Any Clever or Novel Ways for Creating a Setting?

[Rob_Royale]

Use a setting you know. Nothing comes across as well as realism. The details that you can add that give life to the story are limitless. If you and I both wrote a story about our summer working at the car wash, but only one of us had actually done it, whose story do you think would work better?

 

[AllenWoody]

I use a chunks of description which I often cut down or remove entirely upon a read through. It’s easier to get away with mid-scene when the character is up to something and you take a paragraph to describe something important.

You can also describe through dialogue.

 

[StillStunned]

If you're going to start your story with a description of the scenery, you'd better make it engaging. For me, the perfect example is the opening of RE Howard's "The Tower of the Elephant". It paints a picture in a few lines that sets the tone for the whole story, then zooms in from the establishing shot of the Maul to the inside of a tavern where finally the hero is introduced through the eyes of another character.

It's a very effective approach, and one that I try to copy. It captures a mood more than detail, and hopefully that mood stays with the reader throughout the story.