What elements should be included in a story's setting?
I know this will vary depending on the type of the story and the characters involved, not to mention the location itself. What I am looking for is some kind of guideline for identifying different aspects of the setting that should be included when you try to work it into your story. Is there some kind of checklist that an author can use to consider what they should include when describing the setting of the story?
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I suggest a checklist, at least, of sensory information, and another of "implications".
I say checklist because you don't necessarily need all of them, and trying to describe all of them becomes ridiculous. Look to prioritize and pick one or two.
In senses we have what is seen and heard and smelled. We also have the temperature, humidity, and irritations: a chair can be uncomfortable, the floor can be damp, the ground can be soft or muddy or hard and sharp stones. Insects can be landing on you and need swatting. The smoke or dust can be coating your mouth or clogging your nostrils.
Always consider, on your list, what you do NOT see or hear. Have the birds or crickets gone silent?
Is something MISSING that we'd expect to see there?
Those are the direct senses, but you have mental and emotional reactions that inform the setting, too:
The bridge looks dangerously rotted.
Captain Fuller was executed by firing squad against this very stone wall.
My grandfather proposed to my grandma Mary under that tree when they were fifteen, it is hard to imagine them as teenagers. I took a knee for my Karen in the exact same spot, it will have been fifty years this summer.
So what happened here?
What are the emotional connection?
What does it remind your characters of?
What does what they see MEAN to them?
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