Setting

You are ready to put your characters in a setting. Before you begin, make sure you understand the following. Take notes on SETTING.
Setting: The natural and artificial scenery or environment in which characters in literature live and move.

Setting is the when and where your story takes place.
Apart from Character and Plot, Setting is one of the most important elements in your writing.

Setting includes:

• Artifacts or Props (the things characters use)
• Clothes (the things characters wear)
• Time of day, conditions of the weather
• Geography and location
• Trees, animals, and nature
• Inside and outside sounds, smells
• All physical and temporal objects

So that means setting refers to:

• The location (locale) or place the story is set
• The weather (including the season)
• The time
• The time period (historical period)

In short: setting refers to all the places and objects that are important in the work, whether natural or manufactured.

Types of Settings:

1. Natural
Nature shapes action and directs and redirects lives.

2. Manufactured
Manufactured things always reflect the people who made them.
Possessions often enter into character motivation and development.

3. Interior: locales INSIDE. Symbolically often refers to private/domestic issues.

4. Exterior: locales OUTSIDE. Symbolically often refers to societal issues.

What is a regional writer?
• A regional writer chooses to set all of his/her stories in one general place or time period. This place usually reflects how the author grew up.

Regional writers include:
• William Faulkner
• Stephen King
• H.P. Lovecraft
• Flannery O’Connor
• Bharakti Mukerjee
• Eudora Welty

Function of Setting:

1. Setting as Antagonist.

• Settings can cause problems/conflict for characters

2. Setting as reflection of mindset or ideology of one of your characters (often your protagonist)
3. Setting as character portrait

• Settings reflect or contrast character’s wants/desires, goals

4. Setting as quality of narrative vision

• Setting establishes trust between storyteller and audience
• Description of setting helps reader visualize the fictional world

5. Setting as reflection of theme or idea
6. Setting as reflection of conflict
7. Setting as mood or atmosphere
8. Setting as foreshadowing of plot
9. Setting as beginning and ending (establishing and closing shot…or frame)

Now, (THIS IS STILL BRAINSTORMING AND SHOULD BE WRITTEN IN YOUR JOURNAL): choose 1 or more of your characters that you created a character sketch for. This character will be your protagonist. The story should at this point revolve around this character. Put your character in your setting and write a short scene (1-3 pages).

Finished and there's still time?
Go on to work on one of these setting exercises. This is BRAINSTORMING. Don't label it yet as a draft ONE. You may use as many of these exercises as you wish. Change anything you feel you need to as this is just BRAINSTORMING - the first step in the writing process.