How to use setting in your writing?

Setting is a major consideration and powerful tool in fiction writing. However, it is not just fiction writing that a good setting can be useful, but also can be used to bring a blog to life. Travel bloggers can use setting to entice their readers into really feeling the culture of a place, the architecture, and landscape. Used appropriately a setting can really make any type of blog post "pop", making your writing stand out from the millions of other blogs out there.

Setting means a certain place at a certain time, a stage. When and where does your story take place? Show us that place? For example...Waterloo railway station, on a crisp winter morning at 7.00am. Give details of the surroundings. The commuters arriving for work, smartly dressed men in suits with shiny black briefcases. Their early morning sighs, creating puffs of frosty breath that dissipates into the crisp winter air. The morning stillness is broken by the boom of a nasal voice announcing the approaching train. You see, we are ready to visualise the action now that we have a stage.

Although saying that, be careful of too much detail as it can become really boring and long winded, and readers often skip passages to get to the action. When descriptions of a place drag, the problem is usually not with the setting, but in presenting it too slowly. Make your descriptions dynamic and quick. Imagine you are watching a film. You wouldn't see half an hour of scenery before meeting the actors. So when you show your setting, give only a few details that will evoke a place. If the details are vivid, the reader will create a picture in their imagination.

When you write an article you ask " who, what, when, where, how and why?" when creating a story, ask "where, and when?" That is your setting!

If you are interested in a more detailed article about settings, just email me at meami_5@live.com