Great Descriptions of Setting from Literature
Introducing the subtle artistry of setting in literature: a canvas upon which authors paint the intricate backdrop of their stories, inviting readers into worlds both familiar and fantastical. Setting is more than just a physical landscape; it's an immersive experience, a key ingredient that breathes life into narratives. In this exploration, we delve into the realm of descriptive mastery, uncovering exemplary passages where authors transport us effortlessly into their meticulously crafted environments.
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What actually is setting in fiction?
In literature, setting encompasses more than just the physical backdrop against which a story unfolds; it's a multifaceted tapestry that intricately weaves together time, place, and cultural milieu. At its core, setting delineates the spatial and temporal dimensions of a narrative, encompassing the specific locale and era in which events transpire. Whether it's the dimly lit alleys of Victorian London or the dystopian landscapes of a future world, setting grounds the reader in a tangible reality, shaping the context within which characters interact and conflicts unfold.
However, setting extends beyond mere geography and chronology; it encompasses the rich tapestry of environmental elements that breathe life into a scene. From the sweltering heat of a desert oasis to the eerie stillness of a fog-laden forest, things like weather, topography, flora and fauna, and even the objects found in the scene can all lend texture and depth to the narrative.
Yet, it doesn’t end there. Setting also has the capacity to evoke a sense of cultural and social context. It embodies the norms, customs, beliefs, and societal structures that underpin the characters' lives, infusing the narrative with authenticity and resonance. Whether it's the rigid hierarchies of feudal Japan or the tumultuous upheavals of a revolution, setting can serve as a mirror reflecting the broader social and historical currents that shape human experience.
However, while setting can encompass a multitude of elements, writers should selectively incorporate only those details that serve their narrative's purpose. Not every story requires an exhaustive description of flora and fauna or an in-depth exploration of societal norms and politics. Instead, writers must discern which aspects of their setting are essential to their story's themes, characters, and plot progression. By judiciously selecting and emphasizing certain elements, writers can craft a setting that enhances the overall storytelling experience without overwhelming the reader with unnecessary detail. Ultimately, effective storytelling lies not in the exhaustive cataloging of setting but in the deliberate curation of elements that resonate most deeply with the narrative's core essence.
Three Key Factors for Effective Descriptions of Setting:
Specificity and Detail: Great descriptions of setting are marked by their meticulous attention to detail and specificity. Instead of offering vague or generic depictions, authors should delve into the minutiae of the environment, painting vivid pictures that engage the senses and transport readers into the heart of the scene.
Temporal Relevance: Effective descriptions of setting anchor the reader in the present moment of the story, offering glimpses of the environment as it exists in that specific moment in time. Rather than providing static, timeless depictions, authors should weave setting details that actually transport the reader into the here and now of their story. Describing your setting as it appears to your character or characters as they interact with it is generally going to create more immersive storytelling than giving a general description that could apply to the same place at any moment in time.
Narrative Relevance: As mentioned above, while comprehensive world-building can be enticing, great descriptions of setting prioritize relevance to the overarching narrative. Each detail serves a purpose, contributing to character development, plot advancement, or thematic resonance. By including only what is essential to the story's progression and thematic exploration, authors ensure that setting descriptions remain tightly integrated with the broader narrative framework, enhancing coherence and impact.
As we delve into the following examples, observe how each author masterfully employs the aforementioned elements to craft immersion. We suggest paying close attention to the level of specificity in each description, as well as how the writer manages to describe their setting in the precise moment in time it is experienced. By studying these examples, you can hopefully glean some invaluable insights into the art of creating vivid and compelling settings. These examples are all from short stories, and we’ve included links so you can read the entire story to see how each description fits into the wider narrative.
By Caoilinn Hughes
Night has foregrounded itself by the time Maeve is seated. The firelight gives the winter air a formaldehyde quality – pointed incisors and pocket squares and ivory brooches float around in the glow.
The tabletop firestones are set to maximum. Set between the flames are cheese platters, each with three cheeses; a tiny jar and spoon; a block of pale jelly; a dish of oat-thyme thins; and lightly candied walnuts.
