Never can there come a fog too thick, never can there come mud and mire too deep, to assort with the groping and floundering condition which this High Court of Chancery, most pestilent of hoary sinners, holds, this day, in the sight of heaven and earth. You, know, I don't know why, but I get this feeling that Charles doesn't really like the legal system and even less so the Lord Chancellor, and I sort of have the feeling that this book will be about the corrupt, foggy, muddy mess called litigation London, 1853. Think of the superb rooftop-floating opening to West Side Story , or the splendid start to The Sound of Music , the stunning desert scenes of Lawrence of Arabia or the claustrophobic noir of Seven . For example, if we were about to write a romantic or erotic scene we would be unlikely to begin with screaming winds and rain lashing the windows. We've come to expect horrible weather to mean danger or horror.
Setting can be a crucial element of a character's progress throughout a story.
McCloud worked because the cowboy sheriff was displaced, Crocodile Dundee had something extra when Dundee was removed to the craziness of New York. Writers have to think of setting. In each setting Caz is a different person, but in each the other Cazzes lurk. The ongoing dilemmas of Caz's life lie in her trying to reconcile her different needs, career, running, a love life. When I chose to set the Caz Flood novels in Brighton, its reputation as a gay city was important since part of the plot was that the killings should initially be seen as done by a serial-killer attacking gay men.