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.