For a story setting that’s intriguing and suspenseful, take a page from the greats and make your characters stuck in place.
During the pandemic and being stuck at home, I brainstormed ideas for stories that revolve around characters forced to stay in one place. A single story setting may seem, well, kinda boring, but it doesn’t have to be. Written well, a stuck-in-one-place story can be exciting, dramatic, scary, funny, or whatever you want.
Consider all the great stuck-in-place story setting ideas that’ve made great books and movies already.
In Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews, the children are locked in an attic for over a year as their mother attempts to win her father’s love again. Though a large space filled with stuff to play with that they made the best of–which made for fun reading–the attic turned more and more sinister as time went on.
Speaking of sinister, And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie corralled a group of strangers in a gorgeous house on a secluded island, where Agatha picks them off one by one. From boats to trains, Christie enjoyed isolating her murders and suspects.
More recently, Lucy Foley’s The Guest List featured murder at a destination wedding–an island off Ireland’s coast. The rough waves, rocky cliffs, violent weather, and spotty cell reception boosted the story with dark isolation. Another great novel, The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman, tells the story of a lighthouse keeper on an isolated island.
Along the same vein, the movie Clue–another all-time fav–creates the same isolation with its story setting–a creepy mansion in the middle of nowhere on a stormy night–only with much more humor.
The Breakfast Club–one of my fav stuck-in-one-place stories–brought together five unlikely high school misfits for a full day of Saturday detention.
A book I wrote in high school featured a popular jock and a bullied poor girl getting accidentally locked in an art supply closet overnight. I never really pulled that story off, but it was a fun, romantic concept–trapping two unlikely friends and forcing them to communicate.
Writers are so devious…
More recently, my love story One Thing Better featured the pandemic, creating a different type of isolation for the main characters, Lena and Ben. Without being stuck in place, they may never have leaned on each other.
A story setting that brings people together in isolation provides a dramatic vibe for any genre… romance, comedy, fantasy, science fiction, and definitely mystery.
Here are other story setting ideas that’ll create an isolated vibe for your novel:
- Escape Rooms
- Elevators
- Prison/Jail
- An island, a la And Then There Were None
- Any type of underground shelter
- Trains, planes, automobiles
- Boats, ships, subs
- A bank or jewelry store… during a robbery or a hostage situation perhaps
- A hospital or doctor’s office
- Labyrinths, lairs, caves, dungeons, catacombs, corn mazes
- Stores, malls, schools. A store doing an overnight shelf clean or display change might be fun for a misfit band of employees.
- Museums, art galleries, zoos, aquariums
- Sky rides–yes, this actually happened to me once; the ride malfunctioned, leaving me and my future husband stranded at the highest point for almost an hour. That’s when I learned that he was scared of heights
- Secluded cabins with disturbed people, a la Misery
- Really, anywhere with disturbed people, like in a house with your family during a pandemic
Hopefully, a stuck-in-place story setting will unstick your writer brain and get the words flowing. How could your main character be stuck-in-place? Share your ideas below, and let’s start a conversation.
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