The second layer we are going to look at is probably the most obvious.  It isn’t also the second most important or the second one you work on.  That’s just the order I’m going in at this time.  So, let’s look at:

Environmental or Physical Setting

This level of setting is what the characters can interact with.  It can include the terrain, weather, and the overall world.  In other words, this layer is what most people consciously think of when they hear the word ‘setting’.  It is the tangible world the characters live in as they go through their adventures.  You’re bound to create some of this as you go along because you can’t have them travel through a void.

One of the pieces of advice I would give to someone in terms of setting is to touch on all five senses.  Don’t only talk about what people see.  There should sounds, smells, and tastes to the world as well.  When I write a descriptive paragraph to set the stage, I try to hit as many senses as I can.  Touch is a difficult one, but you can do that by talking about the wind and climate.  If you can hit all 5 senses, you can pull an invested reader into the world and lock them into what is about to happen.  Of course, you have to remember to keep moving away from sight and maintaining this, which is the bigger challenge.

Even dialog can be used to enhance environmental setting by having characters point things out.  They can discuss regions that are far away to increase the size of the world and maybe foreshadowing a future adventure.  It isn’t the cleanest way to do it, but it can create an attachment between the world and the character.  They are no longer a fictional figure passing through a fictional world, but an inhabitant of a vast, thriving dimension. This is why an author might have to consciously avoid adding to this setting, which would be weird.  Why would someone want to write a story with nothing for the characters to interact with?

Another aspect of the environmental setting is that it changes as the characters move to other locations.  Similar to time passing, the physical setting has to change.  There is an evolution occurring within the setting to make it a bigger, deeper world.  For years, I’ve called the setting another character because it changes and influences the story and vice versa.  So, you need to consider such changes as you progress through the timeline or you’ll end up with a hodgepodge world.

While this aspect of setting tends to be a ‘given’, we still make mistakes.  What suggestions would you give a new author when it comes to physical setting? As a reader, what have you run into with physical setting that jerks you out of the story?