Welcome to nowhere! You'll never forget it

When I was 9 or 10 years old and started reading everything Stephen King had yet written, I realized very quickly how interlinked his stories were. They took place in little towns, fictional or otherwise, around Maine. The towns knew about each other. Their politics, personal and professional, were intermingled. Many characters appeared or were mentioned in more than one book. And crazy, amazing, sometimes terrible things happened in them al the time. All of this meant that Stephen King's world, although seemingly the same as our own, was alive in itself. It was a setting that added loads to the stories he told. If someone were to ask me my favourite fictional town now, I would say "Derry" without hesitation. Though I would never want to go there! It doesn't even exist, and yet I'm glad it doesn't exist a long, long way from where I live.

I don't have to describe how fantasy stories have been using this "living setting" tactic forever. And a lot of good science fiction figured this out with their ships: the Millennium Falcon is a great setting unto itself, as is Serenity, Nostromo, and the Enterprise (pick your model depending on your age.) This isn't the same as having a cool ship. Star Destroyers, Borg cubes and Shadow vessels are all cool ships, but they aren't unforgettable settings like Ten-Forward or Serenity's cargo-hold. The latter add something else to where the characters are. They have history, depth, and they're irreplaceable in some way. You can always replace one X-Wing with another. But when the Falcon is gone, it's just gone.

Even vehicles can be big enough in the audience's mind to be a great setting: the General Lee, a time-travelling DeLorean, and Dean Winchester's Impala. I visited Universal Studies when I was a little girl and have a photograph of myself inside KITT. I remember he even spoke to me. This impressed me a heck of a lot more than the E.T. ride.

Maybe it all seems like common sense, but this value of setting is easily forgotten in the effort to create characters and a story. It's easy to think that just any place will do for the introduction of the hero, the downfall of the villain, whatever. It's the action, the dialogue, the smarmy expression on Dr. No's face that makes the scene. But what about the evil lair? It's good to remember how much more can be added by having events happen somewhere that means something to the reader. And it's great to know that the place you create might live on in someone's mind, with Twin Peaks creepiness, or Middle Earth clarity.

There's a Dictionary of Imaginary Places that I would love to browse. Let me know if you've read it.