SETTING THE SCENE

THE ELEMENTS OF SETTING

Mrs. Tweedy

What is Setting?

Setting is the time and place in which a story takes place. There are many dimensions to setting it is NOT a one word response on a book report. When you are asked about the setting of a story in this class and from now on, you need to keep ALL of the following information in mind

The Three Levels of Setting

Microsystem

The most immediate and earliest influence and includes the family, along with local friendship and peer groups, and neighborhood or community institutions such as a particular school or church.

The Three Levels of Setting

Mesosystem (Exosystem)

The next level of influence that includes larger and less personal social institutions like government, transportation, entertainment, news organizations, or geographic regions larger than the neighborhood.

The Three Levels of Setting

Macrosystem
The

most distant from the individual and their influence includes such things as international relations or global changes.

The Three Types of Setting

Physical Temporal Psychological

Physical Setting

This is the storys specific geography as far as the particular location, climate, and physical features. It addresses the following:
Country,

city, neighborhood, and street Architecture, floor plan, rooms, and furniture.

The physical setting is how and where a story is located in a specific space or spaces.

Temporal Setting

Setting is temporal in two aspects:

First, the period or era the story takes place in

A point or place in historical time Can be in the present, the past, or the future Or can be in a fantastical/hypothetical past or future

Second, the duration of time over which the story takes place
Some stories occur in a very short time frame (example: 102 Minutes: The Fight to Survive in the Twin Towers) Others can span multiple generations.

Shorter stories usually focus on micro-level setting while epics that extend over many years focus more on larger, more macro-level concerns.

Cues for Temporal Setting

How do we know WHEN a story takes place if the author doesnt tell us??
Style

of clothing Architecture in the images or descriptions Makes of cars, types of transportation Style of photograph or painting (black & white?) Language (such as slang, other expressions)

Temporal Setting

Using the clues for determining temporal setting, decide what era the following two photographs were taken in.
When?

How

do you know? What clues did you find?

Authors provide the same types of clues in their writing you just have to know to look for it.

Psychological Setting
(Human Dimension)

This is how relationships within the text impact the mood or setting of the story. It also includes the types of interactions that may be found in that particular setting.
For

example, the setting of a family gathering at a house for a BBQ on a holiday weekend would be very different than the setting of that same house and same group of people gathered to mourn the loss of a loved one.

How Does Setting Impact the Story?

It is important to note that every setting will imply certain rules for behavior. How people follow, adapt, or violate these rules say a lot about their character and their relationships to the settings in which they are operating. (Smith & Wilhelm)

How Setting Impacts Characters

Character behavior is greatly impacted by the constraints of setting.

In

a story set in England in the 1800s, a character would have to act and speak in a certain manner to be believable. Think about how setting changes how YOU behave do you act differently at a friends house than you would at in a meeting with your parents and the principal? Where you are dictates how you behave the same is true of characters in writing.

Setting Impacts Identity

Place, or setting, also evokes identity and possibility. Think of the different assumptions you make when you hear people say, Im from
New York the rural South Texas

Each of these responses is not only an identifier of culture but also of opportunity and constraints.

There are things you can and cannot do in each place.

Setting the Rules

Setting sets or determines rules, constraints, and possibilities, potential conflicts, and possible consequences. Even when writing a fictional story, not just any old thing can happen. Writers are constrained by the setting and rules in the world they have invented, and only very particular things can happen there.

Example: If you are writing a realistic story about an event in New York City, it will not include a dinosaur tearing through Central Park. That doesnt fit the rules of realistic fiction.

What If I Break the Rules?

We get engrossed in books because they draw us into their world if the author strays from the probable the reader is going to feel misled and maybe even betrayed. If the rules of setting are broken then the story loses its capacity to mean something.

Genre Specific Rules

Fantasy

The genre of fantasy grants the writer one giant fantastical leap away from reality.
The rules include that nothing can happen that is not scientifically plausible (possible) at the time of writing. Historical events must be portrayed accurately and nothing in the story can violate what we know about the historical event.

Science Fiction

Historical Fiction

Creating Setting

Settings grow and evolve from everything we know about the world, from history, from our own experiences, and from our experiences with other books or movies in the genre we are reading. A setting should be specific it should be deeply known by the writer and deeply knowable by the reader.

References

Smith, Michael W. & Jeffrey D. Wilhelm. Fresh Takes on Literary Elements: How to Teach What Really Matters About Character, Setting, Point of View, and Theme. 2010. NCTE. Urbana, IL.