A Change (of Scenery) Would Do You Good

How to vary your setting to your story’s advantage.

- JESSICA STRAWSER

Savvy writers know a novel’s setting is more than just a backdrop, a time and place to ground and frame your plot and characters. A well-chosen, well-crafted setting can enhance your story's mood, set the tone, serve as a metaphor for the theme, provide interesting plot possibilities, and much more.

But it’s a tall order for one setting to carry an entire novel. In real life, if we spend too long stuck at home, we get cabin fever. If we go too long without a vacation, we get restless and stir crazy, growing bored with the same old, same old.

So it is with our readers. You could set your novel in the most aspirational place in the world, but if you show only one view of it, eventually, we'll feel as if we're watching a stage play where the set never changes. When a scene starts to feel stale—even though the script and players onstage are solid—it’s time to cue the orchestra's interlude, pull the curtain, and bring your stage crew out of the wings to work some magic that will get your audience to sit up and pay attention.

Here are five ways to vary your setting to your story's advantage.

1. Build contrasting settings into your story’s structure.

A story that pairs vastly different settings can be especially effective in historical fiction (often when modern-day characters are uncovering the mystery of something that happened long ago) and suspense (especially when the story unfolds through multiple points of view).

My latest novel,