Psychology in Writing: Using Setting to Reinforce Character Development

Article by Vasilios Moudilos

All written works require setting: an environment in which your characters will interact. It can be a single setting or many settings depending on the nature of your plot and how it will best be conveyed to the reader.

It is no mistake that one of the most popular settings is that of the hospital. We have only to look at popular TV shows such as House and Grey's Anatomy to find the inherent drama of life and death decisions made by doctors turned detectives, fighting the unseen enemy known as disease. Who will win keeps us watching.

In written form, the hospital setting, unlike with TV, requires description. If you are contemplating a short story or a chapter in a longer novel which unfolds in a hospital, there are considerations to be made in how this setting will be constructed and so experienced by your reader.

Keep in mind that environmental influences are processed uniquely by individuals. Still, there is a universality in how specific visual, olfactory, and auditory stimuli are interpreted. The smell of iodine may cause one individual's eyes to tear yet, in another person, may trigger a nostalgic memory of a scraped knee in childhood.

Unlike House or Grey's Anatomy, we cannot smell the antiseptic nor does the paint peel from the walls. The visual media's portrayal of hospitals tends to stereotype them as pristine with the latest in medical equipment, one patient to a room, the doctor always nearby, and the nurses physically attractive. There is no yelling of patients from nearby rooms nor are janitors seen mopping the hallway floors.

As a writer, you must construct the stage for the hospital and, in doing so, understand the importance of your character's unique perception of this environment. In creating this specific mood, the reader's feelings will identify with the character's and this will sharpen the intended plot's delivery.

If the plot involves a husband visiting his dying wife, then such stimuli as the smell of feces from a passing room or the yelling of a restrained patient in the hallway will be in harmony with the character's demeanor. The hospital is old, the nurses do not smile and the doctor is nowhere to be found. The lingering odor of dinner mingles with the odor of bathroom stalls and bleached floors. The large window reveals a stark, January night.

As our character is in a state of stress, he will more likely experience the negative aspects of his surroundings and the reader will be compelled to feel this same sense of despair.

Conversely, a husband visiting his wife and newly born baby, smells the fragrance of newly delivered flowers from a passing room, trades smiles with an attractive female nurse and walks down a hallway whose walls are decorated with murals of cartoon characters. The open window carries the delicate fragrance of lilacs blooming in the afternoon warmth of Spring.

The reader's mood shifts to optimism and the cartoon murals may bring specific characters to mind, just as the smell of lilacs will trigger pleasant and personal memories for the reader.

The writer makes use of the premise of "what we see depends on how we feel" by replicating a reality onto paper with specific descriptive words. In painting the canvas of the setting to further enrich the vision of the character, the reader experiences the desired empathetic response.

As a writer, do you want to idealize your setting or to make it realistic? This will depend on your plot's objective. Still, as much as you stay neutral in describing the setting, realize that it is not neutral, as it is being derived from the POV of you, the writer. You are describing only what is relevant to the plot and not every single feature of a setting.

Observation of these social environments can better hone our writing skills in terms of settings. Why it is that surgeons wear green apparel, that strangers talk more freely to each other, or that humor amongst hospital workers is exaggerated? The answers give the writer the unique vision from which to reproduce a hospital setting conducive to an intended plot.

The result is overwhelming the reader's senses and effectively drawing him/her into the story. When both reader and character are experiencing a congruency of emotional states, the intimacy essential to a bonding of reader and character has been accomplished. The character has emerged from your imagination to a reality and the novel becomes a shared universe for both.