Setting is a vital part of any story, but it’s one that many writers forget about. Plot, characterization, story arc – all vital story-telling elements, but nothing happens in a vacuum.
Setting isn’t just where things happen. It’s a character in and of itself. If you picked up your protagonists and put them in another location, it would be a completely different story. Setting isn’t just a place geographically. It’s a place, psychologically, socially, culturally.
Your characters can interact a certain way in LA that would be completely inappropriate in East Anglia. Where they are influences everything about them. Not just how they might dress for a certain event, but how they act, how they frame their words, how they think.
In addition, your setting creates a mood, a tone to which you must be faithful. A lone werewolf running loose in Prague at midnight creates a very different expectation for the reader than a lone werewolf who happens to be the mayor of a small town in South Carolina.
You can use setting to your advantage. Putting that LA vampire in Maycomb, Alabama can create useful conflict – comic or dramatic. What happens when your urban chic vamp ends up in the English countryside? In LA, there’s a ready food source out on the streets at all hours of the day or night. In an area populated by small villages, it’s going to be a lot more difficult to find a meal.
So as you write, don’t just plonk your characters somewhere that sounds interesting. Or in a blank space that adds no dimension. Use the setting you create to make your story the most dynamic it can be.
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12 comments:
Last week I was reading the paper about the set locator of the Sopranos, and she said that she sees the settings as important as the characters, That they have to offer the scene something of their own. I liked how that also applied to writing, which you just brought out so well!
Sometimes the setting is a major part of the conflict. In my PIACT series where two galactics nations are often fighting for contol of a metal ball in space, where in all this chaos can you run to?
:)
Great post Sela!
S.J.
The setting is what inspires me first. A place has to be evocative enough for me to imagine characters living in it, moving through it, interacting with it. For me, an apartment in the city provides zero inspiration, but that doesn't mean another writer wouldn't be inspired by it and write an amazing story set in one.
Great post, Sela! The setting is definitely crucial to the story.
BTW, your blog site looks wonderful.
I couldn't agree more! Which is why I'm finding it so hard to finish my current story -- I don't feel enough of a connection to my setting.
I guess I need to run off and do some more research. :P
Great topic Sela. I never really gave much thought about settings being as important as characters, but you're definitely right :)
Yeah, I need to ground my story in a sense of place or it just seems to float free, becoming insubstantial. Or a couple of talking heads—I mean I'm all for dialogue, but not in a vacuum.
Good points, good post.
I'm always aware of where my characters do what. It seems to make such a difference in the atmosphere and tone of the story.
Great post. I think for sheer setting as character, I most admire fantasy satirist Terry Pratchett, in which Discworld is most definitely more than a Place, it's a Way from which everything else grows and makes sense.
There is no world in Pratchett's novels, it's all one psychedelic dream.
:)
S.J.
I love books where the place comes alive for me. Terry's Discworld is one of them, even though it only exists in his (and my) whacked out imaginations.
Well, TP's genius is that he werites about the mechanics of a fantasy world--it's not all magic horses and wizards--magic horses have to be mucked out and wizards have to learn somewhere.
Great post, Sela, and you're right, setting does influence characters. I had fun setting up my chick-lit spy in England--where we have pretty restrictive gun laws and she has to make do with a pepper spray...
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