Guide to Creating Vivid Setting for Your Fiction
When it comes to the story elements, one of the most vital is the setting. It is the time and place where the story takes place. It will serve as something that will set the mood, establishes how the character acts or behaves, moves the dialogue along, foreshadows happenings, and helps in evoking emotions. Thus, this is the factor that will bring the world that you created to your readers, connecting them to it. That is why you need to put more effort into making your setting come alive. This article will help you achieve this goal.
If you are so worried of how the setting of your story goes, you can always ask for help from a professional. This is where the importance of book editing comes into the picture. Professional editors who offer developmental editing can aid you through the work. This service that they provide usually comes with all the works that come with the basic copy editing plus more substantial work like providing guidance to the flow of the plot and narrative. This means that when you avail of developmental editing you can expect that your content will be much improved. Greg Van Arsdale’s line editing and developmental editing services will provide you all your editing needs, freeing your book with errors without changing your ideas. He edits fiction and non-fiction books.
If you wish to know what else you can do to improve your story’s setting, continue to read more. This blog will discuss in-depth information on the elements of setting—time and place. See the following information below.
The Element of Time
The secret to making both of these senses evident to the story by making your descriptive writing good. You need to practice it. When it comes to the element of time, you should make this the very first goal is to show it from the very beginning. Time, just like in real life, anchors all the happenings in the world. That is why you need to make sure that the readers will know when the story happened. If you notice, whenever you read a book, when you get the notion of what time of the day it is in a certain scene adds color to it. It also really affects how you feel about what happened in that certain scene.
You need to describe all the things that the reader should know about. If you are writing a historical story, you need to describe what the people are wearing, the architecture, the things, and even how the people speak. It is also very important to include the time in your dialogue. Or, maybe there is a major happening during that time, for instance, a war. While in the modern world, it would be best if you could mention the modern technologies, that way, readers will easily get that the setting is in the contemporary days.
The Element of Place
The next one is going to have a similar approach with time. This is because when it comes to place, you need to show and not tell. How is it possible in writing? Well, it is actually easier for you to have it in this form. Instead of just giving the readers a direct definition of what the place is, show them what it looks like. For example, when the scene is in a mansion, you want to show the readers how great of a mansion it is. Describe the walls, the grounds, the high ceiling, and all the things that describe a mansion. This way, you are giving a notion to them that they are also there. You want to stimulate your readers’ imagination. That kind of writing is what makes your readers want to read more.
One tip that can really help you is researching the actual location. From there you will be able to understand your place. If ever your location is set in another world or in the future world, you can just directly base it on a real location that has a similar vibe with it for inspiration. These are just some ways on how you can anchor a vivid place for your book. You can surely discover more ways while you are in the process of writng it. Remember to take your readers there as much as possible.
To conclude, you should focus on making your setting evident to your story for it will help you bring the world that you’ve imagined to you readers. May you get something out of this article and wishing you good luck on your journey to coming up with an amazing book.