If you’ve ever read a fantasy novel that starts in a tavern or a romance that opens in a coffee shop, you’ve seen the default setting problem in action. These scenes feel familiar — too familiar. It’s not that taverns or cafés are bad locations, but when every writer defaults to them, stories start to blur together.

In the Terrible Writing Advice episode on scene writing, the narrator mocks this habit mercilessly: “Writers should always go with the first setting that pops into their head! Coffee shops for contemporary fiction, taverns and campfires for fantasy, and briefing rooms for science fiction!”

It’s funny because it’s true. Many scenes take place in these same repetitive spaces — not because they fit the story, but because they’re easy.

Let’s explore why default settings flatten storytelling and how to choose locations that breathe life, texture, and meaning into your scenes.

1. What Is a Default Setting?

A default setting is a location so overused in fiction that it’s become shorthand — a creative autopilot.

Examples include:

1. Coffee shops in romance or slice-of-life stories.
2. Taverns and campfires in fantasy.
3. Briefing rooms in sci-fi or military fiction.
4. Classrooms in coming-of-age stories.

Writers reach for these spaces because they’re easy to visualize, familiar to readers, and simple to write dialogue in. But the convenience comes at a cost: blandness.

2. Why Default Settings Don’t Work

When every scene looks the same, the story loses energy and variety. Readers stop picturing your world and start picturing a generic one.

In Terrible Writing Advice, the parody narrator insists on trapping the audience “in that freaking coffee shop every scene until they go insane.” It’s absurd — but it highlights how repetitive environments flatten pacing, mood, and creativity.

Creative writing tip: Settings aren’t just backdrops. They shape emotion, meaning, and subtext. Reusing the same neutral space drains your story of tension and visual contrast.

3. Setting as a Storytelling Tool

Great scene writing uses setting to reflect or reinforce what’s happening emotionally or thematically.

Ask yourself:

1. Does this location mirror the character’s mindset?
2. Does it add texture or contrast to the tone?
3. Could this scene only happen here?

If the answer to the last question is no, the setting probably isn’t doing its job.

For example: a breakup scene in a crowded subway feels frantic and suffocating. The same scene in a quiet library feels restrained and sad. The dialogue might be identical, but the setting changes the emotional temperature.

4. How to Break Free from Default Settings

Escaping default settings doesn’t mean avoiding familiar places altogether — it means using them intentionally. Here’s how:

1. Change the Context:

If your fantasy tavern must exist, make it distinct — perhaps it’s floating on the back of a leviathan or carved into the roots of a colossal tree. The key is specificity.

2. Tie Setting to Character:

Let location reveal personality. A corporate lawyer might feel more at ease in a sterile conference room, while a detective might prefer a cluttered diner booth at midnight.

3. Add Movement:

Stagnant settings lead to static scenes. Move characters through spaces — from a bustling street into a quiet alley, from daylight to neon — to reflect emotional shifts.

4. Use Unlikely Locations:

Challenge yourself to set a key scene somewhere unconventional: an empty stadium, a greenhouse at night, a laundromat, a defunct theme park. Readers love novelty when it feels organic.

5. Setting and Genre Expectations

Genres have their own default locations — and breaking them smartly can make your story stand out.

1. Fantasy: Go beyond taverns and castles. Try coastal ports, markets, mines, temples, or ancient ruins mid-restoration.
2. Science Fiction: Step outside the sterile ship bridge. Use asteroid farms, cyber cafés, or forgotten virtual worlds.
3. Romance: Move beyond coffee shops. Use a mechanic’s garage, a bus stop, a museum during renovation, or a storm shelter.
4. Horror: Abandon the haunted house cliché. Use hospitals, carnival grounds, or even cheerful suburban streets for contrast.

Readers enjoy familiar tropes, but what they crave most is fresh execution.

6. Setting as Character

In the Terrible Writing Advice video, the narrator treats the setting like “a static background prop that’s described exactly once and then forgotten.” The real trick to great writing is making the setting feel alive.

Think of your setting as a silent character — one with mood, history, and agency. A creaking floorboard can add tension. A flickering neon sign can symbolize decay. A room’s layout can even affect power dynamics — who stands higher, who blocks the door, who’s cornered.

Writing advice: Settings influence behavior. A crowded train makes people whisper; an empty field makes them shout. Use that to shape tone and subtext.

7. Reusing Settings Without Repetition

Sometimes your story needs recurring locations — like a central café, spaceship, or safehouse. That’s fine, but make the space evolve.

1. Change lighting, time of day, or season to vary atmosphere.
2. Reflect character growth through how they perceive the space.
3. Alter the environment subtly — a cracked cup, a new painting, a missing chair — to suggest time passing.

Returning to the same setting can actually deepen immersion if it mirrors emotional change.

8. Revision: The Setting Audit

During revision, do a setting audit. Make a list of every scene and note where it takes place. If half of them happen in the same type of space, you’ve probably fallen into a default pattern.

Ask:

1. Could this scene happen somewhere more dynamic?
2. Does this location enhance or dilute the mood?
3. Is there a symbolic or thematic reason for this setting?

Be ruthless — a single clever change in location can refresh the whole narrative rhythm.

Final Thought

Default settings are a symptom of comfort-zone writing. They’re easy, safe, and overdone. The cure isn’t to ban them — it’s to reimagine them.

As Terrible Writing Advice shows through parody, creativity starts when you stop taking the first idea that comes to mind. The moment you challenge your setting choices, your story gains depth, color, and originality.

In the end, readers don’t remember where your characters talked — they remember how that place made them feel.