on Fiction University:

Part of the Focus on Short Fiction Series

JH: With a short story, you don’t have a lot of time or space to develop your setting. Rayne Hall shares tips and exercises on how to get the most out of your short fiction setting.

Where does your story take place?

Consider giving your story an unusual, quirky setting. This will make the piece memorable and vivid. What’s the weirdest possible place where the events could plausibly happen?

If this is a romantic story about a first date, how about these two people don’t go to a predictable meal in a restaurant, walk in a park or movie in a cinema, but a Ferris wheel ride at the funfair, rollerblading in a deserted car park, or picnicking on a mountain top?

Could the story perhaps happen in an abandoned factory warehouse, a wine cellar, a sauna, a horse stable, a hayloft, a mineshaft, a cable car, a children’s playground, a stalactite cave? The more unusual, the better.

Consider putting all the characters into a ‘locked room’ – a single enclosed place from which they cannot escape. This intensifies the tension. Consider a railway carriage, a cable car, a prison cell, a cave with a blocked entrance, an island surrounded by shark-infested waters, a mountain hut during a blizzard… If the characters have no choice but to stay, everything becomes more intense.

A story may have more than one setting. Perhaps it starts in the kitchen, then moves into the garden, then the neighbor’s house, and finally back into the kitchen. However, it’s best to keep to as few places as possible, because if you keep hopping locations, your story may grow unwieldy and long.

Continue reading HERE