Setting in a story is not just where the action takes place. It creates tone, mood and atmosphere. It may even grow like a main character. Discover ways to track and build bold worldbuilding ideas using Plottr, with extra setting planning and creation tips.
What is a Story Setting? Stage, Conflict, Symbol, and More
Setting isn’t just a backdrop — it often shapes conflict, symbolizes change, and is full of personality.
Setting is a Stage
Think of your setting like a theater stage: You don’t need the whole kitchen to show a character’s home life. Just a counter, a tap, a table with stools. Use the essentials to create the vibe, then build from there.
Thinking of setting like a stage plus the bare minimum props needed will help you create an interesting mise-en-scene (the arrangement of the scenery for a theatrical production or movie set).
Setting Drives Conflict
In battle scenes, terrain (swamps vs dry land, high ground vs low) may give characters an edge or disadvantage. Sometimes, the setting itself becomes the enemy — think iceberg vs ship.
Setting is Symbolic
Settings can symbolize your character’s inner journey. Leaving home might mean stepping into the unknown or the loss of sheltered innocence,. For example, moving from a cozy forest to a world of magic and dramatic conquest like the knight Percival in Arthurian legend.
Setting is Seasoning
A bland setting? That’s like watching your favorite show… on mute… with no snacks. Readers crave flavor. Think of Tolkien: you can almost smell the Shire’s fresh grass or Mordor’s doom. Sensory details are like spices in storytelling, and the right blend works wonders.
Settings Show the Impact of Change and History
What’s more powerful than a beautiful setting? One that changes. Think of the crumbling manor in Brideshead Revisited. Once it was dazzling and lived in, but after the war the main character Ryder finds it decayed, a makeshift military base, in a moving segment toward the story’s end.
How can you plot setting and character and track worldbuilding ideas and story locations?
Setting Planning in Plottr: Keep Your Worldbuilding Ideas in one Place
The primary setting planning tool in Plottr is the Places tab. This makes it easy to store and recall key place details across a book, series, or screenplay.
Here are five ways to use not only this tool, but also other flexible Plottr features to plan out story locations that are full of character:
Build Visual Setting Notes that Spark Ideas
The Places tab in Plottr makes it much easier to save and retrieve information. You can add images representing places in your story, too. Save everything from landscapes to fashion guides, right where you need them.
You could use a tool like Midjourney (or a free photo library like Unsplash) to find images for your place notes that:
- Capture the tone and mood you want this setting to evoke
- Remind you of place details that are key to your characters and plot
- Help you put yourself in your characters’ shoes as they explore their world
💡Pro Tip: Writing a story (or piece of non-fiction) set in a real place, like Paris, for example? Use Google Street View to walk your characters’ routes. Take screenshots of landmarks or interesting features as you go that you can save to your Places notes.
Add Links to Useful Place Research
You can use Plottr as a series bible (a searchable library of facts about your story), and as a research bible.
Notes in the Places tab allow adding links, images and formatted quotes. To use these features to the fullest, try adding:
- Links to setting research: For example, public library archives, government or travel guide resources, guides to the fashion and design emblems of a time and place
- Links to pictures and other media. If your main character takes the Paris underground in your story, for example, you could save links to pictures of the Paris Métro (e.g. a Pinterest board you create for visual inspiration)
💡Pro Tip: Try using AI to generate an image for a setting from your actual description of it (if you are comfortable using AI this way). You may notice ways you could improve your description from what’s absent or stereotypical in the picture
Create Timelines of How Places in Your Book or Series Change
Planning how settings change is another novel activity that’s easy in Plottr. Here’s how to do it:
Step 1: Create a plotline in the Timeline tab named after the setting you want to develop over the course of your story.
Step 2: In each story unit, jot down notes on how this place changes.
Example: In Toni Morrison’s harrowing, Pulitzer-winning novel Beloved, Morrison describes a house haunted by trauma. This personification changes over the course of the novel. First, she opens the novel with, “124 was spiteful”. As the manifestation of trauma intensifies in the house, Morrison begins a section of the book, “124 was loud.” Then, finally, “124 was quiet.”
These are the kinds of mood and tone changes you could track on a timeline. Your setting becomes like a character with its own dramatic character arc.
💡Pro Tip: If you don’t want to clutter your plot timeline with setting notes, use the Project tab and make a new book called “Setting Timelines” (or whatever you want to call it). Then you can easily switch between setting-specific timelines and your plot timelines using the drop-down menu top left.
