How To Build A Rich Setting For A Contemporary Story

by Stephanie Morrill

Stephanie writes young adult contemporary novels and is the creator of GoTeenWriters.com. Her novels include The Reinvention of Skylar Hoyt series (Revell) and the Ellie Sweet books (Playlist). You can connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and check out samples of her work on her author website including the free novella, Throwing Stones.

Maybe, like I once did, you think of world building as being something only for fantasy or sci-fi writers. While the setting of a contemporary story may not require you to draw elaborate maps or create binders to keep track of it all, it's still a vital part of making your story believable.

After all, can you imagine Gilmore Girls with no Stars Hollow? Veronica Mars with no Neptune? Gossip Girl would be wildly different without it's NYC backdrop, as would The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things. 

I think the first question to ask yourself when figuring out your contemporary novel is if  you should use a real place or make one up. This depends on the type of story you're telling.

If you use a real place, you better be sure you're getting your details right. Anticipate spending a lot of time on Google's street view and posting questions to Facebook like, "Anyone here live in Kauai who can answer a few questions for me?"

There are several big advantages to making up a place. One is that you're not going to get any town details wrong, because you're creating them . Another is that you're not going to offend any locals if you invent not-so-nice details about the town, like in Veronica Mars. 

Making up your own town, however, doesn't mean it's impossible to make a mistake. Once in an episode of Smallville, they showed a closeup of a Kansas license plate on the front of a parking car. Apparently nobody on their staff knew that we don't have license plates on the front of our cars in Kansas. 

You'll still want to do your research on the region, and I would suggest picking a town you can use as a pattern for your invented location. 

Also, if you're setting your story in a large city, I think going with a real one is less distracting. Metropolis is fine for Superman, but it would be distracting in a contemporary romance.

How should you pick where the story takes place?

Sometimes the story dictates it. Gone with the Wind (which, okay, wasn't exactly a contemporary in its day, but I think you'll see the point) mandates that the story take place on a southern plantation. A story about a girl trying to make it on Broadway will need to take place in New York City, same as a story about a man trying to make a living as a cowboy won't take place in NYC.

But sometimes the story doesn't suggest an obvious location. Jodi Picoult's books all (or all the ones I've read, at least) take place in the northeast, but they could have easily been set elsewhere if she'd decided to move them. Same with Stephen King. A ton of his books take place in Maine because that's where he lives. 

I chose to set the Skylar books in Kansas City because I lived in Orlando at the time and felt desperately homesick. If the story doesn't imply a location, feel free to set it wherever your writer's heart desires.

How do you make a place come alive on the page?

Now we get to the fun stuff, where you engage the senses and the emotions of your character to make the setting feel alive for your reader.

The emotion: I think this is perhaps the biggest part of "selling" your contemporary setting to a reader. Few people, if any, are indifferent about the place they live. How does your character feel about her city? Her neighborhood? Her school? Her place of work? Would she live somewhere else if she could? What does she love about this place? What would she change?

Those are questions that you could probably answer about where you live with very little thought, and you should know how your character feels too.

The people: What kind of people inhabit this place? In Veronica Mars, people tend to either be haves or have nots. In Ally Carter's Gallagher Girls series, the other characters are mostly all spies or former spies. Having some common themes among the people as well as diversity will help sell the world to your reader.

The places: When you're away from home, what are the places you miss? When we lived in Orlando, there were times I would lay awake thinking about Sheridan's Frozen Custard or Jack Stack Barbecue. I wanted to be at the Plaza at Christmas time and go to baseball games at Kauffman stadium. What places are close to your character's heart?

The smells: Napa Valley smells very different than Dodge City, Kansas. Boston doesn't smell like Miami Beach. Smell and taste are two of the hardest senses to work into my writing, but they provide a great texture to the story.

The weather: I almost always forget weather until I'm in the edits stage, when I realize things like, "This takes place in downtown Chicago, and I haven't mentioned so much as a light breeze..." Weather Underground is a great place to learn about weather patterns in locations.

The heart: What kinds of issues matter to the characters in this location? The characters of Stars Hollow (Gilmore Girls) were always having town meetings and working to protect their small community. Characters who live in a bigger city might not have those kinds of concerns. Residents in states like Arizona or New Mexico are likely to care more about border issues than those who live in Virginia. Those on the gulf coast fear hurricane season while Midwesterners fear tornado season.

One last note about contemporary settings...

It can be easy to assume your readers know what you're talking about. After all, you don't need to explain what houses look like or what kind of vehicles people drive, unlike in an otherworlds story. But don't forget that readers will still experience your character's world through the tangible details that you provide them. The morning fog. The cry of cicadas. The smell of neighbors grilling. Making the setting vibrant will make it a place your reader longs to escape to.

Contemporaries are my first love If you've read a contemporary novel that you love and that you feel did a good job with setting, mention it in the comments!