How to Use Setting to Convey Emotion

If you’ve ever written a deeply emotional scene, you know how hard it is to find the right words to deliver the feelings—all without sounding cliché or melodramatic.

It’s easier to write, “My heart was splitting in two. I thought I would drown with grief. The sorrow was like a shroud blocking out the sunlight.”

But does that actually help the reader feel what the narrator is going through? Not really.

So how about this:

I sat down hard on the front stoop, staring at the cracks in the pavement. The sun was burning down on my scalp, the heat almost suffocating. My hands shook. Cracks. Spreading. The pavement, split and splintered, the heat turning everything to dust.

Granted, there’s no context here, but there is far more gravity to that second example. Why? Well, we have concrete description (cracks in the pavement). (Ha! I just made a pun!) And we also have small details that show a lot (shaking hands). These are great ways to deliver big emotion.

But that example really shows the power of setting. It’s easy to think of setting strictly as “there are trees and houses,” a tool to help readers picture the scene. But setting allows for much more than that. It can be a fantastic vehicle in conveying emotion to the reader.

The Setting Filter

Let’s start with a more macro view of setting. It’s important to realize that when you’re describing setting—whether in fiction or memoir—there is a filter in place. In memoir, it’s the author’s. In fiction, it’s the POV character’s. What they are focusing on and how they describe it can show what they’re thinking and feeling.

In memoir, let’s say you want to depict a scene when you felt particularly alone, and a moment that stands out to you is when you were in a warm, friendly café. What exactly about it best shows the loneliness? You could straight out say “I sat at a table in the crowded café, feeling lonelier than ever.”

But let the setting do that heavy lifting for you:

I set my coffee on the empty table, a little two-seater by the window. It’s stained. Behind me, a woman shows her friend something on her phone, and they both snort with laughter. Nearby, a man reaches over and steals a chunk of his wife’s giant cookie. I wonder if it tastes better that way. Happy chatter batters against my eardrums until I finally decide to pull out my headphones.

It’s helpful to realize that contrast can emphasize emotion, and setting works great as a base for that. The cheerful café with happy chatter contrasts with how she’s feeling and brings out the sense of loneliness.

But more important to recognize is that this same setting would be described differently by another viewpoint character. Happy chatter can also waft around you like steam, or envelope you like a blanket. It will only batter against your eardrums if you’re super sensitive to noise…or the fact that you have no one to chat with. Your internal state will dictate how you view your external state; use that to your advantage when writing an emotional scene.

Now let’s say you’re writing a fiction scene that occurred at a gas station. The way you capture the smells and sounds will be different based on the intention of the scene. If it’s in middle of a cross-country road trip, the character might notice the enormous stretch of sky and cool air. But if the character is running from someone, or has had bad experiences at gas stations in the past, that open air invites an attack. The character will notice the mostly empty parking lot and constantly look over their shoulder. The gas pump could be just a gas pump—or it could be viewed as a possible weapon for defense.

The point here is that you don’t have to rely on just dialogue and internal reflection to make readers feel something. Where the characters are and how they view that place can support the emotional tone.

Setting and Subtext

Another wonderful thing about using setting to show emotion is that it works hand-in-hand with subtext, which is all about giving over meaning without straight-up saying it.

Take this moment from Stand on the Sky by Erin Bow. Twelve-year-old Aisulu and her older brother Serik are hunkering down in the midst of a blizzard, and she has just learned that he is sick (with cancer, though neither of them know that yet).

The stones under them were hard. The snow over them was heavy. “If you tell, I’ll lose everything,” said Serik, and Aisulu knew he was probably right. “And I’ll never forgive you, Aish. I’ll hate you forever.”

Aisulu fell silent. Her throat felt as if it had been wound up in wire. It got tighter, and tighter, until she thought it might stop her breath. She huddled with her brother in the darkness as the wind howled and the snow fell, weighing them down. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, New York, 2019, 17–18)

The setting description in particular helps to give over the way Aisulu feels here. Weighed down, both with the truth of what she knows and the decision of whether to tell. Stone beneath, snow above—she is literally and metaphorically trapped between a rock and a hard place. There is also that simile of her throat being wound up in wire, emphasizing the trapped sensation, but it hits much harder because of the subtext planted in where they are and how the setting is described.

But you can have even more mundane settings that characters are interacting with and still slip in subtext. Let’s say a mother and daughter are fighting as they shop at a mall, and you want to show how the mother is feeling. They stop at a clothing store, and the racks upon racks of options make the mother feel lost and out of control (subtext for how she feels about her relationship with her daughter).

She trips over a hanger, bangs her elbow against a stand. The saleslady somehow seems to get along with and know her daughter better than the mother herself. The mother suggests a sweet white blouse, and the daughter chooses a blood-red T-shirt. This would likely be a much more emotionally compelling scene than the two standing by the cotton candy and yelling “I hate you” at each other.

Words that Set the Setting

On a more micro note, it’s important to consider specific word descriptions as well in emotional scenes. I once attended a writing workshop by Sherri Mandell, whose son was murdered in a cave by terrorists. She showed us how her word choice and description about the cave conveyed emotion, all without overwhelming the reader with the tragedy, which she wanted to avoid.

For example, in the very first page, when speaking about the cave, she writes that it can only be reached by a steep climb, with “weeds and wild flowers choking the landscape” (The Blessing of a Broken Heart, 1). She could have written “covering the landscape” or “coating” or “scattered over.” The word “choking” gives over specific meaning and emotion. Likewise with the “sharp stones that jut from the ground.” This place is painful.

A writer knows the power of words. Different words have different connotations. “Break” is different from “shatter.” And if the goal is to show how a person or place makes a character uncomfortable, the words “slimy and moist” will likely nail that. Descriptions and setting in general matter, but so do the specific word choices you use in those descriptions.

In Conclusion

Setting is a powerful tool for conveying emotion. Start wide: What does your character notice about the place they’re in? Does the weather, location, art displays, furniture reflect their internal state or contrast with it? What are they interacting with in the scene that can add to the weight of the scene? Their surroundings will take on a completely different feeling depending on what’s happening inside them. Then zoom in. The individual words you choose to describe those surroundings can add another layer of emotion. A landscape can be covered in weeds or choked by them. Snow can be soft and magical or feel as heavy as a grave.

Setting is already part of your scene. Make it do some of the emotional work too.

About Adina

Adina Edelman is a book editor who works with authors of memoir and fiction, especially historical, mystery, sci-fi/fantasy, literary, and middle-grade fiction. She’s all about mining your message, unearthing the gold in your story—not just the grammar errors.

Adina has worked on over 140 titles in the past six years (and published one of her own). She offers 30-minute coaching sessions alongside her editing services.

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