By Annie Proulx
Dawn came glassy orange, stained from below by a gelatinous band of pale green. The sooty bulk of the mountain paled slowly until it was the same color as the smoke from Ennis’s breakfast fire. The cold air sweetened, banded pebbles and crumbs of soil cast sudden pencil-long shadows and the rearing lodgepole pines below them massed in slabs of somber malachite.
They shook hands in the choky little trailer office in front of a table littered with scribbled papers, a Bakelite ashtray brimming with stubs. The venetian blinds hung askew and admitted a triangle of white light, the shadow of the foreman’s hand moving into it.By Lori Ostlund
Now, beneath the praying child, there was something new, pointing upward: a row of hunting rifles, six in total, butts nestled in the orange shag rug.
By Tom Crewe
The train carriage rattled in its frame, thudded on the track, underground. The lights wavered, trembling on the cheekbone of the man in front. John hadn’t noticed that, hadn’t noticed he could see the angle of the man’s jaw and the jut of his cheekbone. There was the hint of a moustache. Blackness rushed past the windows. The floor roared beneath his feet.
The darkness in the room was filmy, as if the small amount of light leaking through the curtains was slowly percolating it.
By David Moats
They passed a man huddled under a filthy blanket next to a street light, and Pete put a dollar bill in the guy’s lap. They turned to their right and crossed the street, passing another cluster, half a dozen men and women, with cardboard signs and hats turned over for receiving money.
As they walked toward Pete’s apartment, the streets became more squalid and crowded with clusters of homeless people, huddled in doorways or pitched out on the sidewalk under makeshift tarps and blankets.
By Phil Crockett Thomas
It was horribly hot in the room. Vera felt around with her feet for her slippers; toes connecting with fur, she padded into the kitchenette.
As Vera opened the door, Valentino skittered noisily over the imitation marble floor to meet her, sounding as if a necklace had burst with its beads rolling in every direction. No matter how polished the surroundings, you could never displace the smell of dog: dust, muck, and jelly.
By Sam Sax
I pause only a moment; the twin slits of its pupils reflect back traffic, pedestrian and automobile alike, all seemingly uninterrupted by the wildlife. And though I can’t be sure, it almost seems as if people are passing straight through its still body. All I’ve ever wanted is to belong somewhere, and all I can ever feel is how out of place I likely appear. So, in this spirit I too walk past the goat as if it were a normal part of the landscape; I too accept what’s in front of me and what is to come as I head down the subway steps. I leave behind the borough, and the animal, and that older man’s fancy apartment, wearing his stolen French shirt after abandoning my own, pit- and popper-stained on his bathroom floor, knowing full well I’ll never have to see any of this ever again.
The Bear Came Over the Mountain
By Alice Munro
Fiona lived in her parents’ house, in the town where she and Grant went to university. It was a big, bay-windowed house that seemed to Grant both luxurious and disorderly, with rugs crooked on the floors and cup rings bitten into the table varnish.
He skied around and around in the field behind the house as the sun went down and left the sky pink over a countryside that seemed to be bound by waves of blue-edged ice.
By Subraj Singh
The fire spills and spreads as soon as the torch touches the wood. The thick flames leap, curling, unfurling, stretching across the bier and towards the blue sky. Tiny waves are smashed under the heels of the mourners who stamp and wail and bounce on the balls of their feet. The waves reform and rejoin the safety of the seawater.
The smoke, black as his soul, is snatched away by the sea-breeze as soon as it reaches for air. Anuradha wafts the falling soot away from her face and turns her head from the pyre. She sees one of the overseers standing on the seawall in the distance, a midday phantom, watching over the burning.
By Isabelle Appleton
The final evening of the retreat, in the thick of August’s exigent heat, Jane gave up on sleeping and took off to the pond by moonlight. She ran and ran. She ran past the ramshackle dwellings and pastures of sleeping cattle. She wove through the yucca and globemallows, expertly circumventing the apertures in the prairie’s jagged floor.
