Characters, setting, plot―these are the three main building blocks of a great story. In my last blog post here, I shared how I find the characters for my next story. Today, I’d like to share some things I do to create memorable settings for my historical novels. Some of these tips could work just as well for contemporary stories.
For readers to feel they’ve shared the lives of real people solving real problems in a real world, we need settings that fit the time and place of our stories. That takes research.
When I read a novel, I want to feel like I’m right there, watching the characters like a fly on the wall, seeing and feeling what the POV character does. I want it all to feel natural, as if events were unfolding before my eyes. That’s only possible when the writer chose a setting that feels real for the story’s time and place. It’s important for the author to know the setting well, and that takes research.
If I were writing contemporary stories, I could visit the town I set the story in. I could see the local geography and the landmarks residents all know. Maybe I would eat the lunch special at the local café and chat with the server or other diners. I could leave with a feeling for what it would be like to live there myself.
But I’m writing stories set in the Roman Empire, two thousand years and a third of a world away. My goal is to make my readers feel like they’re living under the Caesars themselves. To keep my stories historically accurate, I’ve studied many aspects of daily life and created a history website. At Life in the Roman Empire: Historical Fact and Fiction, I share what I’ve learned. For anyone writing Roman era or Early Church fiction, it’s filled with detailed info about the world your characters inhabit. If you have questions, I’d love to find you the answers.
The empire stretched from cold, damp Britannia across the snow-shrouded Alps to the blistering sands of Egypt at the edge of the Red Sea. So, I almost have too many possible settings to choose among. That’s a nice problem to face when I’m trying to make the next story take my readers where they might never have been before. But each new location means many new things I need to know.
So, I spend a lot of time leaning about the geography, housing, food, clothing, politics, and social customs of where I’m setting the story. I’d like to share some of the ways I do that. I hope some of the ideas will help you in creating your own settings, regardless of where or when your story takes place.
When I’m writing, I visualize the story like scenes in a move. Pointing my mental camera as if it were the eyes of the POV character helps me focus on dialogue and actions that build the story’s momentum. So, since I use cinematic techniques in my stories, the words of a famous movie director are ones I take to heart.
“Choosing location is integral to the film: in essence, another character.” ― Ridley Scott, movie director. The right location is equally important for a novel.
I start with the geography. It’s especially important for my stories because many of them involve cross-country journeys. I need to know what scenery my characters will see and what barriers they need to overcome to get to their final destination. A trip might take several days and even a few weeks by wagon, foot, or horseback. The nature of the land through which the characters pass can change a lot, from plains and river valleys to high mountain passes. I need to know many details about the location of each scene to be able to write it. But I’ll be sharing only some of them with the readers so they can feel they are there with the characters.
Some questions when choosing a novel’s setting
- How can we know what a location is like when we can’t visit it?
For me, the easiest way to start is with a high-resolution topographical map of the area. That might sound challenging to find, but there’s actually a wonderful public domain resource. It’s what I start with when I make the maps that I always include just before Chapter 1. Those maps make it easy for readers to keep track of where the action is.
Let’s suppose I want to set a story in the Melbourne area. The original map of the entire world can be expanded with increasing resolution to see the city and surrounding area. Different filters can be activated to show contemporary features, like towns (red). Although land use changes with time, I can see whether an area is mainly crops (gold), grass (green), or sand (yellow) right now. Perhaps it was the same at the time of my story. I can also see if there are neighboring towns that might play a role in my story.
Town names often change over time, but Wikipedia usually has a section on the history of a town, including when names changed. For midsized and larger towns, useful details are included, like when a railroad came through and what the local economy was based on at different times. For example, the first European settlement at what would become Melbourne was called by the native name, Dootigala. Briefly named Batmania, it was soon renamed Melbourne after the British Prime Minister.
Virtually all the towns in my novels had Roman-era names that were different from their names today, and I use the names from the time of each story. Because so much has changed, I always include a list of Roman towns with their contemporary names with the map just before Chapter 1.
