Young Writers Society

When writing a new piece, do you focus on the setting first, or do you care more for characters?

I spent the better part of 2 years fleshing out my setting, doing not only geography but politics and mythology, and lore. And of course, the technology and the means in which people get around in the story.

Personally characters are the most important aspect for me.

I think that when you begin a piece, the idea that first sparks it off is what determines where you put your initial focuses. For example, if the very first spark of an idea of a new project is setting orientated, then you are going to spend more time on the setting than the characters. However if your very first intention begins with the idea of a particular character as the root or spark, then the character/s will dominate. Often when we get a solid perception of one of these things, the second becomes far more difficult to either pull off or get passionate about as the first.

I know for me personally 9/10 times it's going to be characters that set me off, but the setting also plays an important role. Sometimes characters can influence settings, for example in one of my more expansive projects, my idea was sparked by the idea of a character who was based on a Turkish prince, thus the setting naturally extended toward a more middle eastern type. During one idea where the setting was my initial, I had a lot of trouble putting characters into that situation.

oh, characters. definitely. which is funny, because i loooooooooooove world-building, but if i don't have compelling characters to populate the world? nahh. not happening.

What I focus on, initially, before sitting down to write is the first character I'll be playing around with. I'll sketch a quick outline in my head, or something to work with, and focus on how to develop him/her as I go along; I think I can safely say I consider characters to be more important. Setting, too, determines this atmosphere you create as you write, but does your reader want to know about what the snow looked like or what was happening as it snowed?

I think the latter is more important. But what about interaction? Yes, you can have Mars as the place where your story takes place, but a group of bland characters will do nothing to make it a good story.

So it's simple: I focus on how my characters interact with the surroundings--like actors onstage interact and behave according to the backdrop (which is their kinda-sorta "setting") and the props they've been given--as well as how they interact with other characters. You'll find that quite often, though, characters may influence their surroundings in the same way their surroundings influence them. For example, a character may be living in Victorian England, so you expect him to talk differently, act differently, have different trends of thoughts/interests, etc. But what if we zoom into the character being an eccentric, crochety old man whose son has just died? I'm thinking he has a taste for Persian rugs, he's fond of comfort, he's depressed and slowly growing insecure. So it's a win-win situation. You can't focus on just one or the other, but that honestly depends on your style and what you want to convey through your writing.

Your characters are the tools, your setting the canvas you work with.

Hey! You've gotten a lot of good opinion already but I might as well drop my two pence as well. You have to understand that each writer writes differently, so at the end of the day. You will have to follow your heart, all we can provide are the guidelines.

Generally, this is a very controversial issue depending on how you look at it. The setting and the characters both interact with each people and cannot be separated. However, characters are essential to your story. They are basically what the story is about, no?

In your situation, I think that is brilliant you've got a good grasp on how the setting works, and working out all the details in it. You can actually link these details back to the characters, but to do that. You have to know your characters first. Characters are tricky, I've met people who can create page-long character profile and knows their characters inside out before even starting anything else. I've also known people whom only have the roughest outline. Characters are very important to the story, so you should focus on fleshing out your character a bit or at least get to know them before writing. Always remember that the character are linked to every other element in your story.

If you have trouble writing characters, or developing them. You can always resort to the good old character profile, I don't usually write them because my characters fly off the template as soon as I start writing. But for some, a character profile is a great way to establish basic facts and even to the point where you can really know your character.

Overall, you should try and balance the two out as they are both equally important. Try and get a rough idea of what sort of person they are before you start writing.

Best of luck.

My method is fairly simple:

Start with the character, then figure out how that character actually came to exist.

I tend to start with how my characters are at the beginning of the story, with a general sense of who they are and what they do. Then I work backwards, asking questions such as: what're their parents like, how did they grow up, how do they relate to what they're "supposed" to be, how do they relate to their friends, did they have opportunity to make a lot of friends, are they considered normal for the world, if not, why are they considered abnormal, are they accepted where they are.

In the process, I usually end up fleshing out the character more. I figure out the relationship with their parents, the world, and I end up having to ask myself questions about them: do they care about their status, do they want to change it, are there lonely or content, do they accept what others want or do they fight it, do they like their society, can they actually fight their status.

