The "Most Underutilized Tool in Fiction"
Greetings, writers—
For many writers, myself included, a story’s setting can be a bit of an afterthought. I care about characters first, what they’re about to say or do second, and the consequences of the action they just took third. Or something like that. I’m not a particularly visual person (I cowrote six illustrated kids’ books and hardly ever looked at the pictures), and I cannot describe any of the living spaces in my current novel because I find the process too boring.
But I understand that this is a failing. Settings can build tension, create atmosphere, affect characterization, determine pacing, develop theme, and more.
As Rebecca Makkai puts it:
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