The Power of Setting

Think of all the places you’ve visited in stories: Ravka, Gotham, Middle Earth, Absaroka County, Cabeswater, Neverland, the Millennium Falcon, Silent Hill, or Avonlea. What makes them special? Why do these places and stories stick with you?

Setting is an essential part of your story, whether you’re writing a sweeping fantasy, a fast-paced romance, or even contemporary fiction. Without it, readers will feel adrift. With it, you can enhance characterization, establish tone, use symbolism, and create a space where your readers want to spend time.

Join acclaimed author and teacher Carly Stevens as she shows you how to rediscover a passion for the places where your stories happen in this 1½ hour webinar. Learn tips for transporting your audience and fully immersing them in your story’s world. She’ll also show you that setting can be more than just description—it can reveal character, tone, and theme too. Explore the possibilities for your setting and get inspired!

If you have “white room syndrome” or cringe when people say they can’t picture where your characters are, this class will help. No matter your style or genre, you can pick up new practical techniques for creating and using unique settings to your advantage.

Where other classes focus only on description or worldbuilding, this fast-paced course is packed with concrete advice and examples of not only those topics, but also how character and genre fit in to effective settings. There are no prescriptive lessons on how everyone should create the places where their stories happen. Rather, Carly will share a useful set of tools that you can try out to enhance your own personal vision.

Creating an environment means a whole lot more than flowery description. It’s time for your setting to make the story shine!

Some of Carly’s career highlights

What you’ll learn

After you finish this class, you’ll:

• Understand how to apply practical tools to immerse readers in your setting.

• Be able to integrate setting, character, tone, and plot seamlessly.

• Gain the skill to make readers want to spend more time in your world.

• Learn how to leverage setting to reveal character, symbolism, and more.

Zoom schedule

Everyone enrolled in this webinar will receive a copy of the recording afterwards, so you can review it later in case you missed it.

• Saturday June 10, 2023 1:00pm US Central time — 1 hour 30 minutes

How this workshop works

This workshop is a live Zoom webinar. Sign in from anywhere in the world and participate live as the instructor conducts the workshop, with time for Q&A at the end.

Student praise for Carly Stevens

Thanks again for your engaging presentation yesterday to the mystery-writing women of Colorado. I enjoyed it thoroughly, and learned some new tricks and tips that will surely sharpen my writing. My future readers will thank you!

Very engaging and enlightening. Carly is a fun presenter (obviously from her time as a teacher). Fun exercises and great discussion.

This was wonderful in helping me to imagine how to enrich my stories via the setting.

Excellent presentation and content. Learned a few tips and was entertained to boot.

Best session. Carly is a teacher so she knows how to make the topic fun and engaging. The material and the checklist she gave out are crucial tips for any writer.

Very informative and well done!

Questions about this class?

We’re happy to answer any questions you might have!

• Contact us and a real person will get back to you ASAP.

• If you’d like to talk to the instructor directly, you can send them a message through their Scribophile profile page.

About Carly Stevens



Carly Stevens is the author of more than ten books, including the Tanyuin Academy series (YA fantasy) and Laertes (a dark academia Hamlet retelling). Her books have been praised for their immersive worlds and complex, realistic characters. She has also taught high school English for over ten years and posts weekly videos on her YouTube channels, English Nerd and carlystevensbooks.