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Finding Places For Your Stories
Author: Stephen D. Rogers
Just as stories can come from many places, they can occur in many places. Or can they?
Let's say you want to write a romance where parents keep lovers apart. Present day Los Angeles is probably out as a setting because you would have a difficult job convincing readers that the lovers wouldn't simply defy the wishes of their parents.
How about a puzzle mystery with a limited cast of suspects? Don't bother researching Grand Central Station during the afternoon commute because you'll have a difficult job keeping the cast small.
Some stories—such as science fiction and fantasy—seem to come complete with the only place and time where and when the story could exist. With other stories, we have to find that place and time.
A thing that helps us with this task is realizing that setting is more than quick summaries: Los Angeles, present day. Setting ranges from the specific details (Sue's first apartment, a one-bedroom in a seedy building located on the edge of a bad neighborhood) to the resulting mindset (she's determined to be in control now that she's on her own, and because projecting control is the best way she knows how to keep from becoming a victim).
The story takes place on Thanksgiving. That's significant because Sue comes from Maine, where Thanksgiving often meant snow, and her extended family spends the entire day together.
Sue is in her kitchen, which hasn't been updated since the building was knocked together. The stove -- that requires pliers to turn the knobs -- won't light. It is ten minutes to midnight. An uncooked turkey sits in a brand new roasting pan.
Two blocks away, in the wrong direction, there's a corner store that doesn't close until twelve. They sell microwaves.
Whatever type of story I want to write, I've focused the setting in such a way that the story will seem to flow naturally out of that setting, may seem to actually "write itself."
But maybe you already have a story in mind. How do you create the perfect setting, rather than simply have the story unfold somewhere, sometime?
Pick specifics that will complicate things for the main character.
Will the character travel on foot? Set the story at noon on the hottest day of the year. Or at dusk during a blizzard. How would a flood complicate matters? Set the story on coastal Texas, or during a time of historic flooding.
Does the character need to be alone? Go back to researching Grand Central Station. Does the character need help? Where would the character be least likely to find it?
Make your settings specific and unique. That seems simple enough with place (as long as I don't write about the boring town where I live), but how about time? How about 9:44 AM, Friday the fifth of August. Specific? Yes. Unique? Well....
Make it unique. 9:44 becomes significant when the character needs to fax a job application by ten. August 5th becomes significant if it's the anniversary of the day both parents were killed in a car accident. (After perhaps flying to Los Angeles to celebrate Thanksgiving in August with Sue, a surprise that ended badly after they insulted her boyfriend and she threw them out. Heartbroken and distraught, they missed the sign and turned onto an exit ramp into oncoming traffic.)
Ask yourself, what setting can you chose that limits the choices available to your character?
This column first appeared on DM in 2008, but we think you'll agree that it still has some good information!
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