Setting in Literature: Definition, Types, Function, and Examples

Setting is a crucial element of literature, acting as more than just a backdrop for a story. It encompasses the time, place, and environment in which narrative events unfold, significantly contributing to the story's atmosphere and influencing the characters and plot. Alexandra Stoddard once wrote, "When you leave a beautiful place, you carry it with you wherever you go." This sentiment underscores the lasting impact of setting, both in life and in literature.

Defining Setting

Setting refers specifically to the literary element of a written work that characterizes, outlines, or describes the location of the story, and serves as the foundation upon which other literary elements are built. It is usually introduced during the exposition (beginning) of the story, along with the characters.

Elements of Setting

Elements of a setting can include cultural references, geographic locations, time of day, and the social environment and context. Setting is conveyed to readers through descriptive details passed along in either the narrative or through conversations among characters. Time and place indicate setting in various ways.

Time: This can cover many areas, such as the character's time of life, the time of day, time of year, time period such as the past, present, or future, etc.
Place: This also covers a lot of areas, such as a certain building, room in a building, country, city, beach, in a mode of transport such as a car, bus, boat, indoors or out, etc.
Environment: This is the physical location. It includes conditions such as the geographical properties (water, sand, mountains, etc.), the cultural and social settings (school, place of worship, community, business, museum, theatre, etc.), and weather or climate (storm, rain, sunshine, desert, mountain range, plains, etc.).

Types of Setting

Settings can be categorized in several ways, each influencing the narrative in unique ways.

Backdrop vs. Integral Settings

Backdrop Settings: These are vague and undefined, lending a timeless or universal quality to stories. They are inconsequential, having little effect on the overall narrative. The story can shift from one backdrop to another with its key themes and plot structure intact. Many fairy tales and children’s stories have backdrop settings. “Winnie the Pooh” would be an example. Since the lessons that the characters learn is the point rather than the time period, it’s hard to tack a “past, present, or future” on the time aspect of the setting.
Integral Settings: Also called narrative-shaping settings, these environments shape the narrative by impacting a range of storytelling elements, from theme to characterization to plot. The time and place are important to the story. For example, a story dealing with a historical setting will have a direct impact on the plot. A story that happens in the 1800s will not have technology, so the characters will have to write a letter, ride a horse or take a carriage to visit each other; they cannot travel long distances in one day as we do now with cars, buses, and planes.

Real vs. Fictional Settings

Real Settings: These feature actual locations that can be visited in real life. Real settings can be a boon for writers because they come with distinct geography, architecture, culture, cuisine, dialect, climate, etc. They can provide a greater sense of verisimilitude, since it’s easier for readers to imagine (or look up) a setting because it exists in the real world.
Fictional Settings: These require extensive worldbuilding. Writers are limited only by their imagination (and their deadlines). They aren’t beholden to any rules that govern the real world, and because fictional settings are unfamiliar to readers, writers have creative carte blanc to perfectly tailor elements of the setting.

The Function of Narrative Settings

Setting helps readers understand a story by communicating its context, such as where and when the narrative takes place. Other contexts-such as social or political-can also explain what inspired the story’s main conflict and why. Whether a setting is crucial to the plot or largely inconsequential, it feeds the reader’s imagination, which helps them envision the story. To support this process, writers use setting to develop and round out their worlds.

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Context and Understanding

Setting gives context to the characters’ actions in a story line. It can also create the mood (how the reader or viewer feels). It’s easier to understand why the characters in the story are doing what they’re doing when we know where the they are. All forms of literature will have some form of setting; even backdrop settings have an age range of the characters, which is part of time, and a location, either indoors or out, for example.

Worldbuilding

Writers use elements of setting to facilitate worldbuilding. While both terms describe components of a world, the latter emphasizes that the world being described is something entirely new to readers. Because of this, worldbuilding is most associated with fantasy and science fiction, two genres known for expansive, imaginative, otherworldly settings. The opportunities for detail are virtually endless-location, social milieu, economy, politics, language, fashion, and cuisine all contribute to worldbuilding. All together, they create nuanced, multifaceted worlds that, while unusual or strange, reflect an authentic level of detail and complexity.

Characterization

Setting can also reflect or emphasize characterization. The design of a character’s room-furniture arrangement, wall decorations, even closet contents-can all suggest something about their preferences, values, and personality. Social, economic, and politic context also affect characterization. Well-developed characters are products of their circumstances, so they have traits, values, and beliefs that were shaped by their environment.

Tension, Conflict, and Atmosphere

Setting also contributes to tension, conflict, and atmosphere.

How to Craft a Compelling Setting

Creating a compelling setting involves careful consideration of its suitability, uniqueness, sensory details, relationship to characters, and clarity.

Setting Suitability

Every great story hinges on setting. Before writing a story, make sure the setting fits like a glove. For some authors, this will be easy! Nail down the details of where and when the story will take place. If it’s “contemporary,” does that mean present day or ten years ago? If it’s in a certain country, what city or town? Is this setting a real place, and if so, how much research will it require to convey in good faith? How will the setting of the story factor into the characters’ lives? Will it help them or prevent them from achieving their goals?

Highlighting Uniqueness

Not every element of a setting will be worth noting, so focus on what’s unique. Every city has buildings and sidewalks, but how are they different from every other city’s? If someone leans their head out the window, what do they hear besides traffic or birds? Think of the story setting almost as another character. Just as you might create a character bible to flesh out their quirks, you can profile your setting too! Consider how this affects the characters. This is where you’ll tap into the most interesting features of your setting - by considering how your characters will perceive and react to what’s around them.

