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Settings - Part One - Places Authors Have Used

© Janet Kay Blaylock

So far you have learned about gathering ideas for short stories, mini-mysteries, and novels. Then, you learned about characters and how to develop them. Now, you are going to learn about settings.

Settings

Have you thought about where you would like your characters to live? A setting can be anywhere you choose. It can be a real place or a fantasy place.

To begin with, think of the places you have lived. Have you lived in the city, a small town, or on a farm? Make a list of every place you have lived. Then, you need to think of a name for that place. Do you want to use the real name or a fictional name? For the books that I have written or am writing, I have based my settings on the places where I have lived, but I have used fictional names.

My Settings

First of all, you will choose a main setting, which is the town, city, farm, island, etc. That is the main place where your story will take place. A story can have several settings.

For my settings, I have chosen the name River City. I chose that name because I lived on a farm near the river from the time I was born until the end of the second grade.

Other Settings

On the other hand, there are some writers who have a particular house where the setting takes place. The characters are moving about the house. For example, in "The Unexpected Guest" by Agatha Christie, the setting was inside the house where the crime was committed. The characters who were staying there were the suspects, but was one of them the villain?

You'll have to read the complete review on my other site titled "Suspense, Detective Fiction, and Thrillers." The link is http://www.suite101.com/welcome.cfm/3056. You'll find the link to my Book Reviews.

Nevada Barr chooses to have her characters in a forest park because they are forest park rangers. The setting in the book that I have read is in the mountains. She describes the mountains and the environment surrounding the area where the crime was committed.

Carolyn Hart uses an island in her book "Dead Man's Island." She describes the house and the island where the crime was committed.

In Medical Thrillers, writers would use hospitals, doctor's offices, or another medical environment for their settings. In order to write these kind of stories, you would have to be familiar with the medical environment. If you know of someone in the medical field, have stayed in the hospital, or have visited someone in the hospital; then you will have a little bit of knowledge to use a setting for a Medical Thrillers. Tess Gerritsen writes Medical Thrillers, so if you are interested in writing a Medical Thriller, I would recommend that you read her books.

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