Setting
What do we mean by setting?
Setting is the context in which a story takes place. Generally, setting includes time, geographical place, and culture.
Written carefully, setting can create mood. A scene set in a park on a sunny day will feel different than a scene set in a crowded club at midnight.
Setting can add or even cause conflict or tension. In a whiteout, the characters’ car slides into snowdrift-- how will the characters stay warm and find help? In this way, setting can also emphasize a story’s theme. In the above example, the author might want to explore the idea that shared adversity can create unlikely friendships.
Finally, setting can reveal details about a character. A character hears a love song playing at the grocery store and remembers an old flame. The hero notices their antagonist always wears extremely expensive suits and deduces a weakness: vanity.
Setting as a Character?
In some stories, setting is used minimally to great effect. In a story featuring lots of action, the characters move from scene to scene so quickly that very few details catch their notice, but a closet mentioned offhandedly in the opening scene becomes the place where they lie in wait to catch the villain in the final battle.
In other stories, the setting is dynamic. It functions almost like another character that acts and is acted upon. In a post-apocalytic survival story with toxic hail storms, the characters struggle to create a safe haven for themselves and their families. In a small town coming-of-age story, the place’s cultural constraints and the main characters reckoning with them are fulcrum of the conflict.
Aspects of Setting
Much of what has been written about setting explores different aspects of setting that an author might include. The following list is by no means exhaustive:
time of day
time in history
geographical location
season
weather
architecture
cultural context: language, history, religion, clothing, art, economy etc
objects
These aspects of setting can be expressed through sensory details: smells, sights, sounds, tastes, feels.
Genre Caveat
Certain genres assume settings. In fanfic, we often use ‘canon’ settings-- places with which our readers will already be familiar. Assumed or familiar settings can lead to particular pitfalls: 1) inaccuracies that will stand out to readers, 2) cliches/boring patterns, 3) lack of attention to setting, thus leaving out key details or simply ignoring a piece of the storycrafting process that could add depth.
Prompts
Choose a story you’ve already published to evaluate. How did you use setting? Are there key passages or scenes in which your use of setting was particularly effective or integral to the story? Would you do anything to change or enhance the setting in a rewrite?
Choose a WIP in which you want to enhance the setting and then try one (or both) of the following activities.
Create a moodboard relating to the overall setting of the story. Consider all the aspects of setting listed above, not just the visual ones.
Choose three main places in your story (ex: the POV character’s bedroom, the local coffee shop, the front lawn where the climactic argument takes place) and list five things you might find in each place, using a sentence or two describe each one.
Resources/References
Youtube Lecture on Setting
Article with Tips
Aspects of Setting (helpful for worldbuilding)
Create a Setting (link from NaNoWriMo’s worksheet pp37-42)
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