The Importance of Setting - by Harini Nagendra

This week's topic: 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.

As a reader, I know I actively seek out books with strong, compelling settings. I look for mystery books set in times I have not lived through, in places I do not know. For me, this is the easiest and most fun approach I can take to learn more about the world and its history. When a good book of fiction gets me interested in learning more about a place or time, I often turn to a non-fiction book or research paper to learn more - but it's fiction that gets me interested in the first place. 

As a writer, while I work on crafting characters and plot, I'm most naturally drawn to setting. I believe a well detailed, believable setting makes the world within which the story or narrative is set come alive, compelling the reader to walk inside the pages, and inhabit the world of the writer alongside their characters.

When a writer chooses a setting, it's important to choose wisely. It’s the backdrop against which your story plays out, the scenery in the background – done well, setting can even take on some of the roles of a character itself, interacting with and influencing other characters to respond in ways that take them out of their comfort zones and make their inner worlds come to life on the page.

A setting can be real or imagined, and can draw on elements of culture, geography, history, environment, climate, economy, society – and much more. 

I set my colonial historical mysteries, The Bangalore Detectives Club series, in Bangalore of the 1920s - I am from Bangalore, but of course I wasn't born in the 1920s. I rely on research that includes old photographs and maps, archival documents and biographies, letters and newspaper articles, oral histories and recipes and other kinds of information to recreate the social, cultural, ecological and urban fabric of colonial Bangalore. 

Here's an excerpt from The Bangalore Detectives Club. Here, my goal is to describe the setting but also use it to draw a picture of the colonial times in which the book is located, and the colonial use of hunting, equated with masculinity, progress and the domination of man over nature.

Kaveri’s gaze took in every inch of her surroundings. The main hall of the Century Club glowed in the yellow light of the electric lamps, the sturdy furnishings of teak and rosewood offset by the delicate garlands of white jasmine, red roses and orange marigold draped around the pillars like serpents. The lamps were particularly impressive, mounted on tall iron pillars enhanced by ornate cornices and curls.

Outside, the gentle scritch-scritch of a broomstick announced the presence of a gardener, sweeping up the fallen leaves from the grassy lawn where dinner would later be laid out. A servant appeared silently on their left-hand side, bowing deferentially as he helped Ramu out of his coat. Ramu tipped the cart driver, telling him to have a good supper and to pick them up in a few hours. The carriage driver nodded cheerfully; his family lived nearby, and were expecting him home for dinner. 

Aware that the gesture made her seem more like a bashful child than a distinguished wife, Kaveri could not help but cling to Ramu’s side as they walked onwards into the club. 

Animal heads were mounted like trophies along the wall, repulsing and intimidating her. A series of glassy-eyed deer with impressive antlers gazed mournfully down at them, and two large stuffed bison heads drooped their once-lethal horns towards the couple, defeated. Kaveri tried her best to walk around the snarling bearskin that adorned the floor, and as she caught sight of the two life-sized tiger skins mounted on parallel walls, Ramu felt her shudder. 

In the fourth book of the series, Into the Leopard's Den - to be released in July 2025 - Kaveri goes to Coorg to investigate a murder, that then turns into two, and then three. I had a lot of fun visiting Coorg, reading about the history of coffee plantations and British settlers in the misty hills of Coorg, and working this into the setting. Here's an excerpt from the book, describing the landscape of Coorg, it's wealth intertwined with poverty and built on exploitation - 

The powerful car ate up the miles as the plains fell away from view. They climbed steadily. The open, grassy meadows and barren granite hills gave way to misty hills. Rolling down the glass, she stuck her head out of the window, greedily inhaling large gulps of the crisp, cool air. From this height, she could see thick forests draping the slopes like an olive green carpet, punctuated by bright green fingers of coffee on the gentler slopes. Embedded in the valley, small squares of emerald green paddy fields peeked out, like exquisite applique work on a silk sari. 

There was much wealth in the mountains of Coorg. And poverty. The ups and downs of the hill country’s fortunes had left their mark on the landscape. Along the edge of the coffee plantations, marked by the silvery-gray shade of the silver oak trees, she could see huts and hovels jutting out, black smoke rising from their chimneys. Their crooked walls and balding thatched roofs stood out like blotches against the vivid green landscape and the red-tiled bungalows. These would be where the workers lived. Ramu had described them to her in his letters. She wondered if she might find out more about Kupamma in these huts. 

And here's another excerpt, later in the book - some details on high tech equipment, while hinting at the bad blood between the British coffee planters and their Indian labour force, and dangers to come.

Soon, they arrived at the yard, where small piles of coffee berries had been piled up into neat mounds, waiting to be pulped. Ramappa ushered Kaveri to a chair in the shade of a majestic mahogany. But Kaveri went straight to the pulping machine, watching as the men loaded the berries into the drum. ‘Can I?’ she asked with excitement, taking hold of the large handle. She rotated the drum using the handle, breaking the skin on the cherries, letting the green seeds fall out. 

‘At school, I read about this bean separator in my physics textbook,’ she told Ramappa. ‘The centrifugal force created by the rotating drum spins the lighter pulp out into this channel above, leaving the heavier beans at the bottom.’ ‘I don’t know about any of that,’ Ramappa grunted. ‘But the machine gets things done very fast. Because of this dratted leopard, our pickers come late to work, and leave early in the evening, while the sun is still high in the sky. There are berries rotting on the bushes. Thanks to this machine, we can process them more quickly after picking. But we still need more people to harvest them.’ 

‘Lakamma picked a bad time to go for a temple tour?’ Kaveri asked sympathetically. 

‘The worst time for it. If madam was here, she would have never let things get so bad. She would have convinced the workers to return and exposed the villain spreading these rumours. Unless she is home soon, we will be left with very little to show for all our efforts this year.’ 

‘Do you believe in the ghost cat?’ she asked carefully. ‘I don’t believe in ghosts. Boyd must be behind it. Just like Fowler, he will suck the landscape dry in the name of profit.’ 

He swore fluently in Kannada, spitting a stream of blood red liquid into the bushes on the side of the yard. ‘I don’t know why Ponnappa doesn’t realise it. Men like Boyd can’t be allowed to roam free, causing havoc as they like. They should be chopped into pieces and fed to this leopard.’