Your Setting is a Video Game

Your Setting is Video Game

We build settings, but sometimes we don't make them count. A setting is a powerful device that you can use in your writing. It's not just a background image in the reader's mind. It's so much more.

There are settings that serve as simple backdrops. Where are these two characters talking? At a cafe. That's it. That's all you get. They don't interact with the cafe, they don't interact with the people there - the place isn't a living, breathing place. It's just a backdrop in the scene. A background in a visual novel. 

You're not using your setting at its full potential. Enter the whole video game metaphor.

In terms of gamer types, I'm an explorer. Give me a big open world and I'll spend hours avoiding the main plot of the game.

I don't know about you, but when I play video games set in interesting settings, I want to explore to my heart's content. I want to look at all of the curious little nooks and crannies, to examine different parts of the setting that capture my attention, and so on.

When I say that your setting is a video game, what I mean is that it should be interactive for your characters. They should be moving around in it, exploring it, interacting with it and whatever they find inside, and by extension your reader should be able to experience the setting vicariously. 

Obviously, there's only so much you can have your characters interact with and explore in your settings. Often, settings can be there just for characters to discuss other things, and for the plot to move forward in ways that don't have anything to do with that particular setting. But regardless, you can still have your characters live and move throughout that setting - they're not just floating in a void labeled "Living Room." 

They're lounging on the couch, flipping through the channels while they talk to someone, throwing a cushion at them while they banter, giving up and turning off the TV when they realize there's nothing interesting on, fishing an item out from the cracks between the cushions, and so on. All of this while they're having a conversation or argument or whatever purpose it is that that particular scene serves. 

The setting becomes more real, more interactive, and more interesting for your reader. They can imagine it more clearly, and the actions the characters take - the ways in which they interact with their surroundings - can help support the purpose of the scene. If they're angry, they'll interact differently with their surroundings as opposed to if they're sleepy. 

All of this is great to keep in mind, especially as you're editing your first draft. It's one of those things that can be simple to overlook, but just a few sentences and phrases here and there can really elevate the experience of having that character in that particular setting, and not another. If you could paste any background into the same conversation, what's the point of that setting? It really is just a void, labeled. 

And if we're going to be putting characters in voids, then you'd better believe it'd be on purpose.

The Your Setting is a Video Game guide is a newsletter freebie that goes into more detail on how you can accomplish this. It will offer more in-depth guidance, as well as how to deal with issues that might pop up during the process, so make sure to grab that by joining my newsletter group. 

The newsletter will be sent out end of September 2025.  

By joining my newsletter group, you will also get access to all previous newsletters and all of their free writing goodies, too, including: Book in a Year, The Flashcarding Method, Hindsight is 20/20, The Checklisting Method for Eating Elephants, and Your Character is an Onion.

More to come on a usually-monthly basis! 

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