Engaging the Senses

As you describe each setting of your story, make sure you don’t just talk about how it looks. Instead, use all five senses: sight, sound, smell, touch, and even taste. You shouldn’t use all of these in every description, nor should you continuously rehash settings you’ve already described. The more you show rather than tell with sense-based setting descriptions, the more you’ll immerse readers in your story.

Character Relationships

Characters should interact with the setting in specific, realistic ways. Setting doesn’t need to oppose your characters in order to feel relevant and meaningful. Over the course of a story, a setting may play varying roles in a character’s life, both positive and negative.

Reader Orientation

Keep your readers oriented. Ironically, one of the quickest ways to confuse readers is to give them too much setting detail. So when introducing a setting, keep the description concise. If you must use directions, at least ensure they’re consistent! Whether you’re building an elaborate world from scratch or simply want to be as accurate as possible when representing a real place, a map of your setting could help.

Setting in Different Genres

Novels in the same genre often share characteristics. Here's a look at common elements of setting in a selection of popular genres:

Detective fiction: Known for ostensibly perfect crime scenes, towns with substandard law enforcement, and an air of intrigue and mystery.
Dystopian novels: Often feature a hopeless or subjugated society beaten down by a totalitarian government. The settings in these stories create an atmosphere of paranoia and suffocation.
Science fiction: Often requires extensive worldbuilding that may feature outer space, a dystopian society, or perhaps even a utopia.
Steampunk: A subgenre of science fiction set during the Steam Age, which took place before combustion engines and electricity.
Fantasy: Also known for extensive worldbuilding that incorporates magic and mystical or fantastical species.
Westerns: Are highly specific in terms of time and place. They’re set in the Old American West, sometime between the late 18th and 19th centuries.

Examples of Setting in Literature

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion are all set on the fictional continent known as Middle-earth, an incredibly detailed, nuanced setting with distinct languages, cultures, and geographies-not to mention mythology and magic. The first chapter begins:

In a hole in the ground there lived in a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

This paragraph reveals the existence of hobbits, who live underground and are preoccupied with comfort.

Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

Brave New World is a dystopian science fiction novel set in the year 2540. The book’s first chapters establish what separates this engineered society-devoid of meaningful relationships and emotion-from the real world and from its protagonist, a natural-born man named John.

Robert Frost, "The Road Not Taken"

The poem, in which the speaker encounters two roads in the woods and ponders which to follow, employs this natural setting to depict its central theme. These are the first two stanzas:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Elie Wiesel, Night

AND THEN, one day all foreign Jews were expelled from Sighet. And Moishe the Beadle was a foreigner. Crammed into cattle cars by the Hungarian police, they cried silently.

In this passage, we have the name of the town and a location within the town (place). We know that it’s a war (time). Since we know Wiesel survived World War II, we know it must be in the 1940s (time).

J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter

October arrived, spreading a damp chill over the grounds and into the castle. Madam Pomfrey, the nurse, was kept busy by a sudden spate of colds among the staff and students. Her Pepperup potion worked instantly, though it left the drinker smoking at the ears for several hours afterward. Ginny Weasley, who had been looking pale, was bullied into taking some by Percy.

This excerpt sets a gloomy mood with its setting, particularly with the words “damp chill.” It’s October and the characters are students, so we assume young (time). They are in a school dormitory, which is a castle (place). Since the season is fall, we know that the students are getting sick because of the cold.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper”

The setting is an upstairs bedroom whose walls are covered with yellow wallpaper. The location and time period of the setting never change in this story, but as the character’s mental health declines in proportion to the length of her confinement, the room and the wallpaper-the setting-begin to change and evolve as well, mirroring and symbolizing her changing mental status. The setting, then, serves to support the overarching theme of confinement and imprisonment and the effect that imprisonment can have.

L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

In this story, the character of Dorothy moves quickly from the dreary, drab, and boring Kansas farm to the exciting and new setting of the Land of Oz, a magical land of green that is home to a cast of creatures and characters unlike any seen in Kansas. The setting of Oz helps to influence the story’s plot and advance the characters’ actions and dialogue. Dorothy’s progress along the yellow brick road, for example, leads her to each of the unique main characters within the plot, and each location symbolizes the inner journey of personal growth both she and her cohorts must experience.

Bardugo, Example

Inside, the music thumped and wailed, the heat of bodies washing over them in a gust of perfume and moist air. The big square room was dimly lit, packed with people circling skull-shaped vats of punch, the back garden strewn with strings of twinkling lights beyond.

Bardugo is careful to describe each new room the characters enter, so the reader always has a clear picture of what’s happening.

Setting in Pop Culture

One area of pop culture that relies heavily on strong settings is the video game industry. As computer technology has improved over the years, video games have progressed from boring, simple games to intense and complex gaming experiences all due to the use of setting. Video games now have realistic backgrounds, whereas the first video games (as far back as the 1950s) had blank or static (unchanging) backgrounds.

A second example of setting within pop culture is Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin. Setting is a large basis of the story. Martin has a map in the front of the book so that they can see the location of plot events as the story unfolds. Viewers watching the series are able to see the settings change by following the scenes. Some settings are in castles, others in war camps. These different places of the setting will affect how the characters act.

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