"As a writer, I am driven by settings. Others are driven by characters or predicaments, but with me, settings come first."
-- Jim Lynch
Young writers (myself included) often forget how crucial settings really are. Your setting should tie every aspect of your plot together. In fact, the setting essentially MAKES the characters and conflict. Without a well developed setting, your writing is nearly guaranteed to fail.
Let me provide you with an example:
Let's take "The Hunger Games", by Susan Collins (I use this example because most people should be familiar with it). I won't go into great detail, but you have your main characters (Katniss, Peeta, ect.) and your conflict ("the games" and defying the government). The setting is the dystopian world with all the different "Districts". If you really analyze the setting, you can obviously see that without it, the novel would have nowhere to go, the characters wouldn't be who they are. If it had taken place anywhere else, the novel would have been drastically different.
To see just how critical your setting is within your own writing, I challenge you to change it. Re-write one of your chapters, or make a new chapter, with a completely different setting. Take note of how you have to adapt your characters and conflict around the new setting.
Here are some new settings you can write about if you choose:
*A retirement home
*A 16th century castle
*Aboard a pirate ship
*An alien planet
*Ancient Rome
*Atlantis
*In heaven/hell
*In a preschool daycare
*In jail
I challenge you to change your setting, and let me know how it changes the entire plot of your story!
- Thank you to @TrinityGrace_ for asking me to do a chapter on developing a setting -
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