Setting: The Forgotten Character

When thinking about characters, we always think about the protagonist and antagonist, love interests, sidekicks, and other people who play major or minor roles in our story. We seldom think of the forgotten character: setting.

We think about setting in other ways. We consider the place and time as part of the framework of our stories. But a good setting does more than provide a stage where the story takes place. A good setting affects the story in all the ways a character does by providing conflict, plot elements, and all the emotions that accompany a relationship.

People react to our surroundings in complex ways, just like we do our personal relationships. We feel differently about the town where we grew up than we do about the places where we live later. And those who moved around a lot, for example in a military family, are affected by the lack of a real home town as much as the lack of a long-term childhood best friend.

A story set in say, Chicago, is going to be different than the same story set in Miami. The main plot points may be identical, but the landscape, the attitudes, the priorities, and the weather are different. All of those differences affect the human characters in the story.

The same is true of time. San Franciscans reacted to their surrounding differently in the years just before the 1906 earthquake and fires than they did during the dot com boom or at the height of the AIDS epidemic.

All of this holds true as well in fictional worlds. The hobbits of The Shire are not the same as the hobbits of Bree. They have different concerns and are affected by their environments in very different ways.

When setting your story, think about how the time and location affect your character. It's one thing to to mention landmarks and other elements that set up the location. Those are very important. But equally important, and maybe more important, are the ways your character interacts with the other influences of a location. Research (or create) the outer elements of the location, but also look at the inner workings. What do the people think about? How do local politics and trends affect the way people live? How does a city's history affect the attitudes of its current residents? How does your main character react to his surroundings? Is your character a local who shares the inner feelings spawned by the place, or an outsider who finds the town foreign and has to deal with the shock of a different culture, or a newcomer who wants to fit in but has to fight the conflicting ideals of where he is from and his new town?

Treat time the same way, and consider not only the timepoint of the actual story but the time when the human characters were raised. Consider generational differences in attitudes, speech, and ideals and the problems that arise when those differences conflict with the human character's sense of self and how he fits in with the world.

Where we are, and when, are among the most powerful influences that tug at us as real people. The same is true of the people in your fictional worlds. As a result, time and place affect the emotional stories of your human characters as well as the external plot points.

Setting is more than the stage. It's a real, breathing, living character that pervades every aspect of your story.

Picture the Details

Details that bring a novel to life can be tricky to write when you aren’t sure of the setting. Sometimes we as writers may know the general setting, but are still fuzzy on the bits and pieces; the heavy oak door that takes a child’s two hands to push it open because it is so heavy or the slimy moss that gets stuck between the characters toes when they wade into the pond.

I recently read Matthew J. Kirby’s Clockwork Three and was impressed with what I could visualize in the pages of the story and feel of the character's plights. I wouldn’t have noticed the words themselves if I hadn’t been paying attention because they were crafted so well. But the details sucked me into that world and let me see it, as the action reeled me forward through the book.

How do you create those kinds of details?

One scene in my novel involves two boys traveling down a cave-like tunnel. They climb over a boulder, wade through an underground river and make a story-changing discovery. It’s an exciting scene and the details were mostly formed from information researched about caves and underground rivers.

A couple weeks ago I walked through Timpanogos Cave for the first time in my life and realized how much I was missing in my scene with these two boys. Bending and twisting around cave formations to get to the next open area, I couldn’t help but picture these two boys on their own adventure. We heard stories and observed crevices and tunnels that had my mind reeling with ideas for how to make my character’s exploration even more exciting.

It doesn’t make research any less important. But finding a way to see a situation, or experience it, can open your mind to the possibilities. Re-writing my scene will bring details that will intensify the situation I was trying to create with these boys. They will be dodging more stalagmites and wondering about the small tunnel they can't quite fit into. Experiencing Timpanogos will make this scene stronger in the end. Maybe we as writers cannot experience everything our characters do, but it’s worth looking for the opportunity to experience what we can.

We may still have to make up the rest.

What tricks do you have for experiencing life as your character sees it?

What is Story Form?

There are many different types of stories and styles to write them—but each may be described as consisting of the unified sequence of events having a beginning, middle and an ending. This is known as story form or a story’s structure.

Classic Plot Structure:

• Story beginning—establishes a main character and a basic situation.
• Story middle—develops a problem or difficulty and builds to a climax, which is then resolved.
• Story ending—concludes the story’s events, leaving the reader satisfied.

Now briefly consider the three elements common to storytelling and help build the story's structure.

Characters—It’s important to make your characters life-like. Whether they are human or animal, they are the lifeblood of your story. Main characters need to have more detail and a background/history.

Setting—Denotes a story’s timeline and place. A setting may be merely a backdrop, such as a home, school or park. Another kind of setting is the action setting that either creates or is directly related to the story’s conflict, like the storm in “The Wizard of Oz.”

Theme—This is the point of the story. It’s important not to have your story be devoid of ethical or moral content. By adding this element, you will have a more satisfying story and some degree of healthy growth or change in the main character—about themselves, others, his world, and perhaps about the larger world beyond.  

Please note: Young readers do not want to feel a moral is being taught while reading. The primary purpose of a story is to entertain…not point to an explicit moral. Let me say this again another way…stories entertain while hiding the moral being taught to the young readers.

When working on Setting  and your story form a common term you’ll hear is the “Rule of 3”. This means your main character must go through three challenges (each one bigger than the first) before resolving the problem/conflict. This helps build climax and keeps the pacing of the story engaging for young readers.

Note a good story’s form will seem natural and organic to the reader. The opening paragraph leads logically into the second and then third; the middle, climax and resolution all seem part of the natural flow. Nothing feels added in as an afterthought or just there for the mere purpose of detail.

Many factors may determine the climax and resolution of your story from a lucky chance to a surprising turn of events. No matter the problem (which can take form as an urgent conflict, puzzle, question or challenge) the plot structure is the strongest and most compelling when it generates suspense for the reader. 

It’s important to remember that the main character resolves the problem and must go through some type effort—a crucial action or decision that constitutes the story’s climax before the problem is resolved.

Master this classical story style first and then you can apply its lesson to other kinds of stories.

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Writing Prompt:

Use the list of 20 words below that have no obvious relationship to one another or pick your own words and throw them into a hat/bowl. Choose up to 5 words and try and working them into a story for young readers; or you may choose a single word as an idea-starter, letting it suggest other words and concepts via the process called “clustering”.

Be creative and have fun!

Brainstorming Words:

Whisper           Flag                 Patch               Leap

Candle             Slide                Cup                 Sing

Brush               Float                Park                Fell

Bark                Sky                  Warm              Flip

Pancakes         Bag                  Crack              Rainbow