: Re: How to make a setting relevant? One piece of feedback that I got on a story I wrote is that my settings feel irrelevant, or that the entire book could have been a phone call. I am not

DPT and Sara Costa have provided great points. (Sara beat me by 4 minutes!) Having the characters interact with the setting is a way to make it matter for the scene.

Most of the time when I see this addressed in writing craft books or online by authors, the solution is stated as making the setting a character.

In practical terms, one way to make the setting important is to give the characters a reason to be in that setting, when it makes sense to do so. For example, if they meet in a diner because it's where they used to hang out with their friends, then the setting is important to the characters, their history, and their development. Or maybe they met there, and so it carries significance that way to them. But the gist is, make the setting significant to the characters somehow.

But it's not always possible to have the setting be significant to the characters prior to the scene. The other side of that is making it significant by its menace, or what it's representing to the character(s). An old house is significant to the young characters who believe it's haunted and are afraid of it. The woods are familiar to the townsfolk in the daylight, but ominous and threatening and strangely UNfamiliar after sundown. That sort of thing.

You could also write the scene so that there's no way it could have unfolded without being there. An exaggerated example is the ancient burial ground trope, where it's significant because it's a place of magic and mystery. Reference Stephen King's Pet Sematary for a great example of this trick, and don't forget The Dark Tower cycle; that tower represents a significant location throughout the series and in the "Kingverse" in general.

If the setting is important to the general world of the story, or to its characters personally (if not everyone in that fictitious world), then it will have a lot of weight.

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: Is it a bad idea to have a pen name with only an initial for a surname? My name is Ana Novkovic and I'm about to start writing and all that. I really really don't like my last name Novkovic.

: Re: How to make a setting relevant? One piece of feedback that I got on a story I wrote is that my settings feel irrelevant, or that the entire book could have been a phone call. I am not

More posts by @Vandalay250

: In most of the books that i have read, which include a drunken character at some point, the person's speech mostly follows these points- Words which have two or more than two consonants

: Tackling backstory while writing multiple POVs I am trying to write from multiple points of views with my first fiction book. I need to handle backstory (part of the overall plot) where all

: Is it expected that a reader will skip parts of what you write? I have given multiple things I have written to a friend of mine, who is something of a writer himself, to get feedback on

: Is it a bad idea to have a pen name with only an initial for a surname? My name is Ana Novkovic and I'm about to start writing and all that. I really really don't like my last name Novkovic.

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