11 Ideas for Writers Using Setting

When you sit down to write something new, what comes to you first: the characters or the story? Maybe it’s different for every piece. And when you get blocked, maybe it’s because those elements are too large of a piece of a puzzle to begin with. Why not try something smaller, like setting? Below are 11 ways you can use setting to inspire your next piece of writing.

Build a home

Writers are imaginative architects. Like Ariadne in the movie, Inception, we create every element of the story, no matter how intricately or briefly it is described. When we’re focusing on the larger story, setting can sometimes be a throwaway element. Where a character lives is often an afterthought.

But setting is crucial as it fills in the reader’s imagination so that the characters are not floating in space. And a good place to start is home. Where a character lives tells you a lot about them: how successful they are, what their lifestyle is like, what kind of career they have, who lives with or around them.

Home answers a lot of questions and helps you to start building a cast of characters, a conflict, and the world around them. Even just narrowing down where a character doesn’t live will narrow down your options and point you in the direction of where they do live and how that plays into who they are and what their story will be.

I decided that the hero of my fourth novel would grow up in a former funeral home. The home itself doesn’t play into the plot, but it provides an interesting visual, gives me a lot of space to maneuver my characters around, and makes for a great location for my novel’s climax.

A business

Work is in integral part of our lives. So, it’s likely going to come up in a story. And we don’t always just go to our own work. We sometimes visit others’ work as well, whether we go to the gas station, a grocery store, an amusement park, or the gym. Is the focus on the employees or the customers? What unexpected thing could happen there?

Think about this the next time you’re in a business. Look at merchandise, exits, and the architecture. Where could you take us as readers beyond the confines of the customer or employee areas. What conversations are you overhearing? What would happen if characters had to hide out there or got locked in? Where could the back room lead?

My second novel was built around the idea of a horror-themed shop. Here I could incorporate my interests and my characters’ interests in a central location that readers could both envy in the real world and feel part of while reading. Everything else grew from there.

Job settings

If you do decide to write about a workplace, what does their workday look like. How do they commute? Where do they go? Where can you take the reader that might seem familiar or completely unfamiliar from what they may do in a day?

Think of the jobs that you envied growing up. What do you know about them now? What jobs would you like to learn more about? Turn this idea into a research session, and see what comes from it. Maybe you’ll get to tour an archaeology site or sit in on ballet lessons at a dance studio, vicariously living through your research so that you can create a fictional version of it that allows you to live out your own personal dreams and keep you interested in the story that you are telling.

A town or group

Many classic stories don’t just concentrate on one character or one family. They focus on a large group of people. It really brings the story to life and helps people feel connected to a town or neighborhood.

Think of the characters in To Kill a Mockingbird or the huge cast of characters in The Stand. Set your story in a small town, a suburban neighborhood, a trailer park, a circus, and then see what you can do with a tight-knit group and how their closeness can strengthen or corrupt them. It may be a strong base for a mystery, romance, or comedy.

A time period

Setting doesn’t have to be a physical location. It can manifest as time. A story can be set at Christmas, in a certain year, during a historical event. That doesn’t mean that the story has to be centered around the time period, but you can mold a story around it, creating parallels and setting a specific tone. Figure out a time period or time of year that will capture and hold your interest, and it will make you more willing to dive back into that particular story that you’re writing.

A temporary stay

Vacation and travel stories are very popular, especially for summer beach reads. The reader gets to live vicariously through the traveler, whether it’s a small getaway to recharge after a loss or a change, a dream vacation turned deadly in a horror or thriller, or a seemingly standard vacation that turns into an adventure or series of misadventures.

You can have a character who has to stay with friends or family after an event or crazy characters who have to stay with the main character and how the living dynamics play out, comically, dramatically, or even horrifically. Or a character may get stranded somewhere totally unique and have to find their way home or wait it out until help or a ride home (a delayed bus schedule, a ferry that comes sporadically, etc.) arrives. What can happen during a short period of time can be life changing or at the very least, entertaining.

A unique living situation

Do you ever look at homeless people and wonder where they sleep at night? Have you ever worked or known someone who has worked a job that requires them to be gone for months at a time (ex. cruise ship workers, musicians, etc.)? Where are they living? Where do they sleep? How does one person cope with one unique situation over another?

The living situation can be a new and temporary place, or it can be the only life a character has ever known. If the latter is true, how do they cope when they have to leave that way of life, either temporarily or permanently?

A setting from a piece of art

Go to the museum or browse the Internet for art. See if there is a painting of a place where you can tell a story. Have somebody draw you a picture of a landscape. The plot of a story may even come to mind just by looking at it.

Watch a favorite movie. Where is it set? What other stories can you tell in this place? Can you disguise it so that nobody but you will recognize it?

Visualize a song as you listen to it. Can you create a story around that song or the emotions that it’s conveying?

Scour the internet for photos. Jump on Pinterest and start creating boards from the photography you find. See if you latch onto a particular place, whether it’s the window of a building or an entire city.

Take a walk or a drive

Lately, I’ve taken an interest in architecture and take notice of interesting designs of particular homes and buildings. On your next walk or drive, observe the buildings that you pass by. Do you see any unique color schemes, crazy lawn decorations, or layouts that stand out from the buildings around it?

These details can be used to world build, pulling different details from different places that you pass by. Bring a notebook. Take photos. Put everything together into a mood or vision board to see what connections you can make. This will count as research time and make you feel less guilty about not writing. And if it leads to something significant, it will be worth it.

A place from your past

Where is a place you haven’t been to in a long time? Maybe it’s a place that you barely remember or were told that you had been there but don’t remember at all. It could be a grandparent’s house, a cottage, or a hospital stay.

A few years ago, I began to trace my genealogy, and I found relatives living in different parts of the country and both old and new photos of these distant relatives and the places they live or lived. It may not be a part of my specific past, but there’s still a connection there. Dig through your family archives, and see what stories you can tell from snapshots, journal entries, or even verbal stories passed down from your ancestors.

A place you’ve never been

We all have bucket lists now, and those bucket lists often include travel destinations. It could be a city you’ve seen over and over again on TV and in movies. Or it could be a made-up fantasy world like a classic fairytale or children’s book. It may be harder to visualize, but it also gives you more room for your creativity and an opportunity to plan and research before you start writing, helping you to saturate yourself into the world you’re trying to create which will make it easy to build a story around it.

What are your techniques for getting out of writer’s block? How has setting helped you to craft a story? Leave your answers in the comments below!

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