Have you ever read a novel that made you fall in love with a specific place?
Whether the twisting corridors of a haunted house induced those sought-after spookies, or that cabin nestled in the trees reminded you of a simpler, cozier time, places in stories we love have ways of tapping into our subconscious thoughts and emotions, calling forth memories and transformative moments at just the right time.
Settings help us connect to the characters living through story events because we feel we know those character just a bit better when we know where they are, where they came from, where they’re going, and how they feel about all of that movement and change.
Settings in stories, the ones that move us, invite us in, seem to have lives of their own and become characters in themselves, immobile as they may be. Those settings live from the first pages of a story, experience challenges and changes of their own, and affect the characters, becoming metaphors for unfolding drama and transformation.
But it takes a lot more than tapping into the senses to make a setting come alive for your reader. So, how exactly do you elevate your setting to character status?
By tapping into why the setting matters to the characters in your story. You must go beyond the obvious to integrate your setting into the story such that setting and story are one and the same.
Places Are Personal
As a young child, I spent lots of summer days at my grandparents’ house. They had this bright, wide living room with a green shag carpet where we kids spread out toys and activities for long, languorous afternoons of play after active mornings spent outside, sweating. On that green shag, we played thousands of games of cribbage and crazy eights, lost Monopoly pieces and Legos in the plush pile (only to step on them later; ouch), and built formidable castles out of boxes and blocks. We shared snacks, sopped up juice stains, and watched movies as the oscillating fan moved hot summer air back and forth and made us crave winter’s cold breath.
Though the shag was traded for more modern carpeting more than a decade ago, that green fuzzy floor is the first thing that comes to mind when I think of my grandparents’ house. The kicker, though, is that the carpet itself is mostly irrelevant. What is relevant, to me, to you, to the reader, is the joy of remembering time spent on that carpet. Or, it is the combination of events and emotion tied to a setting that makes the place come alive.
For me, the green shag is the key to unlocking memory. For my brother, the key is my grandparents’ unfinished basement where we rollerbladed around support beams as kids. For my cousins, it is the hill behind the house up which we dragged our sleds each winter, and the forest butted up against the wide lawn that disappeared many balls like a nature magician, the wild strawberry patch of June afternoons. Each of us has a different image that comes to mind when we think of the phrase, “my grandparents’ house.”
While my grandparents’ house wasn’t the most elegant in town, it was a childhood place of light and warmth. It was a place of experimentation and creativity; it was a place of learning and play and peanut-butter sandwiches and boxes of grape juice. For me, the green shag isn’t a symbol of childhood. Instead, it ushers in the symbols of childhood: Skin textured from sitting on the shag too long, lost game pieces, a row of kids awaiting the reprieve of an oscillating fan.
Because characters are people too, each of your characters will have personal relationships with and responses to the settings in your story. They have their own memories to contend with, their own traumas and regrets, their own rose-colored glasses, and their own opinions about what those memories represent. Dig into why your characters know the settings in your story, what happened to them there, or what did they cause to happen there that makes the setting important to them. And get specific. It is in the specificity that readers will call forth their own memories and emotionally connect with the characters remembering for themselves.
Consider:
- Why is this place important to your character?
- When did the place become important to your character?
- What specific (and detailed) memories does your character have involving this place?
- Who else may have been involved in or present for the events remembered?
- How do your character’s memories differ from the memories of others?
- Where in the place are the memories most powerful?
Places Change Over Time
After my grandpa died in the winter of 2009, my grandmother had her home painted and new carpeting installed. The jobs were done well; the house looked nice, refreshed. But it felt . . . different. Something was off.
Except for some cosmetic upgrades applied like lipstick, it was the same old living room with the same old floral velvet couch, the same old busted recliner, the same old hand-carved wooden lamp with a knot hole into which my grandpa had stuffed used toothpicks, the same old pictures of the same old family members on the wall. And, yet, something had changed.
The new wall color threw off the light coming in through those wide windows, and the new carpet made the room seem smaller, somehow; claustrophobic. My grandmother’s house felt different because I had changed.
Grief can look a lot like the wrong color coming in through the windows if you know how to see it. During every visit that first year without my grandpa, I couldn’t unsee the green shag, though it had disappeared. Even though part of me hated the way the outdated synthetic fibers stuck to my summer-damp skin, that signature shag stickiness was part of a happy childhood spent on that living room floor. Without the shag carpet, the home just didn’t seem as happy. For me, the death of my grandpa changed the feel of the house. Seeking happiness meant finding grandpa, and grandpa existed in the shag.
