How do you choose the settings for your stories?

When you read a book the setting is like another character.  It’s important, you want to picture the characters in their surroundings, even if your version of that picture is different to everyone else.  I’ve written before on how I see describing settings as a balance between giving enough information to convey something of my vision of any given place while still leaving enough room for the reader to form their own picture.  It’s like I provide the outline and the reader colours it in.  For the Inspector Kirby books this was an interesting and evolving process.

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Story settings and the reader's mind

For me the setting of any book if it’s pivotal to the story becomes a character in the story.  The reader has to be able to see the setting in the same way they vision the characters.  This means giving enough description to convey a frame work for that character/setting without being to prescriptive and depriving the reader of the fun of having their own vision of what the person/place looks like. 

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