Cleaning off my desk is a fantastic voyage of discovery. Among the medical bills which I haven’t submitted for reimbursement from my insurance company, a check way past its “void after 180 days” date, and the ever present “Simply How I Think” reminder from Cathy Maxwell, I found the hand-out from Kathleen Gilles Seidel’s fantastic talk on setting from last year’s Washington Romance Writer’s annual retreat.

I started reading it over to see if there was anything useful there. Ha! My brain nearly exploded with ideas of how to make the setting more significant and meaningful in my WIP! I can’t believe I hadn’t put her ideas to use before.

Setting is an incredibly meaningful part of a novel. It can be used in such a myriad of ways, my mind is still swimming with ideas and possibilities. Here are just a few from Kathy’s wonderful talk:

Home is where you can be your authentic self. Where is home for your hero/heroine? If they can’t be their authentic self where they live, why not? What is happening in that space that is stopping them, stifling them? And what do they need to do to get past this? How do they need to change? Or what do they need to change?
Characters need to earn the setting of their Happily Ever After. How do they do that? Where is their HEA? Why is it there?
Does your hero/heroine save or redeem their setting? Does it play an important role in the story?
How does a static setting show character growth? How do we see this growth through the character’s interpretation of the setting?
Is there a place where your hero/heroine go to in times of stress or difficulty? Why there?
What are the different meanings of each setting in your story? What is the underlying feeling or deeper meaning of each setting? Some examples of deeper meanings are:

Well: where hero and heroine (Jacob and Rachel of Bible) meet
Mountain, long, winding staircase: difficult journey
Rivers, water, rafts: life-giving, freedom or powerlessness
Thresholds, gates: enter a new world
Crossroads: decision
Maze or Labyrinth: confusion, choices
Stagecoach, space ship, train: people confined together on a journey
Inn: temporary conviviality (or not) among strangers


Do the characters earn the right to stay/earn the right to leave?
How does the setting impact the characters and the story?

Looking through this list has me thinking about the threshold my heroine goes through at the very beginning of my story—entering a new world. It has me wondering whether it’s all right for the black moment of the story and the HEA to take place in the same place? How that place changes after the black moment to make it the right place for the HEA to occur there—and naturally, it’s not the place that changes, but the character, and so I’ve got to show that. The setting is vitally important to my current WIP, and Kathy’s talk has just turned on a switch that is going to make the story so much better, so much deeper, so much more nuanced.

Thank you, Kathy! Your talks are always inspiring me, even nearly a year later.

So, now, where are you with the setting in your story? Does this list spark any ideas for you? Share them below!