Organize Setting Planning and Filtering with Tags
Returning to the Places tab in Plottr, there’s another great tool for organizing story locations and keeping track of your worldbuilding ideas: tags.
In the Tags tab, you can create categories of tags, bookmark-like highlighted words you can add to places, notes, characters and scenes. Ideas for subjects you could use these ideas to tag each of your settings:
- Tone and mood. For example, you could tag a setting where your main character feels isolated with “Mood: Isolation” or similar (tag the places where your character feels most alone or has no allies around)
- Conflict or conflict intensity. For example, you could create tags for different intensity levels of conflict and tag places, “Conflict: Peak”, “Conflict: Mid”, or “Conflict: Low” (and use colors that reflect that gradation)
- Symbolism. Tag settings with key themes or symbols in your story — e.g., “Symbol: Freedom” for a wide open space that a runaway reaches, or “Theme: Betrayal” for a location where trust is broken
- Character Relationships. Plot place and character together and tag settings with the status of your main characters’ relationship in this place (for example: “Relationship: Strained” or “Relationship: Renewed”)
These are just some ideas! If you use tags in Plottr this way, comment what you tag in your settings!
💡Pro Tip: Use tags to filter settings you’ve added to the Places tab, too. See at a glance places with a specific mood, conflict level, or other info you’ve tagged.
Build a Setting Planning Template that Keeps You Inspired
Places in Plottr have a secret weapon: custom attributes. These are custom fields that you can add across all place notes, so that whenever you create a new story location, you have helpful questions to answer. A great way to ensure you capture your best worldbuilding ideas.
Why is this useful for setting planning? You can tailor these attributes to your genre and story. For example, if you’re writing:
- Fantasy. Add custom place attributes such as ‘Type of Magic Found Here’ or ‘Primary/Secondary/Tertiary World’ (to specify which of two or more dimensions your setting is located within)
- Mystery. Add custom place attributes to fill out such as “Clues Sleuth Finds Here” or “Suspicious Place Details”
- Romance. Add fields to fill out for love story locations such as “Romantic Elements” or “Potential Conflicts Here”
- Sci-fi. Try adding custom fields to fill out such as “Tech Risks Here” or other location details
💡 Pro Tip: Tag Notes in Plottr with the places you’ve brainstormed they apply to. This way, you can filter your notes by specific places and recall every important detail that’s relevant to that place.
Eight Tips for Writing Vivid Settings
Here are eight tips for planning settings that will linger in readers’ minds.
- Engage all five senses. What can your characters see, smell, taste, touch, and hear in this place? Sensory details bring settings to life. Bonus tip: Think character-specific. A musician might tune into subtle sounds others miss, while a chef may notice scents and flavors first.
- Go light on summary: show settings through characters. Show how your characters experience a setting. Someone who adores the beach might revel in the salty sea spray — someone else might be too busy dodging their worst “ick” (sand between their toes) to have a good time.
- Let setting shape mood. Use the character of places and built and natural environments to evoke mood.
- Give story locations personality. People have quirks and idiosyncrasies that make us remember them (like Mr Jaggers in Dickens’ Great Expectations always biting his forefinger). What is unusual or distinctive about each place in your story?
- Immerse readers using specifics. You could say “The trees showed that autumn was coming” (telling), or you could describe the crunch underfoot of the leaves on the ground and the russet shades.
- Use movement and interaction. Show how your characters live in and move through space. How might your character sit in their favorite armchair, versus the utilitarian, stiff furniture in their dentist’s waiting room?
- Layer time and change. How does a setting in your story change from day to night, or through the seasons? Think about physical changes as well as changes in mood and atmosphere.
- Use inference and implication. How does a setting challenge or threaten your character? In a tense thriller, a screenplay direction describing a character walking down a street, viewed from a car’s side mirror, for example, makes us wonder who’s sitting in the car watching them.
Scene templates in Plottr will also help you plan mood and atmosphere. Read these guides to popular scene templates:
You can also create your own scene template to specify place details per story beat.
Get Planning Setting with Organized, Visual Tools
Ready to plan vivid settings and build a bible of worldbuilding ideas? Start now with a free 30-day Plottr trial!
Which of your favorite authors use setting best? Or what’s your number one setting description tip? Share your thoughts below!
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