Angela Ackerman

When it comes to painting a setting for readers, think beyond “window dressing” detail. Get personal, get inside your protagonist’s head, and show the world in a way that allows your audience to discover the deeper side of your hero or heroine.

Taking advantage of a deeper POV means really understanding how crucial sensory description is to the story (which will be covered more in a later section) and how settings should include an emotional value.

If the setting is someplace neutral to the protagonist and there is no emotional value based on past knowledge or experience, we can still bring one to the forefront by creating mood. This is done by choosing sensory descriptions that reinforce a specific emotion (fear, peacefulness, unease, pride, etc.) that we want the character (and the reader) to feel. Mood can also be created through the use of light and shadow, universal symbolism, weather, and other techniques, which are all covered in depth in The Rural Setting Thesaurus.

The first step is to brainstorm the best setting match for a particular scene.

First, identify your hero’s scene goal—what must he do, learn, or achieve? And what do you want him and the other characters involved to feel? Once you know the answers to these questions, imagine different types of settings where this scene might take place, ones that fit the story and are logical locations for your character to visit. Make a list if you like. Often the settings that pop immediately to mind are the most obvious, but with a bit of digging, some more creative and interesting choices can be unearthed too.
Once you have a few options, look at each potential setting in turn and think of how you can describe the location to evoke a specific mood that will make your character’s emotional reactions more potent. Tension can be a factor too. Depending on what is about to happen in the scene, you might want your character to feel off-balance. Or maybe you wish to lull him into a false sense of security so he doesn’t see what’s coming. Either way, the details you pick to describe the setting will help steer his emotions.
Finally, think about what the character will learn, decide, or do as a result of what happens in the scene. The setting can act as an amplifier for this end result simply by surrounding the character with emotional triggers that will lead him toward that decision or action.

As a therapist, the section on how positive traits develop (which, in turn, applies to negative traits as well) was the most interesting and thought-provoking.

I’d also recommend that you come to this book with a character in mind—you know, the one that interrupts your sleep and begs to be written.

, I run a business where I profit from analyzing fictional characters,

With millions of books being published worldwide every year, readers have a landslide of stories to choose from.

Although eye-catching covers, professional editing, and a well-directed marketing campaign contribute to how well a title will do,