In most romances, the setting is not a major highlight, as it should be. It's meant to be the unsung hero of your narrative, providing context and helping your plot and characters progress. But sometimes, you may have a story where the setting plays a crucial front-seat role. Here, the surroundings become just as important as a character, directly affecting your narrative. It can be the case where the atmosphere is used to indicate the presence of danger or mayhem, which can be relevant in a few scenes or chapters or can run throughout the novel. 

Here are a few examples where the setting has a direct effect on a story: 

1. In romantic suspense, where the hero and heroine walk through dark alleys and other surroundings with the foreboding of the villain closing in. Here, the shadows, the sudden noise, the cold air, the creak of the floor get considerable attention. 

2. A romance set in a haunted place — a house or a town. Here, these places are part of the obstacles which the hero and heroine need to overcome. 

In this article, we explore various techniques you can adopt to maximize your setting for extra effect when your story needs it.

Give More Space for Descriptions 

This doesn’t mean the description should interrupt the flow of events in your narration. Subtly mingling actions with descriptions is still the most effective method. In this case, you just need to include more descriptions with more details. Don’t say it’s cold and dark inside the basement without elaborating. Reveal how the darkness in the room feels and give substance to how chilly it is. What is the reason for the dimness? Are there sounds and smells and difficulty with navigation accompanying the gloom? Highlight these details and how they affect your characters. The more you elaborate on the surroundings, the more readers get drawn towards it and see its importance.

Employ More Adjectives

Yes, Stephen King is right; the road to hell is paved with adverbs and adjectives. You should minimize your use of adjectives in describing your setting to the barest minimum, using them only when necessary. But when your settings need to play an active role in the narrative, you may need to use more adjectives in your story. Instead of “chill,” you can say “cold air” or “an eerie gush of cold air.” Adjectives personify a place, just as they give personality to a character.

Choose Affective Words

Let your description be affecting; use words that propel and evoke emotion. The house shouldn’t just be ugly; it should glare like the scowl of an old hag. A bad break doesn’t just screech; it cries like a bird in distress. Your words shouldn’t just tell facts; they should provoke a feeling in your reader. Valleys aren’t just deep; they are a descent into the bowels of Hades, darkened with hues of uncertainty. Again, you’re personifying your setting, making it into a character that affects your heroine, hero, and readers the same way another character would.

Get Characters Personifying Reactions 

Readers follow your characters; what is relevant to your hero or heroine is crucial to your readers. And if they are affected by the setting, your readers would follow suit. Let your characters react to their environment. Let them shiver, shriek, have a sense of foreboding, and have their attention drawn to a specific element of their surroundings. Let them pass comments about the setting, giving it a personifying attribute, and it becomes equally significant to readers. Your setting shouldn’t outshine the main characters. But it can become a supportive secondary character.