Describing the Setting

1. Describing the Setting Narrative Writing Craft Lesson Pg.72

2. Settings All stories take place somewhere. Any story you are writing- whether fiction or nonfiction- happens in some particular place.

3. A story might be set at the beach;

4. another might take place in a shopping mall.

5. Writers talk about this as the setting of the story. Often they include a description of the place so the reader can get a feeling for the story’s setting.

7. Settings to Reveal Characters Imagine a movie about a young woman whose beloved has left her. We see her staring out a rain-streaked window, wiping away her tears. This is no accident. The director chose this particular setting to reinforce the woman’s emotional state.

8. Writers do the same thing. They use the setting to help bring alive the inner life of a character.

9. Think of the character Max, the giant in the book titled Freak the Mighty. Max’s is a huge size and is not very smart. This combination of things made him the center of a lot of jokes. As the book begins, Max spends most of his time in his grandparents’ basement, a place he calls the “down and under.” It makes sense that this “dim hole in the ground” would be the only place that a misfit like Max would feel comfortable. It’s a place to hide.

10. You see the same thing in the book, What Jamie Saw. Jamie, his mother, and the baby leave their house to get away from Van, the mother’s boyfriend. They move to a tiny silver trailer. (“Jamie felt that he was in a box, or a hollowed-out bullet.”) The author makes use of the setting outside the trailer in the same way. The landscape Jamie sees outside is a cold and frozen as the feelings inside of him.

11. Settings that Shapes the Action We are now going to look at how the setting can be an integral part of the story and actually shape what happens.

12. In the book, Phoenix Rising, the setting has an enormous impact on the plot as well as on the characters. The novel takes place on a Vermont sheep farm. There has been a recent explosion at a nearby nuclear plant. Many of the people and farm animals in the area have been poisoned by radiation.

13. The very first scene shows Nyle Sumner, the main character, walking on her grandmother’s farm. Nyle is wearing a gauze mask, and we learn that she has had to wear it for the past week. Soon Nyle and her family have to take in a boy who has been severely poisoned by radiation.

14. When you write, think these things about your setting. • Where does your story take place? • What description could you include to help a reader get a sense of that place? • Does your setting hint at the feelings going on inside of your characters? • Have I used details that really describes the place where my story happens? • How might the setting affect what happens.