How to Use Settings to Show and Influence Character Development

When you think about “worldbuilding” in fiction, are you thinking… epic fantasy, dragons, magic, hereditary monarchies under threat from armies of goblins—that kind of thing? All of those things absolutely fall under worldbuilding. Building your storyworld can look like writing a thousand years of history for a planet you’ve created explicitly for your sci-fi narrative. It can look like establishing the specifics of the political system that underpins your near-future dystopian spec-fic. It can look like working out which elements of vampire lore you’re keeping and which you’re turning on its head… and much more besides.

But if you think worldbuilding is only about setting the scene for your novel, you’re missing out on a world of narrative possibilities. (Pun only slightly intended, because I wrote that sentence without noticing it, and then decided to keep it during the first round of edits.)

I’m kind of intense about a lot of things related to the craft of writing, but worldbuilding is where I go full wide-eyes-talking-directly-into-your-face levels of conversational discomfort. Because it pains me to see writers treat settings as a kind of passive backdrop against which events unfold, when a well-built world has the potential to actively work alongside your narrative in powerful and layered ways. The environment your characters inhabit can have a profound effect on how your characters change and grow. It can influence their decisions. It can provide compelling conflicts. And it can help you propel your plot forward.

Intrigued? Okay then. Let’s dive in and take a look at how writers can leverage setting as an active force in storytelling: one that drives conflict, shapes character choices, and marks transformation throughout the narrative.

Setting as a Driver of Character Conflict

Let’s start with one of the easiest places to see this in action. One of the more direct and visible ways we can use setting to influence plot is by using the world around your characters to create obstacles or opportunities for them.

The environment can throw up physical, mental, and emotional challenges that force your characters to act or to act differently. For example, in The Left Hand of Darkness (one of my all-time favourites), Gethen’s unforgiving winter landscape traps Genly Ai and Estraven together as they escape Orgoreyn. This enforced closeness leads to the strengthening of the bond between the two, which had been left floundering after Ai’s departure from Ehrenrang, which in turn powers the emotional heart of the narrative climax.

For another example: a bustling city can provide many and varied narrative options. Need to give your main character a sense of existential threat? Hundreds of thousands of strangers convened in one tightly defined geographical space will do that for you: it’s tough to stay safe with those kinds of odds. Need to show your reader a snapshot of the vivid profusion of cultural life? Cities easily work as a wider world in microcosm. Got a skittish protagonist who needs to stay out of sight? The crushing anonymity of a city offers ready cover for a person who wants to fade into the background.

I often talk about Creo Basse, the city setting for my novel Edge of Heaven, as though it’s a character in the narrative, and that’s because I see it as one and treat it accordingly. Without Creo Basse, there’s no Edge of Heaven. My protagonist Danae Grant needs a place where she can be anonymous and Creo Basse, an overflowing refugee resettlement centre, is full of people that the government would rather not think about too much. It’s functionally intertwined with the dystopian socio-political climate as a kind of dumping ground for the human cost of climate change. This means that the setting itself functions as a visual representation of the sharp dividing line between the “have-nots” (the Creo Basse locals) and the “haves” (everyone else, including the powers that be) that’s also very useful for a person trying to be invisible. It’s effectively Creo Basse against the whole world, an “us versus them” dynamic that feeds into the narrative at just about every turn—in ways that both help and hinder Danae’s journey and, ultimately, corral her into the impossible choice she has to make in the final act.

The key here is to think about how your chosen setting naturally generates tension or stakes. What sorts of dangers lurk? What resources are scarce? How does the environment affect movement, communication, relationships, camouflage, escape? You might not know all of this when you start to write, and that’s okay: sometimes, the setting flows organically from the plot and the characters, just as sometimes the opposite is true. Just make sure to keep an eye out for the possibilities.

Environment As a Framework for Character Choices

Characters do not exist in isolation from their surroundings. Their personalities, values, and decisions are shaped by—and react to—the environments they inhabit. A character raised in a close-knit rural village, for example, will almost certainly approach situations differently from one who grew up in a sprawling metropolis. Look at Carrot and Vimes from Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett (the greatest novel ever written, by the way; no, I won’t be taking questions). Same city, same Watch, same dragon on the loose melting citizens into the brickwork. Entirely different outlooks, ethoses, attitudes towards authority, and faiths in the basic goodness (or otherwise) of humanity.