A few months ago, I posted a blog here about writing historical fiction that stays true to its place and time. In that post, I gave several sources for detailed information for accurate world building during different historical periods. Among those are historical maps. Old Maps Online is a great place to start.
Suppose you’re writing a story set in Melbourne around 1900. A search at Old Maps Online took me to an 1891 map of Australia at the David Rumsey Map Collection. It let me zoom in to see the area roads and nearby towns. It shows features along the coast like Warrnambool, Curdie Inlet, Wilson Promontory, Kooweerup Swamp―all wonderful names of real locations that give a sense of place.
For routes and time required for travel by foot, carriage, horseback, river boats and ships in the parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa that were part of the Roman Empire, I use the Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World (also known as ORBIS) It’s also good for pre-automobile travel in Europe because the Roman roads were still in use (some still are). I use this site all the time, as well as the Digital Atlas of the Roman Empire (DARE). There’s a second version of DARE since the professor who created this changed universities.
Online photos can let you “see” what your characters will see. Topo maps help me get the larger land features right, but I want to know what my character will see up close and in the distance. The websites for towns often include views of the area and historical buildings. Local museums sometimes have websites with useful images.
Visiting museums in small towns can provide an up-close view of everyday objects and exhibits on historical people and events. Many allow photographs. Photos we take ourselves are great for sharing in social media, newsletters, and on our websites to get readers excited about our future story’s setting.
- When the plot itself doesn’t tie us to a fixed place, how do we choose a good location?
I like to take my readers to different parts of the empire. Since I love the research, I pick a place I’d like to explore. Then I think about what could happen there. Sometimes I have the story idea first and need to find the right location. If I want a town on a river with a lake or ocean beach nearby and mountains to get lost in, I can shop for the right location on the topo map. Or if I know the town already, I can see what’s nearby that might be the perfect setting for a particular scene. I discovered the lagoon that became the site of a turning-point scene in my latest novel, Truth and Honor, while looking at maps.
- How much is too much description of the setting?
As long as they aren’t in exotic locales, contemporary novels don’t need as much description of the location as historical novels do. I enjoy many older novels with omniscient POV and lyrical descriptions of the setting. But for many of today’s readers, a more intimate POV, like 1st person or 3rd person limited, is expected. Viewing the action through the eyes of a single character at a time can make long paragraphs of descriptive prose, no matter how beautiful, feel like an info dump.
I don’t like rigid rules. When I started writing novels, I read too many blogs saying we should always show, never tell. But for plot-driven stories, there are times when too much showing makes the story drag. Several paragraphs with too many details of what the character is seeing or feeling can slow the pace while a few descriptive sentences could quickly set the scene for the important actions and emotions.
How much is too much description depends on the scene. Less is usually better, but too little can make a story feel incomplete and too much like some book we’ve read before. But when we’ve done the research to give us a deep understanding of our story’s time and place, it’s much easier to find the balance of show versus tell that our readers will love.
- What is the right balance between showing and telling when setting the scene?
We do want each scene to keep us mostly on the showing side of “show, don’t tell.” Most scenes won’t trigger all of our senses with sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touches. Trying to evoke too many senses at once can feel artificial, but the right combination can create the feeling we are there with the character.
We don’t need to have lived in the place or time where our story takes place. That would be impossible for historical and most science fiction or dystopian stories. But we do need to spend whatever time it takes researching the locations and customs of our story’s setting.
The old adage, “write what you know,” is usually attributed to Mark Twain. It’s good advice if not applied too restrictively. There are many ways of learning what we need to know to write a setting that fires a reader’s imagination. I’ve shared a few that I use for location. I hope you’ll share some of yours in the comments.
Share your thoughts!
1) How do you research the setting of your story?
2) Do you have favorite websites to share for researching stories’ settings?
So true Carol. In my very first novel set in the Australian opal fields, I drove there and stayed overnight underground. I met miners who were happy to share their experiences. And I learned so much history about the opal trade. It was fascinating . . .
I would love to do that, Rita! For years my husband was in a rockhound club here in New Mexico, and I went on some of the day trips with them. Visiting the Aussie opal fields would be such a treat!