Setting the Mood

How important is setting in your books? Do you write settings that you’ve never visited, and how do you go about this, if so? Give an example or two of setting in your own work and say how these scenes enhance the plot or create mood.

Brenda here.

Setting is essentially another character, especially in crime fiction. In my case, I use the Canadian landscape as the backdrop for my stories, because I know it intimately. It's much easier to create mood and describe the locations if I've visited the place I'm describing, but on occasion, I've researched an area and written a scene without having visited. I use Google maps and Google earth, and look up websites and images to get the logistics correct. I've even had readers who live in some of these places write to tell me that I got it right -- most gratifying when that happens!

In my first novels, I made up towns set in real geographical locations, but in my three, later series, I've used real towns and cities. I take liberties with businesses or houses, but overall, I work to get the geography correct. Many readers say they love following along the streets and visiting places with my characters that they're already familiar with. I had an American reader actually travel to Kingston to visit the places in my Stonechild and Rouleau series - how great is that?!

I like to incorporate the setting into the storyline without writing long paragraphs of description. The images and choice of language enhance the mood that I'm working to create. Here are a few examples from my work:

"She looked around the darkened street at the layer of pristine snow glistening on the sidewalks and roadway like spun sugar in the light from the street lamps. Errant flakes drifted through the air in their lazy tumble to the earth." - Bleeding Darkness

"The route took me to the outskirts of the village, the road hugging the shoreline and winding slowly north. Luckily the plow had been around early and the road was passable. Only a few houses dotted this back road, small homes with smoke pouring out of the chimneys with wood stoves the main source of heat. If I opened the window and leaned out, the smell of wood smoke and pine would fill my nostrils like love letters from the past." - In Winter's Grip

"The utter darkness that only comes in the country had settled around Liam where he stood at the edge of the Petries' garden, looking up at the night sky. A few hours earlier, a fitful breeze had sprung up, helping to hasten the rain clouds on their way, and the stars glittered like fistfuls of sequins spread across a black canvas." - Fatal Harvest

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