What is setting? Is it the ‘when and where’, or is there more to it?

In a purely definitional sense, setting is often described as the ‘when’ and ‘where’ of a story. But for writers, the key to bringing settings alive is to think as broadly as possible about what ‘when’ and ‘where’ can really mean. When, or temporal setting, might refer to the time of day – dawn, twilight, peak hour – or the time of year: winter, New Year’s Eve, Ramadan, the last day of school. It can also encompass historical and speculative timeframes, from the height of the Aztec Empire to Edwardian England, or some post-apocalyptic future. 

Where, or place, operates on many levels. The story might be intensely contained, and entirely set in one room, or the lens might widen to take in a suburb, a city, a landscape, an ocean, even galaxies. When writers open themselves to the full possibilities of setting, it can feel overwhelming, but everything comes back to perspective and story. What story are you trying to tell? What emotions are you trying to evoke? And crucially, what does your character notice?

How do you balance description with maintaining narrative pace?

When setting is working well, it almost becomes inseparable from narrative pace. Description isn’t slowing the story down – it’s actively building tension. A character is soaking wet, rain is belting down, it’s pitch black, every door is locked and they’re stuck outside. The reader knows something is about to go down. 

Pacing also relies on ebbs and flows as a story builds towards its climax. A pirate sits in the sun on his ship; the sea is flat. He tends to a wound from a recent battle while his crewmates nap nearby, a cat stretched out beside him. This moment of stillness gives the reader a pause in suspense before friction begins to form again. 

Done well, setting becomes almost indistinguishable from narrative pace, and from the action itself.

Your most recent novel, Melaleuca, is set in a small country town. Was this setting inspired by your experiences in country towns? Should writers spend time in the locations they are writing, or can setting be purely imagined?

I wrote much of Melaleuca while away from the country town I grew up in. The nostalgia helped sharpen certain memories – the smells, the textures, the rhythms of the place. I think writers naturally draw on places they know, even when creating entirely fictional worlds. In science fiction, for example, ‘alien’ landscapes or spaceships often have echoes of familiar elements: ships might feel like planes or trains, and planets might resemble our own extreme wildernesses – deserts, volcanoes, deep jungles. 

Ultimately, though, it comes back to character. The key is how to make the reader feel what your characters are feeling, and describe the world as they experience it. A grumpy old man will barely notice a blooming rose, but he’ll definitely notice the dog mess he’s trying to avoid. Perspective shapes every detail of setting.

Are there examples of setting description by other writers which have inspired you?

I’m always inspired by other writers, and I’ll be drawing on some of my favourites for this course. Here’s a few I’ve gone over recently that really made an impression on me:

Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead from the perspective of Demon, a man from the Appalachian mountains, who is recounting details from his impoverished childhood.

‘Dead in the heart of Lee County, between the Ruelynn coal camp and a settlement people call Right Poor, the top of a road between two steep mountains is where out single-wide was set.’

Also, this by Frank Herbert, in Dune, from the perspective of young Paul Atreides:

‘It was a warm night at Castle Caladan, and the ancient pile of stone that had served the Atreides family as home for twenty-six generations bore that cooled-sweat feeling it acquired before a change in the weather.’

Or Toni Morrison’s Beloved, from the perspective of Sethe, a formerly enslaved African American woman now living in Ohio:

‘The crickets were screaming on Thursday and the sky, stripped of blue, was white hot at eleven in the morning. Sethe was badly dressed for the heat, but this being her first social outing in eighteen years, she felt obliged to wear her one good dress, heavy as it was, and a hat. Certainly a hat.’