This document provides tips for improving writing by focusing on story settings. It recommends considering the location, time of day, weather, and whether indoors or outdoors when establishing the setting. Descriptive details that engage the five senses can bring the setting to life. Settings should be based on real places with some invented details added. Atmosphere can be manipulated using the setting to create different feelings for the reader such as danger, fun, or strangeness. Too much descriptive detail should be avoided so as not to slow the narrative pace. Using real or invented place names can make the setting more believable. Characters can then be introduced once the setting is established.

1. Story Settings
How to improve your writing!

2. You can start your story by thinking
about the setting.
Where does your
story take place?
What time of
day is it?
What is the
weather like?
Is it inside
Or outside?

3. Manipulate
the reader with the setting.
Use place as well as the weather, time of
day and season, to create a setting. After
all, a walk along a lane on a summery
afternoon creates one atmosphere but the
same lane on a dark wintry night would feel
very different.

4. Use detail to bring the setting alive - base
this on sense impressions.
• What can be seen,
heard, smelt, touched
and tasted?
• If the reader is to
enter your world, s/he
needs to be able to
• see it
• hear it
• touch it
• taste it
• smell it

5. Base settings on places that you
know - plus some invented detail.
• Think of places where
you have been.
• Close your eyes and
look at all the details
around you. What
can you see?
• Now use your
imagination to change
the place. Add some
interesting details.
• Do you want details to
make your setting
seem:
• dangerous?
• frightening?
• fun?
• safe?
• peaceful?
• strange/imaginary?

6. Use the setting to create
atmosphere
• For instance, you
might use a
frightening place such
as an empty house -
or you can take a very
ordinary place and
make it seem scary
by making it seem
unusual, dark and
cold.

7. Remember:
• Do not get
bogged down
in too much
description
or you will
lose the pace
of the
narrative.

8. Use real or invented names to bring
places alive
• Names help to make your setting more real and
more believable.
• ‘A boy walked down a street’ shows us nothing,
but ‘Lugs O’Neill limped down Butcher’s Row’
starts to catch our imagination.

9. Once you have built the setting
you can bring in the characters.
Who is there and why?
Have fun creating your story
setting!

10. Once you have built the setting
you can bring in the characters.
Who is there and why?
Have fun creating your story
setting!