One of the things that has been driven home to me by reading the novels of Charlaine Harris is how important setting is to the success of a novel. It is the uniquess of Harris’ Bonne Temps, Louisiana, setting for her Sookie Stackhouse novels that helps to make her vampire-centric mysteries uniqe from Laurel K. Hamilton’s New York setting for her Antia Blake novels.

Sure, there are other differences in tone and writing style; but the setting is what gives each novel flavor and texture and uniqueness. It’s like the difference between an LA townhouse and a two-story colonial set on some prime Wilmington NC real estate.

One of the damaging elements of TV shows and movies is that probably two-thirds of mass media entertainment is set in either New York or Los Angeles. Yet that is so incredibly limiting. And I’ve seen many a young fiction writer attempt to seem sophisticated by setting their stories in New York or Los Angeles just to fit in, despite growing up nowhere near those settings.

That’s what makes novels fun. Harris knows how to embrace her Southern roots, so her fictional worlds have a style all their own. While any soulless screenwriter can fake a New York or Los Angeles vampire story, only someone from the Deep South, like Harris, could write about Bonne Temps, LA, convincingly.