Howard,

Thanks for the nice words. Sorry I didn't reply sooner but I'm currently on vacation.

I think setting is sometimes overlooked because so many writers (rightly) study plot and character. Much of what has been written about creating drama comes out of the stage, where it was simply impossible to do more with setting than paint a background picture and prop up a few easily-carried bits of set dressing. As you observed, as writers we're not on a budget. Nor are we limited to Shakespeare's "brawl ridiculous" -- if we need a thousand war elephants charging out of the setting sun, all we have to do is write them.

Setting boils down to time and place. Time is easy to overlook. Why is the story happening at this particular time? Figuring out "why now" will often give you your first big plot-point.

As for place, all I can say is to try and give setting an organic quality. Businesses, countries, families, religions, forms of art, they all are born, grow, mature, and die (and are sometimes at their most picturesque long after they are dead, how many Romanticists painted overgrown Roman ruins?) Everything from Classical Greece to the Simpsons has a life cycle, you've got to decide where your bit of setting is in that life cycle, and then depict it as such. Think of the pieces of your setting as characters, each with strengths and weaknesses, and spend time crafting them in proportion to their importance to the story. Thus Tolkien gave us a lot of Minas Tirith but only a little of Ghan-buri-Ghan's folk.

Okay, taverns are often boring. I agree. But perhaps you've got to put one in your S&S story for whatever reason. Maybe you can decide that an innovative tavern owner at a busy crossroads is trying something different and birthing a new business. He's using a large cellar his grandfather built as a cheap dormitory (now there's an inn and a local church offers a warm corner for a free so the dormitory is no longer in use) to hold wine, and invited two wineries of the region (assuming your local environment is conducive to grapes) to supply him. They can sell all the wine they like under his roof and he just takes a small cut. One winery sends in the sword-and-sorcery equivalent of a wine expert, talking about the quality of wood used in their aging casks and the frequency of the morning dew and where they obtained their rare vines. A second winery sends a comely, lusty gal with a cocky sense of humor who flirts and jokes with customers as she sells wine like a Jaeger girl selling shots. These two characters can pop in and out of the background as the main characters do whatever has to be done in the tavern.

A dead tavern could be interesting too. Perhaps the local potentates closed a famous seaside tavern and hung the owner for associating with pirates and allowing them to recruit in his establishment. It's still a warm and dry building with a convenient landing, though ill-omened as the potentates stuffed the owner upside down into his own chimney to plug it, and pirates secretly meet, often by the light of a single candle, to talk over business. They advertise that they're hiring with some bit of discrete signal, like a black feather stuck in the lintel. They send barefoot, gutter-bred boys running back and forth to other establishments for their bread, cheese, meat pies, and booze and to act as lookouts. Because the windows are boarded up and the light and activity must be hidden, a writer can have a good deal of fun with atmosphere here.

Anyway, thanks again for quoting me. I'm chuffed.