Location, Location, Location

The setting of your story can be a character in itself. Whether you're using a real-life location or a fictional world for your story, how you describe your setting is crucial to ensure that your readers fully immerse themselves in your story. So, let's sharpen our setting skills!

For this writing exercise, we're going to use a location that you - likely - know inside out. Where do you currently live? Whether it’s a city, town, village or remote clifftop, write down your location at this very moment.

Now, think about your favourite place in this location. It might be a park, a favourite shop, the cinema, your cosy reading nook that overlooks your overgrown garden.

Write down the name of the place and think about how you would describe it to someone who has never visited before. See this place through the eyes of a stranger.

What would be the first thing to catch their eye? What are the sounds they might hear? What might they smell? Or even taste?

Write a short paragraph introducing a complete stranger to your favourite hometown place, using all of the senses: touch, sight, hear, smell, taste

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Clare Povey is the editorial and communities manager of the Writers' & Artists' website and author of children's fiction. She fell in love with France as a child, inspired by the stories in her local Barking & Dagenham Library, and by discovering the vocabulary in Usborne's First Thousand Words in French. The magic of speaking another language eventually led to her living and working in France, and writing her debut series, the Parisian-based The Unexpected Tale of Bastien Bonlivre.