When I was a mopey teen living in a central New Jersey suburb, whenever I got too whiny, my mother would say, “Don’t forget. You take yourself with you wherever you go.”
I never tested her theory by running away, but I once hid behind my living room couch for three hours while she drove around our neighborhood looking for me. My point is, I believe what my mother was saying is that you can’t escape your demons by bolting.
Was she right? Probably. But having lived a nomadic life, I can also definitely say that place does matter, that some problems, like walking a dog who jumps at skateboards, motorcycles, and bicycles and finding parking feel huge in a crowded beach city, but those same problems seem to disappear in a peaceful New England town. Though I’m guessing they don’t truly vanish, that they’re actually hibernating or festering.
In life, festering problems are bad. But in the literary world festering problems are a good thing. We writers like our characters to struggle, because without the struggle there is no change or character growth. So, if you’re at a point in your novel where you’re feeling stuck– maybe you’re at the beginning and you don’t know how to get started, or you’re in the middle and you’ve hit a wall, consider altering, or if you haven’t already done so, embracing setting.
Take your protagonist on a trip. If she’s claustrophobic and hates crowds, dump her in Tokyo, New York, or Kolkata and see what happens, or if she’s from the cornfields of Iowa, put her on a boat in the Florida Keys where she must sink or swim. Some of the best writers have taken full advantage of setting. Harry Potter left Number 4 Privet Drive and went to Hogwarts. Jane Eyre was sent to the Lowood School and then to Thornfield Manor. Readers gladly followed Harry and Jane.
But if dragging your characters to another destination doesn’t work for your story, consider leaning in and making the current setting of your novel more prominent. Take the time to describe your protagonist’s street, favorite restaurant, or his bedroom, using sensory details. One of these specific details might spark an idea that keeps your plot moving forward and gets you excited about your novel.
For the full impact of setting, if you can, go to the actual setting of your novel. If a pivotal scene is set on a mountain, climb that mountain. If your character lives in New Orleans or Albuquerque, if possible, drive or fly there. If you can’t, look at pics on the Internet or talk to someone who lives there.
So why does setting matter so much? Because setting is a part of who our characters’ are, just like their physical appearance, their memories, their dreams, and their dialect. Hence the saying, “You can take the girl out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the girl.” Without examining the role that setting plays in your characters’ lives, it’s almost impossible to fully develop them. Don’t believe me, take the Netflix series “Orange is the New Black” based on Piper Kerman’s book, “Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison.” The protagonist, Piper Chapman, goes from her comfortable privileged life in Brooklyn to Litchfield Prison, where being college-educated, a former debutante, and the owner of a Brooklyn bath soap company are irrelevant. Despite Piper’s awareness of this, her experiences as a woman from a wealthy Connecticut family repeatedly impact her decisions as she struggles to gain acceptance and deal with daily prison life.
I get that some people like to write novels that can happen anywhere. They want their stories to feel universal, so they limit the role that setting plays. But if you put your characters in a generic room, in a basic house, in an unnamed town, it feels a little like you’re hiding your characters behind the living room couch and not truly bolting.
So, if your novel feels as if it’s missing something, maybe it’s well-written, solid, but it’s not memorable, consider paying homage to the power of setting. Make setting a character unto itself. Ground your characters physically and surround them by walls, street signs, buildings, and get specific. Write your novel as if your story couldn’t possibly happen anywhere else, and see where that commitment to setting takes you.
