2. Theory – Setting

Theory – Setting

Why is setting important?

• Helps readers visualise your story
• Elicits emotional response in the reader
• Setting can enhance your characterisation and plot
• The readers should experience the location the way the characters do.

Your story obviously isn’t just a place! You have created a really cool character to live in your imagined setting. So your characters have to interact and truly inhabit the setting. 

What are the three types of setting that you should consider?

• Temporal setting (The era/period in which the story takes place)

You might be in a room in a building right now, but what year is it? What country are you in?  What planet are you on? Like with your character, you should know your setting really well!  Even if it’s more than what you may need to know for the story.

• Include time period in description
  • Technology – what can you see? Surveillance cameras?
  • Culture
  • Current pop culture

• Setting is crucial to a plot in that it offers the parameters of plot elements. For instance, if your story is set in the Middle Ages, can you have any holograms delivering news of your father’s illness? Or if your story is set in Sydney, are your characters going to be involved in any disputes  over farmland? As you can see, setting is bound up with what the possibilities of your plot can  be.

• Environmental setting (the larger geographical area)
  • Country, city
  • Climate
  • Time of the year, time of the day
  • Community 

• Individual setting (specific places within that area)

Of course your short story can’t cover the whole world. It can only focus on one or two  scenes/particular locations. So you REALLY need to know the exact time, location, context and  atmosphere of your character’s surroundings within your story.

How to develop the setting.

• Describe the setting through the characters’ perspective. 

Sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste. How do the characters feel about the setting?

“Then the doorbell begins to ring and the people come in. The house fills with the alien scent of cigarettes, which will still be there in the morning along with a few uneaten candies and salted nuts, and with bursts of laughter that get louder as time passes. I lie in my bed listening to the bursts of laughter. I feel isolated, left out. Also I don’t understand why this activity, these noises and smells, is called “bridge.” It is not like a bridge.”

• Be detailed:

Your setting has to visualized, realistic and believable. Try and focus on one setting within your  story, so you can fully flesh out the weather, sounds, colours, atmosphere and emotion. You have  to create a picture in words, a backdrop that your plot can work in. If you’re having trouble,  remember the 5 senses when creating your setting: smell, sound, sight, touch, taste. 

Describe the setting throughout the composition

• Show, don’t tell in your writing. Show the readers the setting of a story through powerful writing and the use of literary devices.

• Decide the mood (overall feeling for the reader)

• Pathetic fallacy: On a smaller scale, setting can be used to reflect a character’s thoughts and feelings. For instance, a cramped and uncomfortable setting can reflect the character’s own discomfort; or a multitude of bright flashing lights can  demonstrate confusion. 

How to prepare (Strategies) 

• Research location (find out architecture, flora, fauna)
• Research historical accounts
• Look up on Google street view
• Mix Fiction and fact