Environmental pressures test your characters’ resilience and adaptability. That might be physical hardships like socioeconomic deprivation (Vimes) or cultural norms within a closed community (Carrot). It might be extremes of weather, like in A Song of Ice and Fire, or resource availability, like in the Luna series, or sociopolitical tensions, like in the Saga graphic novels. Whatever the pressures—or combination of pressures; go nuts— it’s going to impact your character’s worldview and the way they approach problems. It’s going to have shaped, and continue to shape, the information available to your characters and the context in which they view that information. And the way it shapes your character’s worldview, problem-solving, and contextualisation skills will evolve as they progress through the novel—and most critically of all, two characters in the same environment may be shaped by it in completely different ways. A character raised in isolation might be inclined towards introspection and self-reliance, or they may be embittered and hostile, or they may be taciturn and unapproachable, or they may be desperate for companionship, or none of the above. Exposure to new environments might challenge your characters’ preconceived ideas and spark growth—or the opposite may be true. Honestly, the only “wrong” option you have here is to neglect the plethora of rich, layered, and fascinating character development options your setting presents.

Questions you might ask yourself to get under the skin of how your setting influences plot and character growth include:

How does the world in which your characters live influence what they fear, desire, aspire to, believe?
How can you reflect those fears, desires, influences, aspirations, beliefs through the setting itself?
How does the way in which your character interacts with setting give your readers a glimpse into what goes on beneath the surface?
What language does your character use about the world in which they live—positive, negative, neutral—and how does that align with or differ from the way you, the author, present the world that you’ve built?
How can your setting provide opportunities for change over time?
I can’t emphasise enough how readily environment acts as a built-in vehicle for natural character development as the narrative progresses. And the best part is, you can let your reader pick up all of the cues for themselves. A character beat that the reader uncovers through hints, allusion, and reading between the lines, is a far greater prize than a character beat that’s spelled out for them in black and white.

“Characters do not exist in isolation from their surroundings. Their personalities, values, and decisions are shaped by—and react to—the environments they inhabit.”

Practical Tips for Creating Character Development Through Settings

Know your setting as well as you know your characters: I treat a major setting the same way I treat a major character. I do a research deep-dive, compile a fact sheet, gather images from all sorts of sources that help me tap into the heart of the space. I want to be able to walk around my settings in my mind before I ever let my characters loose on them
Integrate descriptive prose with narrative: I know that spinning worlds out of words is, for some of us, the very best part of this whole crazy process, but your readers are almost certainly less in love with your setting that you are. Don’t give them the option to skim: motivate your settings description by what the character is doing in the scene. Chase scene? Show the crumbling footpath, the high walls, the barren fields with nowhere to hide. When you make your descriptive prose an action beat, your reader is fully motivated to uncover all the details that make your world come to life
Engage all the senses: We have more than five of them, by the way. Interoception, thermoception, proprioception—all under-utilised, in my opinion, and all can add an extra sprinkling of spice. But even if you’re not deep-diving into the human (or non-human) sensory system, remember that our world is comprised of more than just visual cues. Integrate sound, smell, touch, taste wherever you can to create an immersive, layered experience for your reader. This is also a fantastic opportunity for a character beat: what sort of character would describe a flowery meadow in terms of the delicate fragrance of the petals in blossom, and what sort of character would describe the way the stems of the high grass scratch irritably at their skin? Same space; different character beats.
Remember that all settings are the product of their history, too: Your narrative (and your protagonist) encounters your world in the present story-moment, but a well-built world should feel as though it existed long before your novel began, and will continue to exist after it finishes. Your character’s dealing not only with the challenges that your present-day world casts up at them, but also a rich history steeped in lots and lots of different opinions, power-struggles, and conflict. How does that affect your protagonist’s relationship with the world around them? How does it challenge their safety, force compliance, push them into change?

Final thoughts

So, yes: setting can be a backdrop for your narrative events, but it can also be much, much more. Whether you’re building a magical world of dragons and myth or a contemporary family drama set in small-town Northern Ireland, the world in which your story unfolds should be no less of a living, breathing force than the characters who walk its paths. Individual, small elements of that world may blink in and out as your protagonist moves through the narrative, but you should understand your settings as integral parts of a whole that shapes the actions your characters take, the choices they make, and their personal growth (or otherwise). And the best part of all is that the interplay between your characters and your setting reveals layers to both that the reader can uncover by themselves without the need for paragraphs or pages of expository prose. Win-win.

Next time you sit down to create a story world, remember: your setting isn’t just where things happen—it’s why and how they happen. Use that creative power strategically, and watch your characters come alive in new and exciting ways.