Setting
I love a good setting. It gets me invested in the story more quickly and it’s what really gets me excited to write a new story—a new, exciting setting to explore. Now of course, what constitutes a good setting is as individual as a favorite meal. For example, I seem to have a mental block on sparse settings (e.g. desert, moonscapes, etc.). I read these and am almost immediately bored (it goes for movies as well). The characters and plot have to do extra work to get me over that hump. But that’s individual tastes for you.
It’s a problem I ran into recently when writing a novella (the length is comfortably outside the word limit of Writers of the Future so it’s okay to discuss). It’s set on an asteroid cluster passing through space—a sparse setting. I love the characters, the circumstances surrounding them, the plot, and the theme so I powered through writing it. But I had to work extra hard to try and make the setting interesting to me so it would be interesting to the reader.
The setting is what almost always incites me to write the next scene, to explore. The fun ones are near-effortless for me. Which probably isn’t true, I just really enjoy writing setting so I don’t notice the work involved for the fun ones—that is, it’s not work.
In short, I love a good setting.
Comments are closed.