Location, Location, and... What Was It?

 I was looking at A Textbook Case this week, the SleuthSayers page I created as a sort of informal manual on writing fiction. It consists of about sixty essays I wrote here and at other blog sites.  

I noticed that I had only one piece about settings, and  that one was about imaginary places.  This didn't really surprise me because I am not a big fan of descriptions of setting.  Elmore Leonard famously advised us to leave out the parts people don't read, and that is how I tend to feel about those descriptions.  But I admit they have their place - sometimes.

You can find some excellent essays on setting here at the SleuthSayers website.  In one of them I found this comment from O'Neil DeNoux:  "Setting is not just the name of a place or time period, it is the feeling of the place and time period. It includes all conditions – region, geography, neighborhood, buildings, interiors, climate, time of day, season of year." 

Good starting place.  I began thinking about descriptions of setting that really stood out for me and a few came to mind:

* The beginnings of Chandler's novels.

* Elizabeth Peters' descriptions of Luxor and the Valley of the Kings  in various Amelia Peabody novels.

* Doyle's descriptions of  Dartmoor  in Hound of the Baskervilles.

* Tony Hillerman's description of the Navaho Reservation.

* Hong Bay in William Marshall's Yellowthread Street novels.

Personally I am much more interested  in interior settings: descriptions of houses and rooms.  How many full size reproductions have been made of 221B Baker Street?  Rex Stout provided a detailed plan of Nero Wolfe's famous office but that doesn't prevent people from arguing with it or (very common)  picturing it in mirror image.  

If you want a real master class in describing interiors in an interesting manner open any of Mick Herron's Slow Horse novels.  Near the beginning of each one you will find a description of Slough House; each version is different, and each is intriguing. 

All this came to mind because I have a story in the current issue of Black Cat Weekly and setting is important in it.  All the tales in my "Bad Day" series take place in Brune County, which is fictional, but "A Bad Day For Good Samaritans" centers on a park which is very much based on a real one in my city. 

 Well, here is a little report I wrote on Facebook in 2020 about something that happened to me: 

The pond this week

My story begins with a similar situation except the mother is nasty (conflict is the kernel of fiction).  So I went to some trouble to describe the place.  But the other scenes in the story are afterthoughts, with hardly more than a few words of description.

The pond in 2020

I suppose the point I am making is that you don't go deep into setting unless it is crucial to the story.  That could mean it is part of the plot (as in mine) or part of the mood.  But as always in short stories, the rule is not one word  should be included that doesn't move the story forward.

Now over to you: what are your favorite fictional settings?