How are writers supposed to write settings when we're supposed to stay at home? Christine Meade offer writing prompts and tips fro writing strong settings during social isolation.
Author Jane Bernstein shares five thoughts on how to use place to move your story forward by showing how setting affects characters and characters affect setting.
Author D.M. Pulley shares her five tips for building a house or setting that comes alive for readers based off her experience working as a structural engineer.
Richard Kirshenbaum used his experience working in advertising to tell the story of two rival beauty industry icons in his novel Rouge (St. Martin's, June 2019). Here, he reveals how he also channeled inspiration from the places he's traveled to tell the story.
Five celebrated speculative fiction authors give their best world-building tips, demonstrating how different approaches can work.
Call Me Evie author J.P. Pomare shares how his research trips to the town where his suspense novel takes place influenced his writing.
If you're setting a book in another country from your own, it's critical to learn as much as you can about the culture, climate, architecture, and other aspects to make your story more believable. Here, author Sejal Badani offers tips for researching and writing about foreign countries.
When the reader can feel as if they are physically in your story's setting, they will be more inclined to let themselves experience what the characters are seeing and hearing. Here, author Curt Eriksen offers considerations for bringing the locations and eras in your fiction to life.
Laura Oles discusses her considerations for transforming her favorite weekend getaway, Port Aransas, Tex., into a setting for her mystery novel.
A simple setting, but one that pulls readers in, makes them want to be part of your story and actually resonates in their soul. Here are a few things to keep in mind.
For a fiction writer, weaving a real historical incident into my narrative posed an interesting challenge. Here's what you should know.
Here are some ways to infuse your manuscript with meaningful and unexpected details that keep the reader turning pages.
Powerfully portrayed settings seem to have a life of their own, but how is that effect achieved? Make your setting a character is a common piece of advice given to fiction writers, yet beyond invoking all five senses when describing the scenery, there’s not a lot of info out there about exactly how to do it. Here are 5 keys to doing it.
In his CraftFest session at ThrillerFest, “Setting: How to Make Your Novel Go Places,” David Morrell (author of First Blood) riffed on how to produce fantastic settings that become characters in their own right.
