| p>Every story needs a believable setting. Setting | | | | Your character also inhabits intangible settings that |
| will both put your characters in their context and | | | | are not physical. Writers must pay attention to |
| make them seem real. | | | | these spiritual, historical, cultural, and economic |
| The setting is both where and when your story | | | | settings in order to effectively convey full |
| occurs. The where is the place in which the story | | | | characters! What is your character's cultural |
| occurs. It includes interiors and exteriors of | | | | community: Yankee, Jewish, Lithuanian, African, or |
| buildings, the landscape, and the political | | | | Chinese? Show us how the person interacts with |
| demarcations (town, county, country, etc.). The | | | | this background. We need to know about the |
| when includes the calendar time as well as the | | | | person's economic status: is she the wife of an |
| history of the characters and of their community | | | | upper-income lawyer or a single woman who |
| (family, group, nation, etc.). Setting, like character, | | | | works as a secretary at a hardware store in a |
| is also best established with ample sense-oriented | | | | small town; is he the third son and sixth and last |
| details. | | | | child of a mill worker and a store clerk or the only |
| Always place your story in a recognizable setting. | | | | child of a heart surgeon father and corporate |
| That is, use descriptive writing to show us where | | | | lawyer mother? Is your character the first person |
| your story occurs! Let us see the double Cape, | | | | in her family to graduate from high school? The |
| with its faded red paint and two dormers directly | | | | reader needs to know the education levels, |
| above the downstairs windows. Give us a view of | | | | religious affiliations, and spiritual affinities of the |
| the living room inside, to the left of the front | | | | people you are writing about. Your characters will |
| entrance, where you were sitting in one of the | | | | otherwise remain stick figures without any |
| stuffed wing-backed chairs. Let us notice you | | | | contexts--or, to use another image, fish out of |
| passing your finger over the worn arm rest as | | | | water. |
| you come to a frayed upholstery cord and | | | | In short, as part of the setting, we need to know |
| thoughtlessly pull it. Point out the full-leafed maples | | | | the entire context that surrounds your character. |
| and oaks (not just generic trees) outside the clear | | | | These include: physical, intellectual, spiritual, cultural, |
| window next to your chair and hear the car that | | | | economic, educational, professional, occupational, |
| is crunching stones in the driveway. Let us taste | | | | personal and public. These aspects of your |
| the pastries--cobblers and brownies and molasses | | | | characters must be explored through descriptive |
| cookies--that you are being served on large oval | | | | writing. |
| china that belonged to the grandmother of your | | | | The setting is a very important aspect of your |
| hostess. | | | | lifestory. It can change your story from a |
| Without the sort of tangible physical setting | | | | parochial one that is of interest only to family and |
| provided in the paragraph above, your story | | | | friends to a universal story that becomes the |
| remains an ethereal piece--inhabited by phantoms | | | | voice of a generation and of an shared |
| in a conceptual space. You story needs to have a | | | | experience. |
| sense of place that is very real. Descriptive | | | | Good luck writing! |
| writing full of sensory details will do that. | | | | |