By Carol Harrison

Once you choose the locale for your setting, there are other details to consider. What is the time period for your story? What season or time of day? Can your reader visualize the world you have created? What does your character see, hear, feel, smell, and taste?

As we consider all these bits and pieces that comprise our setting here are some questions to ask ourselves.

1. What time period in my chosen location will increase tension and transform my character?
2. Which era or geographical locale will suit my genre and plot best?
3. What mood or theme do I want to convey?
4. Have I visited or researched this place or time enough to depict it with rich details?
5. Are there cultural or environmental details that can push my protagonist out of their comfort zone?

(Motif June 2, 2024 blog post https://meetmotif.com)

When I wrote my Prairie Hope series of books, the modern-day portion took very little research compared to the historical parts of the books. They required lots of research. Obviously, if we are writing historical fiction we can’t go back in time to live through this period. However, I was able to find several replica sod houses to tour through and get the sense of what it felt like, how dark they were, what the dirt smelled like and how the settlers needed to improvise their storage. Archives provided measurements of the sod houses, how many sod bricks it took to make one, and information about homesteading on the prairies. One other interesting fact I came across was about the long wooden building at the rail line that housed the immigrants until they could build a dwelling on their homestead.

“Susannah stumbled over a snowdrift as her mind wondered. She scolded herself and caught up to her husband just as he opened the door to this strange looking building. David spoke in English to someone sitting at a desk by the door. Susannah paid no attention as she stared at the interior. It was simply one large room with several pot-bellied stoves in the middle, which added some warmth from the frigid outside temperatures. She noticed several areas with cookstoves and dry sinks – presumably where everyone took turns cooking their meals, or did they all eat together? She noticed quilts hanging from lines strung around the room – makeshift bedrooms perhaps” (A Home for Susannah, Carol Harrison, 2020).

I read about these long wooden buildings and had to visualize and then convey to readers what Susannah would have seen when she entered. It gives a feeling of crowded conditions and possibly overwhelming emotions.

I attended a workshop a number of years ago at Saskatoon Writers’ Club Inc. in Saskatoon. The speaker, whose name I forget, talked about noticing little details that add to the accuracy of settings. To help us understand, he had us all go outside on a chilly winter day and record what we saw, heard, felt, textures we noticed, and if we tasted anything. Other than shivering through the exercise, it helped me focus on a scene I’d observed many times before but had never paid attention to.

He suggested standing in the same spot at a different time of day or in a different season and observing the scene again using all our senses. He also suggested snapping photos to go back and check for accuracy. Which way did the shadows fall? Did this change with the season or time of day? Other than lack of snow, once spring arrived, what other differences could be observed?  Would you see a sunrise or a sunset or neither very well?

If you’ve set your story in the country, the sights, sounds, smells, and textures will be vastly different than setting your story in a large city with all its skyscrapers. Be your character, as much as possible, as you work on your settings so you will see things through his or her eyes. Your setting should draw your readers into your story and enable them to see, hear, smell, feel, taste, and even touch the scenes you lay out. Enjoy the process of working on settings as you round out your characters and plot.

Carol Harrison lives and writes in Saskatoon, SK. She enjoys mentoring others as well as learning more about the craft of writing. She also enjoys reading the descriptions of settings that others write which allow her to be immersed in the story.