We all know how important an evocative setting is to a story. Readers want to know where the characters are. Further, a story’s setting can provide ample opportunities for grounding both the reader and the characters in sensory details that make stories more distinct, authentic, and relatable.
But think of the books and films you love that place such emphasis on place that it becomes inextricably linked to the characters’ development. What would Tolkien’s tales have been without the world of Middle Earth? The Mississippi River was integral to the story of Huck Finn in a way that any other river in the world couldn’t have been. The vibrant Land of Oz contrasts so sharply with the flat, drab landscape of Dorothy's farm that we almost don’t even need the iconic line: “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”
What the writers of these stories achieved was the elevation of their story settings to characters in their own right.
Place becomes character when we cannot separate place from story—but how do we achieve that effect? Here are three points of focus.
Describe in detail
Writing 101: Details, details, details. Sensory details. Through your sentient characters, readers should be able to see, smell, hear, taste, and very nearly touch the world you’re creating for them. Imagine your main character driving through her hometown, the place she knows best in the world, but she’s describing it for a passenger who has never seen it before (the reader). She’ll point out the park, the farmer's market, the mural on the side of the elementary school, the historic theater, everything that makes that town interesting and unique. Those places will pop off of the page if she observes the squirrels chasing one another around the park's pavilion, recalls the scent of the first spring herbs from the farmer's market, and remembers hearing the audience gasp the first time she saw a scary movie at the theater.
Overwrite descriptions of physical places and where the action is taking place, if you have to—you can always trim away the weaker details or anything that becomes unnecessary as the story evolves.
Depict change
Return to the places you’ve described and show how they’ve changed over time. As people change, so do places. The changes could be tied to the seasonal, cyclical nature of life, so that the same snow-covered field a character passes on her way home to visit her family for the holidays is bursting with wildflowers when she brings her new baby home a few years later in spring. The flowers and the baby both are complementary examples of new life.
Or the changes might make a comment on history or society. Maybe the main character, after living away from home for decades, returns to find that field of wildflowers has transformed into a fancy townhome complex, evidence of the industrial expansion in the woman’s hometown that some deem necessary for progress and others lament as a sign that their familiar way of life is over.
Make emotional connections
Now that you’ve thoroughly described a place as it was and shown how it’s changed over the course of the story, be it over minutes or years, you need to connect that place to the emotional tension(s) of the story.
Your character is coming back to her small-town home after living 15 years in a big city. She’s bringing her new baby with her. As a single mom, she feels some apprehension about job and housing prospects in this more rural, remote area. Then she sees the new townhome complex. She misses the field of wildflowers, but is intrigued by the possibility of living here, so close to the elementary school her daughter will eventually attend. She pulls into the newly-paved lot, driving slowly past each unit until she locates the door that reads Rental Office. She parks and gets out of her car, intent on picking up a rental application, when she notices the garden around the side of the building, bursting with the same wildflowers that have always grown there, which the landlord must have decided to preserve. She considers that new and old, history and progress, natural and industrial, can coexist, and that realization brings her comfort.
Developing details, changes, and emotional connections around the physical places in our stories make those places play larger, even integral roles. Places become characters, and stories become richer for it.
Writing exercise
Think of a place you know. It doesn't have to be a favorite place, only a place that is familiar enough to you that you can describe it using lots of sensory details, and can show how it has changed over a period of time you will define. Begin to write about this place using the first person "I" or third person "he/she/they." Give the place a persona, even a name, if you like. Write about the place as if it were a human being.
Another approach to this exercise might be to use the example above of driving through your hometown and describing it for someone who has never visited before.
What did you think of this week's post? Will you or did you try either of the writing exercises to practice thinking and writing about places as characters? Share with us in the comments.
Related reading: When stuck, write in scenes
How and why to plan your story like a party
