On Setting

Last month we talked about how to begin a story in terms of plot, which is to say, trouble.  The root of all tension in a story, in other words the reason the audience will want to keep reading, is in the problem the characters have to resolve.  

Obviously in order to have this tension we need both trouble and characters, but since character are probably the single mot important aspect of this particular three-body problem, I am shamelessly putting off addressing them until a later date.  In the meantime, we can talk about the other aspect of the story’s beginning: the when and where of what happens, that is, the setting.

I mentioned above that setting is essentially the when and where of the story.  Setting is one of the first things we remember of when we think over a story we’ve heard before, it’s the aspect of the information that colors everything else.  

It accounts for a great deal when it comes to the tone, or overall emotional flavor, of a story (compare a story which is set on a sunny afternoon last summer versus one set in German-occupied Poland in the winter of 1944).  It accounts for almost all of the shorthand idea of what genre the story falls in; stories set in the past, for example, are automatically historical fiction, and stories set in the future are set down inevitably as science fiction.  And it exercises a great deal of control over the credibility of the characters; we can put whatever characters we like in whatever setting we like, but the audience will be able to tell for themselves what is probable and what feels believable, and a weirdly-fitting setting could throw an otherwise excellent character-driven story completely off course.

So how do you decide on a setting for your story?

More often than not I find that setting is the one aspect of storytelling which takes care of itself, or else it is the first point, the foundation or backdrop, on which the other ideas like the characters and their struggles wind up getting cast.

Setting for me is less a matter of conjuring ideas out of nothingness so much as reviewing and selecting which feel right, which feel real, and which feel like the story I’m trying to tell.

But again, most of the time when I’m opening a new story, the setting sort of shows up, more or less fully formed, if not totally refined, and I sort of make small changes as the work moves forward, and the details of where and when things are going on get sorted out at about the same time as the questions of what is happening, and why.

So how does this selection and refinement process take place?

For me it generally starts with a feel for when the story will take place.