And I don’t mean the climate control in your car or home. Everyone, even characters, need a comfortable setting to retreat to or recover in. So what are your comfortable settings? If you’re a writer, what settings do your prefer to create to give your characters comfort? Readers, what are the comfortable settings that stick in your memory.
I think part of the appeal of the Sherlock Holmes stories is his apartment on Baker Street. No matter how harrowing the mystery, Holmes and Watson can return to Baker Street with its inviting hearth, cozy chairs, and eccentric decorations, like the Persian slipper that holds Holmes’s tobacco. Although all the tobacco smoke would force me to leave the apartment if I wasn’t stopping by for a literary visit.
For my YA mystery, I needed a comfortable setting for main character, Rae. She’s just discovered her father and his family, so I made the farmhouse where her dad lives with her three half-brothers and her grandmother Rae’s comfort place. I modeled sections of the house on my maternal grandparents’ home, which was my comfort setting in reality.
Your turn. What are your comfort settings?