Without a sense of place, your dialogue exists on a black movie screen. Without a backdrop, your characters and their actions are floating in space. Without specific details, that setting of yours can pass beyond the familiar and into the territory of cliché. (The Four Doorways Into Story and How to Use Them to Create a Bestselling Novel) But you can be better than that. You already have all the tools you need to be a maestro of settings. Give yourself credit, writer. You’ve lived a life. You’ve seen some things—and more important to this conversation, you’ve seen some places. […]