And That’s How I Became a Woman
By Vigdis Hjorth
Translated by Charlotte Barslund
We reached a passage with four closed doors, he walked to the one furthest to the left and I followed with my hand in his until he let go of it, opened the door and turned on the light in what looked like a guest bedroom, it seemed uninhabited. A made-up bed and a bedside table, a window facing the road with the curtains closed, a sink to the left of the door, a chair to the right.
By Rachel Connolly
A cloud stretches across the sky. Bright white like hotel sheets. Unbroken, so I can’t see anything below. The airport. Or where the sea turns into the Lagan. Farmhouses and their neat green fields. Wild patches of forest. The navy ikea warehouse. The mountains. My da, recovering from his operation.
By Jessi Jezewska Stevens
New York had the reach of cottonwood or pollen. It defined an ecosystem all its own. Only midway through Pennsylvania did you escape its sweep and a new kind of flora emerge: narrower roads; affordable real estate; tractor trailers galumphing down lane one. The Midwest loomed somewhere in Erie. You could tell by the way the land flattened and the woodlands narrowed to windbreaks between the farms, and by the layout of the convenience stores, which shared in common taupe wire shelves and the tart, musty smell of packaged bread.
By Sophie Frances Kemp
The compound was set on 300 acres of deciduous wood. There was a creek that babbled. A saltwater swimming pool they called Infinity. A greenhouse full of plants. Red clay tennis courts where you could volley, serve, volley, serve. A wrought iron table where we ate apple galettes. A beach where the flotsam and jetsam might kiss you. There were fish too. Calvados in a Styrofoam cup. There was no town nearby. No local market at which to shop. Instead, grounds, compound, Jacob’s porcelain ladder pointed to the sky. Instead, the tug of crisp cotton on your neck. A ladies’ mule, brown suede. Size 37.
By Selva Almada
Translated by Annie McDermott
Wild guinea pigs, weasels, viscachas scurrying through the tall grass. El Negro moves with care, with respect, as if entering a church. Dainty as a guazuncho deer. But of course he ends up treading on a twig, a bunch of curupí pods, and the result is deafening. The crackle of dry shells echoes through the alders and timbós, up and out of the dense circle of woodland. Announcing the presence of an intruder.
By Aria Aber
The art, too, annoyed me – it was good, better than I had hoped. The show was called Self-Portrait, a title she had kept secret from me for the last year, and the arrangement of objects in the white-painted warehouse room was familiar and yet astounding. It wasn’t on the ground floor – we had to walk a narrow flight of metal stairs into a hall with exposed pipes and a wall of windows, the urban sunset eclipsed by the cityscape and distant hills, the water glistening just behind it.
In the Unlikely Event of a Loss of Cabin Pressure
By Juan S. Guse
Translated by Gwen Clayton
The base camp lay at the south-eastern edge of the Taunus, near Kronberg, just a few kilometres from the place of first contact. It had never been officially designated or planned, but instead gradually took form out of tents, containers and camper vans. Now hundreds of people, sent by universities or on behalf of their countries, lived and worked there in close quarters with local authority personnel, journalists and NGO staff. They lacked for nothing: there were 220-volt electrical connections, sanitary facilities, a canteen, Wi-Fi, a library and even a small shoe shop.
By Ewan Gass
The boy sat by what had been the foot of the wall. Only scattered rubble marked where the line once stood: nothing now prevented the poisonous bush spilling over from the neighbours’ garden. A week ago, the boy had teetered on top of the wall, as he liked to do, peering over the tall rushes to glimpse the spot where two cats liked to sun themselves, when a large stone gave way beneath his feet.
By Deniz Utlu
Translated by Jackie Smith
On my way back to the car, the sun blazed with the last light of day. In the transom windows of the sheds, as I passed them again, a farewell shadow-play was going on among the historic beams, a geometric riot in the spaces between the roof timbers, whose shadows – stretched, shortened or multiplied – were cast across the windowpanes which, in the cold evening, looked like parchment.
By Lukas Maisel
Translated by Ruth Martin
The pavement was covered in snow that had been compressed by the weight of pedestrians and was now more like ice. It even creaked in an unsettling way as he walked on it. He didn’t particularly like winter, but he enjoyed inhaling the fresh, scentless air, like his body was being cleansed on the inside.