Cities are packed with fresh locations for a story, offering the best–and worst–that humanity has to offer. Part writing guide, part brainstorming tool, The Urban Setting Thesaurus helps writers bring modern locations to life through purposeful sensory detail and story-aware description.
What This Guide Helps Writers Do:
Immerse Readers in City Life
Cities are loud, crowded, and constantly in motion. This guide provides location-specific sights, sounds, smells, textures, and tastes that help readers experience urban environments as characters move through them.
Generate Conflict Unique to Urban Environments
Urban spaces come with built-in challenges—crowds, crime, surveillance, noise, and social clashes. This thesaurus helps writers uncover complications tied to specific locations, providing plenty of ideas on how to apply pressure and raise the stakes.
Use Setting as a Vehicle for Emotion and Characterization
Specific environments, and how they are described, can influence the person within them. Learn how to make your setting description work harder, triggering emotion and bringing your character’s true self to the surface.
Share Backstory Without Stalling the Story
Settings can be used as a window to a character’s past, fears, desires, and needs. This book shows you how to share key pieces of backstory and personal information without infodumps.
Let City Spaces Drive Plot Movement
Urban locations can block escape, force encounters, provide or offer temporary refuge. This guide helps writers use city settings as constraints, catalysts, and turning points that keep the story moving.
What’s Inside The Urban Setting Thesaurus?
In addition to a skill-building guide on activating the power of setting, each entry includes descriptive ideas for:
- Sensory details that anchor readers in the scene
- Location-based threats, dangers, and complications
- Setting notes for each location to make it easier to describe it well
- Descriptive examples that put figurative language to work, demonstrating how to add meaning and sophistication to a story
With 120+ modern locations, this thesaurus helps writers find the perfect setting for each story moment and describe it so readers can imagine it, too.
Format and Availability
The Urban Setting Thesaurus is available in print, ebook, and PDF. This guide has a companion volume, The Rural Setting Thesaurus, which focuses on natural and personal locations. Each book can be used independently, but many find that using both together provides a broader range of setting options.
