How important is the setting to your character? Somewhat? Very?

Before you answer that, think about this. Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff in today’s Manhattan rather than the 19th century Yorkshire Moors. Or The Great Gatsby fighting in Vietnam. Makes your brain boggle, doesn’t it?

Character and setting are intrinsicly bound together. Yes, there are characters like James Bond who seem to adapt to multiple environments: North Pole, a Trinidadian beach, swinging London. But that cosmopolitan atmosphere is part of his makeup. He remains always a product of an upperclass childhood, Eton and Oxbridge, and the military.

Some years ago, I saw a photograph of Mahatma Gandhi in London. He was wearing his usual simple dhoti and a shawl. London was grey, wet, and bleak, but that didn’t seem to bother the iconic leader. In fact, he would have looked thoroughly out of place in a business suit. The image reminded me of something a friend said to me many years ago. We were talking about a particularly unhappy colleague who, after years of complaining, had finally tendered her resignation. I commented that I hoped she’d be happier in her new job. “She won’t,” my friend replied, “Because she’s bringing herself with her.”

That’s a profound statement. No matter what we wear or where we go, we will be ourselves, and we bring our past with us. We will never wipe our first home’s dirt from our feet. Our speech will retain the same cadences of our childhood. Yes, we can take lessons and try to sound neutral or, heaven help us, posh, but in duress our origins will reveal themselves.

Even in our current age of travel and — at least in Europe — relaxed borders, people remain tied to the place they came from. You’ve probably heard the expression, “You can take the man out of (place name), but you can’t take the (place name) out of the man.”

Which brings me to settings in fiction. Some settings are so powerful, so unforgetable, that when we think of the story, that’s one of the first things that comes to mind. Think of Gone with the Wind and Tara, or The Lord of the Rings and the Shire. One thing both have in common is the passionate regard the protagonists of these books have for their homes. It isn’t really the places themselves that make them memorable, it’s the fierce loyalty of Scarlett and Frodo.

That said, the authors embued those places with a sense of safety, happiness, and peace. When we read these books, we share that same sense of security the characters feel. Everything will be fine when they get back to the Shie / Tara. Of course, by the time the characters do return home, they find it radically changed, blighted by war and irrevocably changed times.* There is, as Dorothy says, “No place like home,” not even home itself, it seems. It remains an ideal, not only for the characters but for the reader. Who wouldn’t want to live in the Shire, protected by the silent and fierce rangers?

Of course, some places have an entirely different image. Think of the Second World War and the US base in Italy that so disturbs the characters in Catch-22. Here, we are given no alternative to this seemingly unending nightmare that is armed conflict and, possibly worse, the insanity of the leaders — as evidenced by the rule, ‘Catch-22’ which says that pilots could avoid flying if they were insane, but if they asked to be grounded it proved they were sane, therefore, they were fit for duty. Sneaky, huh?

The setting of a story isn’t limited to the location. It’s the ambience, the people, the energy, and the rules. Think of the sinister settings of any Kafka novel, of 1984, or Brave New World.

How then is the writer to bring these settings to life?

If you already have a strong sense of the character, think of the setting that would have formed him or her. Was it loving and stable, or violent and full of fear? Is it bright, warm and cheerful? Or dank and depressing? How does it smell? Yes, smell. That’s one of the senses and it’s just as important as any other. Make the place as unique as possible. Base it on a real place if you can. Describe the peeling wallpaper, the dog-stains on the carpet, the smell of stale tobacco. Show us the sepia toned photographs on the wall, or the trophies on the mantle. For good or ill, it probably effected your characters.

The environment’s impact can be surprising. Think about Citizen Kane. For all the character has achieved in his life, in his last breath he says, ‘Rosebud’. No, not a girlfriend or a boat, a sled that he played on when he was a child. What has had the biggest impact on your character? He might not even realise its importance; perhaps it has been lost to conscious memory, but the heart remembers.

Imagine your character grew up in a religious environment. There is a picture of the pope on the wall. But the child grows with abuse and poverty. In his child’s mind, he sees the pope as responsible for all his ills, and now hates all religion.

When I was a child, I used to build a fort out of books and I would hide inside it. Books became my refuge. It’s hardly surprising that I became a writer.

More than anything else, the setting is about feeling. You don’t have to lay out for us what the character feels. If a dent in the wall reminds her of the time her father violently pushed her, we can deduce her emotions for ourselves. If it’s a swimming medal she won in 3rd grade proudly displayed, then her reaction will be something else entirely. As Chekhov once said, “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”

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