Hindsight is an interestingly human phenomenon, and it’s something to tap into when writing your settings well. While the places in your story may not change much, time passes, and the characters in your story do change. Thus, their experiences and feelings about the places important to them change. Job stress, a crumbling marriage, infant loss, empty-nest syndrome, terminal illness, or other challenges faced will provide them with new perceptions on which they evaluate old memories.
When writing character reactions to what they perceive as changed settings, dig into the root causes of their modified perceptions, which will affect their growth arcs.
Consider:
- What changes does your character notice about the place in your story?
- What do those changes mean for them, emotionally? Physically? Spiritually?
- How does their changed perception of place affect their worldview, or vice-versa?
- Who else may be experiencing similar changes?
- Why do they notice those specific changes?
The Eyes Matter
On a practical level, most of us can look back on old memories and explain our big emotions with the benefit of time. When my grandpa died, I was a recent college graduate and a full-time bartender. From that year, I remember little except those two major events, but a brief online search shows it was a year rich in pop culture, technology, and political news.
The American sitcom “Parks and Recreation” debuted. Sweden legalized same-sex marriage. General Motors filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Microsoft released Windows 7. And according to the obituaries, my grandpa was in interesting company. Both Brittany Murphy and Patrick Swayze, among other celebrities, met their ends in 2009.
Yet, I recall almost none of it. The history that mattered most to me was my grandpa, and his death clouded my perception of reality such that much of that year is a blur. Beyond graduating and a death in the family, being late to my grandpa’s funeral (because I was too much of a mess to get out the door on time) and being chastised for tardiness sticks out. And during the funeral, I could hardly concentrate. All I kept thinking about was that damn shag and how my grandpa used to hide treats in it for the rescue fox to find, something he’d never get to do again.
I learned that day that in periods of collective grief, many folks are unwilling or unable to give grace or assume good intentions. My relationship with my family fractured just a little that gray, snowy morning. I no longer trusted some of them with my feelings, a reality that persists even today. And I became something of an animal-rescue lover myself, putting out food and water for the neighborhood strays all those years ago. Now, my daughter and I put out food and water for the resident chipmunk who lives under our porch; we call her Pipsqueak.
The settings and places in your story must matter to your characters, not just to you. Reader experience depends on perspective, so use it well to share the memories, moments, reflections, lessons, trials, and triumphs that matter to your character, with specificity, to invite readers to tap into their own emotionally laden memories of their treasured places.
Consider:
- What unique memory does my character have that nobody else has?
- What makes their memory different from the memories of others who were there?
- Were there lessons learned in that place that may not have been learned elsewhere?
- What tools or backdrop does the place provide that leads readers to that lesson?
- Why does this memory help propel the character’s transformation?
TL;DR: Connecting Character to Place is a Powerful Way to Draw In Readers.
Look at the important settings and places in your story. Note any details that help define the settings. What would be obvious to someone who knows the place inside and out? What would be subtle? How would those observations change for a new person who’s never stepped foot into the place before? Use small bits of setting description and balance description against emotion, opinion, and perspective to enliven your place. Because it isn’t really the place itself or the green shag that comes alive.
Personalizing places and settings in your story is one way to punch up the emotional connection between a story and its readers. But the authenticity of that personalization matters, otherwise the setting will fall flat, and the emotional connection from setting to memory to reader will wither.
Consider:
- What details of the place stick out for your character?
- Would those details be more subtle or more obvious to a different character? Why?
- How does your character feel about the place?
- What memories or experiences lend themselves to those feelings?
- What makes this place different from any other place like it?
What makes a place come alive is the infusion of history, the acknowledgement that things happened there that affect the character and give the character strong feelings about it. When a place becomes magical for the character, it becomes magical for the reader.
So, how does your character perceive and feel about a treasured place? And how will you share those perceptions and feelings with your reader? Let me know in the comments below, and share this article with fellow writers if you found it helpful.
Happy writing.
<3 Fal
Prefer video?
Join me on MetaStellar’s YouTube channel:
Fallon Clark is the book pal who helps you tell your story in your words and voice using editorial, coaching, writing, and project management expertise for revision assistance, one-on-one guidance, and ghostwriting for development. Her writing has been published in Flash Fiction Magazine. Check out her website, FallonClark.com, or connect with her on LinkedIn or Substack.