Every action in a story’s scene happens in a setting. To have that intriguing story, you need to put in substantial time and effort to come up with and properly describe a story setting that would captivate your readers. So this makes having a good knowledge of how to write a creative story setting fundamental to every fictional and non-fictional story writer or every intending good author.

Just like how having a realistic character makes your story more interesting and gives it some life. Same way, initiating a creative setting for your story is key in bringing your story to life. 

The setting of a story is a must irrespective of the genre and should be written in a way that the readers can feel it and appreciate what you are selling to them.

Before we dive into the guide to writing a creative setting, let us understand what a story setting is, and what makes it important in a story. 

What is Setting in a Story?

A setting is the bedrock of every strong story. It is a make-up of the place, time, atmospheric conditions, and physical structures that are present in a scene in which the characters exist.

Why is a Creative Setting Important in a Story?

• The essence of writing a creative setting is to have your readers feel the moments and events in your Story. 
• It reveals a lot about the personality of your characters.
• It gives clarity to the story. For example, the theme, time, season, place, mood, or action that would likely take place.
• Makes your story easily conceivable such that a reader can relate to the described environments.
• Keeps a reader’s attention glued to your piece.
• A creative setting also makes your story memorable. 

How to Write a Creative Setting in a Story

Your aim in having a creative story setting is to get your reader’s rapt attention, such that they zoom off into your created world and sail through with your characters.

To come up with a creative setting for your next story, you need to apply these strategies;

Plot the Story

The plot of your story would give you insight and more clarity on what scenes your story would have in order to plan the corresponding different settings it requires.

Tap from your Imaginative Senses

Go into your imaginative senses and creatively imagine a suiting environment that appeals to what you intend to communicate in your story. An environment that will suit the story you want to tell, be it descriptive, narrative, or expository. 

Create from Existing Locations

Sometimes you can factor in real-world locations from popular cities. Close your eyes to recall different settings you have experienced and create a setting from it.

In a situation where you aren’t great at retaining memory of experiences, take a visit to a location with a similar environment just as the theme you need, observe the environment, and pay attention to what your sensory system can pick.

Then write a description of this environment and keep it to be imported into the suiting story scene.

Create Settings with a Blend of both Imagination & Reality

Aside from writing creative settings from your imagination or culling from existing ones, you can also create a blend of both. This will give you a very unique and beautiful result also.

Highlight locations in a Creative Pattern

The environment should denote the geographical location, say a room in the south wing of the house. This helps a reader imagine the environment well. It also gives a good read when names are ascribed to places in your story, even if the addresses, buildings, or structures only exist in your imagination. For example; An off-white painted bungalow beside the oak tree situated at #2 Steve’s Street. 

Naming places in your story makes them feel more realistic.

Make it Memorable for your Reader

Bear in mind that your story setting needs to be as realistic and relatable as possible, such that your reader can actually picture and feel it in a real-life event. If it is too inept, you will bore and lose your readers.

Inculcate the Time and the Season

Time should be factored in, in a progressive manner just like in real-life situations. Write the setting of a scene to unfold with time. It would aid a reader to easily picture and digest the events described. If the time is static, your readers would get stuck and lost at a stage.

Introduce a time frame or season by describing directly or indirectly how dry the harmattan air or sun was that a character found it difficult to keep up with her breath after running or returning from a routine morning jog. Don’t forget to capture atmospheric changes. This goes hand in hand with time and seasons. All these paint good pictures of the season, time, and moment.

Capture the Correlation Between the Environment and your Characters

Show how the environment affects the actions and reactions of your characters. Like a windy cool morning can make a character cuddly, and a hot sunny afternoon can make a character sweaty and temperamental. 

Physical Structure 

Describe the physical structure such that the reader can tell where the character really is. The place…market, church, party, football pitch, etc.

The Described Settings Should Suit an Active Character

He can’t be at the church putting on a jersey meant for a football pitch, and vice versa.

Do Both Telling and Showing 

Being a little more detailed by describing the gallop road condition that she drives through to work daily would gain your reader’s attention more than just writing that she drives herself to work daily.

Make it more realistic by letting your reader into your world to actually feel, smell, touch, and see it all interplay. 

Make the Story Setting Simple and Uncomplicated 

Skip trivial details and focus on what is important. Every environment would always hold more than we perceive. So when you describe a story setting, don’t go on to capture every bird and butterfly that buzzed past. Keep it as simple as possible. Capture what is important to the story.

Just enough detail to show the reader what the environment looks like, so they can picture it in their mind. But not to over-describe and bore your reader.

Imagine reading a story and after like 2 pages, you realize the author still went on to describe every nook and cranny in a house.

If a leaky roof at the garage has nothing to do with the plot, then why mention it? Except the leaky roof caused a lot of damage in the garage. Such that your character got so confused on how to clean up the car and still drive down to the interview on time beating the already building up early morning traffic. If not, then we are not interested in the detail. Just tell us she hurried to the garage and drove off in her new classic Toyota.

Make Use of Figurative Language

Using figurative language like metaphors, and similes can make the description of your story’s setting more fascinating. 

“As she stepped into the room, it was as silent as a graveyard…”

Figurative language really spices up your creative writing in a special way.

Conclusion

Writing a creative story setting is a key factor to be considered when planning a captivating story. The simple way to do this is to be detailed but at the same time not too detailed. And also, try to have it appeal to the 5 human senses.

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