Setting
Place, time and landscape can all contribute to the feel of a novel.
Put them somewhere
Scenes are built around settings. These can add more to a story than the dialogue.
A place, a time, the weather.
Some stories belong so strongly to their surroundings that moving them would mean writing a different book.
Shuggie Bain
Douglas Stuart1980s Glasgow, its poverty and its communities are woven into Shuggie's childhood and the world his family has to navigate.
Where the Crawdads Sing
Delia OwensThe North Carolina marsh is home, refuge and isolation for Kya, shaping both the life she builds and the way others see her.
The Beach
Alex GarlandA hidden tropical beach promises escape and paradise, until the isolation that makes it desirable begins to make it dangerous.
Where it happens affects everything.
A house
A house is not just a home.
The Haunting of Hill House
Shirley JacksonHill House turns rooms, corridors and architecture into unease. The building is not merely the location of the haunting.
The Dutch House
Ann PatchettOne family home becomes bound up with childhood, loss, resentment and the hold a place can retain long after someone has left it.
Piranesi
Susanna ClarkeAn immense House of halls, statues and tides forms almost the whole of Piranesi's known world, making place inseparable from mystery.
Imagination can turn a house into a universe.
Sarah walked to the ticket office.
A train guard looked up from his newspaper.
The man behind her tied his shoelace.