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. Had the book been set in a city with a low incidence of public gayness, the investigation would have been different. The opening chapter of Cuckoo begins with Caz out on a long run.