Elizabeth McCracken on Setting

Setting is a kind of contour map, with the central, highest point the soul: Soul, anatomy, body, clothing, furniture, room, building, street, neighborhood, municipality, state, country, continent, hemisphere, planet, galaxy. (All Setting is a kind of contour map, with the central, highest point the soul:

Soul, anatomy, body, clothing, furniture, room, building, street, neighborhood, municipality, state, country, continent, hemisphere, planet, galaxy. (All of this tailored to your actual setting.) Geography, weather. Time deserves to be in there, a concentric set of steps: moment, hour, time of day, day of the week, time of month, month, season, year, decade, century, epoch. You needn’t keep in mind of all these circles of time and space, but they surely exist in rings around your characters. Knowing that helps me, especially if I get stuck.

Excerpt from: "A Long Game: Notes on Writing Fiction" by Elizabeth McCracken. Scribd.