Michaela Wolf

Creative Writing
Due: November 4th
Fiction Exercise 1: Setting the Scene
Context: When it comes to storytelling, it can be easy to jump straight into plot,
characterization, or even style. Writers are eager to pen the elements of their story which they
find the most exciting, and this euphoric plunge is key to the authors initial engagement with his
or her writing. However, for the finished project to be complete and artful, the writer must
always take steps back and investigate how the story could be enhanced by filling in whats
missing. Sometimes whats missing are small details; other times, more critical elements of
fiction writing are absent. One such element is setting, and in this writing exercise, you will
focus on a particular setting or object, and as you write you will treat your setting as the nucleus
of your scene or story. Imagine that your setting is the Big Bang, and the expansion of the
universe is equivalent to the expansion of your story.
Setting contributes to the conventions of the world in which your story takes place. Setting
informs and sometimes dictates things like the time period, cultural norms, historical influences,
and routines of the place about which you have decided to write. Setting also invokes certain
connections a reader will make as they read, as well as a host of expectations the reader will have
for the trajectory and outcome of the story. Setting relates to genre, characterization, tone, the
subject-matter of your story, and so much more.
In The Other Town, The Library of Babel, and The Fall of the House of Usher, physical
setting is essential to the telling and the content of the stories. Poes use of setting establishes
stylistic aspects such as tone and suspense, while Borges builds and explores a whole universe of
questioning and abstraction through the setting. The settings in each of these stories are almost
like characters themselves. In this vein, the radio in The Enormous Radio, cathedral drawing
(and cathedrals) in Cathedral, and items carried in the rucksacks of American soldiers fighting
in Vietnam in The Things They Carried, are objects that are the vessels for, sources of, or
mediators to the main conflict in these stories. Though these stories have a loose physical setting,
the authors use these objects as a sort of setting from which the conflict and plot unfold. Of
course, these objects are also symbols of various themes raised by the characters and plot in the
stories. In these and other short stories, physical setting and objects, not plot or character,
determine the course of the story.
Exercise: In this exercise, you must choose a physical setting or an object around which to build
your plot, conflict, and characters. As in the short stories mentioned above, you must make sure
that the themes, questions, and ideas raised by your writing come from tensions teased out by

your physical setting or object. Additionally, you must make sure that the conflict you detail is
caused by, transported through, or mediated by the physical setting or object you write about.
You may choose to craft a short story around this, or you may just write a scene. Whatever you
decide, your piece must be between 500 and 800 words (no more than 3 pages double-spaced,
please). Your goal is not to write a description of a physical setting or an object (although a
description will aid in the effectiveness of your writing); instead, you must focus the outcome of
your narrative through the lens of your physical setting or object. Center your piece around your
physical setting or object, and think about how you can incorporate it prominently enough in
your story so that it, like the examples of setting in the stories above, is itself like a character.
Think about the symbolic significance of your setting or object, and make sure to bring that out
in your writing.