Where am I?

Name your favorite books for me. Now, where did they take place?

Great stories, the ones published as best-selling novels, "the next great American novel", perhaps, have clear, defined settings. Let's look at a few:

Harry Potter: Hogwarts (and a very realized wizarding world with clear rules)

The Great Gatsby: 1920's New York City

The Hunger Games: Futuristic Panem

Friends Like Us: Milwaukee WI

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore: San Francisco

Water for Elephants: Benzini Bros Most Spectacular Show On Earth

even the Twilight series: Forks WA

Why is setting so important? Why do we gravitate towards books that have strong settings?

If the setting is confusing or missing entirely, the reader will glance over your beautiful prose and your character development until they have something with which to ground themselves. Setting is key. If Harry hadn't been under the stairs at Number 4 Privet Drive, instead, living in the Taj Mahal, would he have had the same journey at Hogwarts? Would he have even gone to Hogwarts? If Katniss lived in some modern day forest in North Carolina, would the Hunger Games have been plausible?

Now, you're telling me, "My story doesn't involve wizards or fights to the death, so setting doesn't matter in my story." You're wrong. Water for Elephants takes place in a traveling circus, but Gruen produces strong rules and a strong setting. The best short stories have strong setting as well: "Cathedral" by Carver, "Sonny's Blues" by Baldwin. Even if your character rarely leaves the house like Camus' The Stranger. Even if it's not in a specific city or country, we need to be grounded. We need climate (tropical? frozen?), we need surrounding images (oak trees? mountains? desert?), we need setting.

It is possible to go too far. Readers need to be grounded but not flooded with setting information. Remember what your grade school teachers said, don't info-dump on setting. Readers don't need to know, and will often skip over, extraneous detail. For example, if your character is getting wine for a guest, he doesn't need to say:

The wine was to the left of the toaster and wedged in between the microwave and the plastic chef who held his rolling pin. He found the cork screw in the drawer under the spider plant, which sat on the windowsill by the dishwasher, not the one over the sink. He extracted it from the depths of the drawer, which was cluttered with old silverware and spatulas. He uncorked the wine and found the glasses in the cabinet...

 

I think you understand how ridiculous this would get through a novel. All the reader needs to know is the protagonist poured a glass of wine for his guest. Then move on.

 

So, let's review; you need to give your reader a place to land so they can concentrate on your characters and the story itself. You don't want to bore them with more detail than necessary. Be concrete but be brief, and maybe you'll be writing the next great American novel.