If you have ever read Ethan Frome and shivered at the icy loneliness of a Starkfield winter, or read The Heart of Darkness and felt the dark foreboding of the foggy Congo, then you understand the power of setting in a text. Setting is often relegated to the position of the uglier step-sister of the elements of fiction…something that exists merely to make the really beautiful things like character and plot able to fully develop and mature, but not something all that important or interesting or attractive in its own right. However, this is a completely wrong viewpoint. I don’t know if setting is considered ‘sexy’, but maybe it should be…ok, maybe ‘sexy’ is over-stating it a bit. (Actually, as an aside, I absolutely despise it when people use the word ‘sexy’ to catch the reader’s attention when that isn’t really what the author means at all…but that is a subject for another blog post…maybe one about vocabulary…) Let’s try this from another angle: Consider this…your character and plot must be plausible in the location and time period in which your story is taking place. If they aren’t, it doesn’t matter how good the plot is or how endearing your protagonist is, because they won’t ring true if the setting does not support them. How often have you been relaying the plot of a recent novel you read and your friend stops you to clarify, asking, “Oh, where (or when) does the story take place?” Clearly, place matters. Setting matters.
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Wendy Picard GorhamWendy lives and works in the midst of words everyday--English teacher by profession, and writer by passion! Archives
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