How To Enchant Your Readers With A Rock-Solid Setting

Setting is vital to Fantasy writers, moreso than writers in any other genre.

Readers are looking for more than memorable characters and a tight plot, they want settings brimming with magic and intrigue. What’s more, these enchanting settings must be believable.

It seems like a contradiction to call for believability in fantasy, but a dose of realism can immerse your reader even more deeply in your world.

Setting is almost a character in itself, and to really succeed, must be as individual and relatable as your protagonist, otherwise readers will lose faith in your ability to tell a gripping tale.

When writing Fireside Fairy Tales, it was my hope that the atmospheric settings lingered as much as the characters.

While working on this skill I’ve learned a few things:

Explore your world with curious characters

“We don’t see people as they are, we see them as we are,” said Anaïs Nin.

I believe this applies to settings, too.

It could be the most beautiful summer’s day in Scotland, with the flowers in bloom and picnic options aplenty, but if I’m in a black mood I’ll see summer as a sticky, sweaty, fly-ridden hellscape.

Think about your protagonist’s state of mind. Would she stop to smell the flowers or find music in the crashing tide? Is the steady tick of a grandfather clock soothing or a nerve-rattling memento mori?

A protagonist’s state of mind will shape the atmosphere around her. Take the following scene from my short story, The Duke With Opals For Eyes, as an example.

Despite the wild winter outside, the familiar scents of her home make Mary feel safe and content:

Mary crowed in wonder then wriggled under the homespun blanket, as close to Granny’s warmth as possible. The wind couldn’t get at them here; they’d made camp in an old cattle fank and its lichen-rusted walls protected them from the elements. Mary loved the scent of earth and pipe smoke clinging to Granny’s clothes, so she cooried in tight.

How your protagonist experiences the setting she inhabits is how the reader experiences it, too. Keeping her emotional state in mind when setting a scene will also ensure rock-solid consistency throughout your story.

Make it moody

Are you writing an epic Fantasy or a twisty Thriller? A cosy Romance or chilling Horror?

Each of these genres requires a different mood. If your setting falls short of readers’ expectations, they’ll be disappointed.

Imagining how I want a reader to feel helps me know where to set the story and what details to include. It also helps me filter out the filler so I can keep my settings tight and atmospheric. For example, in my short novel, The Bone-Men, I knew I wanted to evoke a primal and unsettling atmosphere, so isolated my characters in a dense wildwood, filled with tightly packed branches and shadows.

Wave a magic wand over lifeless settings with figurative language

Figurative language is a magic dust that brings dull descriptions to life.

Personification is one of my favourite techniques and works particularly well if you’re going for an eerie atmosphere. Here’s another example from The Duke With Opals For Eyes:

Mary peered through the smoky gloom at Granny’s closed fist. Granny winked at her, then, swift as a stoat, tipped the story into her mouth, where it settled under her tongue, ready to be told.

Saying that the story ‘settled under her tongue’ and is ‘ready to be told’, creates the impression that stories are living things. Imbuing them with human qualities raises their importance within the Fireside world and perhaps prompts the reader into pondering how Granny came by her stories and if the stories themselves choose to be told.

But sprinkle sparingly! Too much and your prose will purple. Just a pinch keeps the balance between captivating a reader’s attention and drowning them in a literary lagoon.

The 5 senses: a simple spell to captivate hungry readers

A bracing wind rakes your hair. There’s a tang of salt on your lips and the witch-shriek of gulls overhead…I’m sure you know you’re by the sea without me needing to mention the waves crashing against the sand.

Tantilise all five senses and you’ll do more than paint a picture for your readers – you’ll put them in your fictional world right beside your characters.

Try to vary which senses you use.

Describing how something or someone looked used to be my writing crutch. When I challenged myself to use senses other sight, my settings became alive and more vivid than ever before.

Scent is particularly powerful and might provoke painful or joyous memories for your character. Does dawn in your world comes with the blare and bustle of traffic or the chorus of birdsong?

Small sensory details weave a rich tapestry of your world that will immerse readers and keep them turning the page.

Dare to be unoriginal

Forbidding forests. Enchanted castles encased in thorns. Moonlit graveyards.

These settings crop up time and again. While they might be cliche, the above settings speak to the primitive part of a reader’s brain which has been trained to associate graveyards with death and forests as wild places, populated by wily wolves and gingerbread houses.

A well-chosen scene does the heavy lifting for you.

For example, in The Traveller’s Curse (based on vampiric Highland fairies) I leaned on the Gothic setting of a manor house, dark mirrors and candles. I even set the story at Hallowe’en.

Using popular settings for your story doesn’t need to be hackneyed. The above details instantly conjure a spooky atmosphere, but in using traditions and superstitions peculiar to Scotland, I hope I was able to inject fresh blood (!) into the vampire tale.

As a writer with lots to learn, I’ve finally cut myself some slack and taken the pressure off of being original. Nailing structure, character and figurative language is enough to get on with without trying to avoid every little cliché!

I hope these tips gave you a few writerly cantrips to help craft memorable settings and rock-solid fantasy worlds that captivate your readers.