals that the White Witch is the one who makes it “always winter and never Christmas” there. The reader needs this information to understand that this story takes place during a time when Narnia is under the control of a villainous ruler.
How does setting serve to make the story better?
Setting is a story element that does some heavy lifting for the writer. It makes the work of creating believability, setting limits and boundaries, establishing mood and tone, and supporting conflict a little easier.
Setting creates believability.
The setting helps create believability by fitting characters into a timeline and giving them a world to engage. Lucy experiences the landscape changing from a wardrobe to a snow-blanketed forest to the cozy cave of a faun within a single chapter. The rich physical details of soft fur coats, prickly tree needles, crunchy snow, reddish stone, family portrait, and bookshelves bring a sense of believability to Lucy’s short journey from the wardrobe to the faun’s cave in Narnia.
Setting defines limits and boundaries.
The setting serves to establish limits and boundaries in a variety of ways. Geographically, Narnia begins where the back of the wardrobe should have been. However, as the reader progresses through the story, one learns it has other physical features and borders, such as seas, cliffs, woods, and kingdoms.
There are also magical boundaries in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. For example, the White Witch only has the power to make it always winter until the four thrones at Cair Paravel are filled. This establishes the limit of her powers and helps set the story goal since there are four Pevensie children.
Setting establishes mood and tone.
The setting helps quickly establish the tone and mood of a story. Lewis opens the account in the Professor’s home, where children are indoors due to rainy weather. However, they soon transition into this world of fauns and talking animals where even the trees have ears. It sets the tone for a hope-filled fantasy. The reader expects a tale of adventure, excitement, danger, and wonder.
Setting mirrors conflict.
Finally, the setting can mirror the conflict of a story. The setting reflects the conflict throughout The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. For instance, the faun sees Lucy’s land of Spare Oom as a place where eternal summer reigns, whereas Narnia experiences “always winter, never Christmas.” The faun’s home is cozy and inviting, yet it is also where the faun plans to trap Lucy for the White Witch. Finally, the scenery of Narnia changes from a frozen landscape to thawing rivers to springtime countryside as the conflict between the Pevensie children and the White Witch escalates.
So, remember to use details great and small in the setting of your stories to do the lion’s share of the work for you! (I had to give a little nod to Aslan there.) Also, read and study other authors who use setting well.
Great examples of realistic settings to study:
- Summer of Monkeys by Wilson Rawls
- Some Kind of Courage by Dan Gemeinhart
- Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
- Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Great examples of dual-world settings to study:
- The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis (begins in a real-world time & setting and transitions to a fantasy setting)
- The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling (starts in a real-world time & location and transitions to a fantasy setting)
- Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan (combines elements of Greek mythology in the real-world environment of New York)
Great examples of fantasy settings to study:
- Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
- The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (set in North America, but it’s entirely unlike the North America that we’re familiar with)
For a bit of practice, try these writing challenges:
- Write a scene where you use three of the five senses to help establish the setting. Bonus points if you don’t use sight or touch.
- Write about an unfamiliar time and place, but include details that feel familiar to your audience, like Lewis’s tea and buttered toast in a faun’s cave.