I basically end up using the unanswerable question of which first to build both at once. Usually, in the process of doing this I work both ways for all relationships and characters in the MC's life, with more work going towards primary characters (protagonists, viewpoint characters, and antagonists) than secondary, but building the worlds' relations the way I do, I tend to have a pretty good list of quick pull traits, usually relating to how they conform to their societal role and how much freedom they have to not conform.

People build and are a product of their societies. Any group of people together will make a mini society, and large groups of people make society as a whole. At the same time, society changes because of people. It's a constant cycle, and I like keeping it constant.

Well, it seems the popular opinion to have characters come to life first. Characters are very important (duh) and are the part of a novel that stands out the most. While characters are key, I usually create a setting first. I love creating worlds with conflicts and controversies, then throwing a character in the middle of it. The setting helps me to develop the character, really.

A human's personality is developed by their surroundings, whether that be the physical surroundings, the mental attitude of popular culture, or the people in our immediate vicinity. It's easier for me to create a character when I already have the world they grew up in (or were excluded from) in my head or down on paper. What happened to make them unique? Why do they feel the way they do? What are their motivations? All these important character developing questions can be answered when you understand the world your character lives in and how it affects them.

Creating a setting first also gives me a better idea of the plot that I am coming up with as well. When I have created a background, situations just seem to pop up out of nowhere that I can stick characters in and play around with.

Not that setting is any more important than character of course. A character cannot exist without setting, and a setting cannot be a story without character! Really it all comes down to what you feel more comfortable with or what gives you the most motivation to create your story.

Kakali wrote:Well, it seems the popular opinion to have characters come to life first. Characters are very important (duh) and are the part of a novel that stands out the most. While characters are key, I usually create a setting first. I love creating worlds with conflicts and controversies, then throwing a character in the middle of it. The setting helps me to develop the character, really.

A human's personality is developed by their surroundings, whether that be the physical surroundings, the mental attitude of popular culture, or the people in our immediate vicinity. It's easier for me to create a character when I already have the world they grew up in (or were excluded from) in my head or down on paper. What happened to make them unique? Why do they feel the way they do? What are their motivations? All these important character developing questions can be answered when you understand the world your character lives in and how it affects them.

Creating a setting first also gives me a better idea of the plot that I am coming up with as well. When I have created a background, situations just seem to pop up out of nowhere that I can stick characters in and play around with.

Not that setting is any more important than character of course. A character cannot exist without setting, and a setting cannot be a story without character! Really it all comes down to what you feel more comfortable with or what gives you the most motivation to create your story.

Thank you! This is my thought process as well

The more developed the setting, the more things run smoothly, at least in my experience. You know what is really good practice for story writing? DMing a D&D campaign. Making a story with (some) predetermined outcomes and letting your friends muscle through it is a beautiful thing

Writing, eh? Gotta love how there are absolutely no right answers and everybody has things work differently.

Setting is important and I don't deny that! I love worldbuilding and I've sunk years into it. Just some people prefer working with characters. No one start point is better or worse, so long as you work on both. You'll have to work on both anyway, because these two things are so important.

For me, personally, I've found writers who are so setting focused to the point they never think about how people actually live in the world, and I've also found writers who are so people focused they have no idea what the world looks like.

Both writers have massive problems: the former tend to prefer writing encyclopedias to stories, rendering their fantasy novels too dense because they feel a need to put all their worldbuilding work into the story even though most of the details aren't important; the latter tend to rely on very flat worlds and have characters completely detached form their realities simply because they've never thought about how the two interact.

Either way, each side has something to learn from the other. Sure, setting is an awesome place to make sure things work, but you can't get so wrapped up in setting that it becomes basically an encyclopedia. All the worldbuilding in the world is useless if you don't think of how your characters grew up— if you don't know the society, the actual sociology part of it, then the worldbulding is basically useless because it doesn't account for people at all.

You also can't get so wrapped up in the characters' immediate surroundings you forget the overall tone of the world, the classes, the other conflicts not in the MC's immediate line of fire. Awesome characters are pretty boring if you don't have a good playground for them to live in. Again, it all boils down to knowing the actual sociology part of it, because you need to know how they'd play.

So long as, eventually, you go down to how characters relate to their world, it doesn't matter which one you start with.