The setting of your novel is as much a character as any of the actors in your story. It drives the action just as they do. It deserves at least as much attention from the writer. Well, I think so.
The word “setting” covers many things: social norms; period, if you are writing historical; rules of magic, if you are writing fantasy; technology, if it’s SF. But what I love most is to imagine landscape.
(The word “landscape” also covers quite a few things: for me, it has included castles, fantastical cities, the surface of an icy moon and, in Muddle and Win, the internal architecture of the human mind. But my current manuscript is set in a medieval forest., and yes, the Forest is very much a character in the story. You bet.)
Landscape, like a good story, should have it wonders. It should call to the reader. When we pass through it for the first time, it should surprise us. Without surprise there is no discovery. There is little to remember. Fingerposts point across open fields. Paths snake towards beckoning groves. The ridgeline hides what lies beyond. What’s going to happen next? Let’s go and see.
Landscape, like story, has its rules, even if they are not obvious as we approach. That grove might hide a ruin, but its not going to be a volcano. It might hide a waterfall, but you’ll hear that before you see it. Stories too: the twists and reveals that keep you turning pages must fit within a set of rules that holds the narrative together. The good storyteller knows how to prepare their reader without giving the game away. Landscape helps you do that. It can set the mood for a scene, and then change it for the next, just like the musical score in a film.
The good reader, picking up a book for the first time, knows they must prepare too, just as if they were setting out to explore a new landscape. If it’s going to rain (on our heads, or in their hearts,) we need to be ready for that. We might want some refreshments too.
But first of all, we must be ready to discover.