What would Harry Potter be without Hogwarts?  Just another dorky kid in a broom closet.  Right?  And don’t you just love the way the Secret Garden changes and blossoms, little-by-little, just as Mary and Collin do?   The big woods and broad prairie of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s childhood are as crucial to her stories, and have just as much of an impact on her, as Ma and Pa and Mary.

In all these examples, the setting is more than window dressing.   It is, in essence, a character with which the people in the story interact.

A particularly good example of setting as character is The Talking Earth, by Jean Craighead George.  The main character, Billy Wind, has to come to terms with a very remarkable setting–the Florida Everglades.  As with all George’s books, the setting is described in such loving detail and is such a  key component of the plot that it truly becomes a character in its own right.

How do you make your setting come alive?  The same way you make your characters come alive.  With specific and carefully chosen details.   Wind should never simply blow.  It should howl or whisper, burn or freeze, help your protagonist’s ship sail to a safe harbor or carry her to Oz.   Is there a  tower in your story?  What kind?  Ivory or granite?  A stalwart lighthouse saving sailors’ lives or a haunted wizard’s den luring travelers to their doom?  A forest can be friendly or menacing, a seashore bleak and lonely or sun-drenched and cheerful.

Describe your setting with these kinds of telling details and you will not only ground your characters in a specific time and place but will create a setting that lives forever in your reader’s memories–as all good characters do.