Setting does NOT simply equate to drawing maps and designing house floor-plans and planting trees all around your world. It isn't just about the weather or the town where the story takes place. It isn't just world-building from scratch. Setting certainly can be these things, but it also goes a lot deeper than that. Setting grounds you in place and time, but it also sets the mood and tone, provides a lens to understand the world through, and works in conversation with your other elements (characters, plot, and theme). Setting does A LOT more work (even if it is subtle, background work) than we often give it credit for. So, how do you get your setting to do its work – productive, necessary, hard work – without going overboard? We're going to look at the 3 mistakes writers often make when designing their setting or world-building and how to fix it.