Setting The Mood by Bobbi Lerman
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Setting is more than a place. It’s more than a simple description to establish where a character in a story is living or traveling to or just hanging out for the moment. Setting is more than an inconsequential backdrop between action scenes or romantic scenes. Setting is mood, atmosphere, tone.
What is a simple definition of setting?
Setting is the location where the story takes place. It includes the region, the look of the landscape, the climate, the buildings, and the interiors of the buildings. It might be the look and feel of the underground tunnel you character is trapped in or the ambiance of the bedroom where you spent your honeymoon. Setting can suggest the passage of time by the use of light, weather, or the hour of the day or night.
It doesn’t matter if you are a novice writer or a seasoned one. As a writer, you need to understand the fundamental elements of setting to create a story that will draw a reader in and keep them turning the pages. The setting of your stories and how you present it is a crucial element to storytelling, whether it be fiction or nonfiction.
Readers need to visualize where your story takes place. They need to feel like they are experiencing it as if they are there themselves. Your readers need to believe not only where they are but when—otherwise as a writer you will lose all credibility. When your story takes place will determine what words can be used to tell your tale. For example, the word noisome (which refers to a small that is particularly
Disgusting disgusting or unpleasant) came into usage in 1350. However, the word confidant (which refers to someone to whom secrets are entrusted) was not used until 1705. You wouldn’t use modern-day medical procedures in a story set in the early nineteenth century, or have one of your characters flick a switch to turn on a light in 1403.
One of my favorite quotes by Edith Wharton: “Every story would be another story, and unrecognizable if it took up its characters and plot and happened somewhere else.”
Think Harry Potter in a Kansas one-room schoolhouse, or Jane Eyre in in a beach house in Malibu.
And then there is time. Did you know there are four kinds of time in a story, each with its own unique role to play? There is clock time, calendar time, seasonal time, and historical time.
What is the difference, you ask?
Clock Time will often create a mood or feeling. It can ramp up the suspense or the depth of creepiness. Think your protagonist, alone (or he believes he is), investigating supernatural happenings at an abandoned house, but he needs to wait until the clock strikes midnight.
On to calendar time, which settles us in the year, the month, and the day, usuallyspecifically the day or the week. Americans will recognize April Fool’s Day takes place every year on the first; however, they would not necessarily have a clue when Boxing Day is in England or when exactly Carnival takes place in Venice, as other countries have different calendar dates that would be significant to their culture.
Next up is seasonal time, which refers to the four seasons. Consider how differentthe atmosphere of your setting, the ambiance, would be if your story took place in February in North Dakota versus St. Barts at the same time. Your characters’ dress would be informed by what season they were living in. Their activities would be dictated by the weather. They won’t snowboard in Florida in April and they won’t go swimming in one of the Great Lakes in February.
Last, but not least, we have historical time, which most often lends to establishing behaviors and attitudes that impact your story’s setting. How people communicated was dependent on the time in which they lived. Expectations of women, for instance, were far different in the 1950s than in the late ’60s or early ’70s. Slang changes radically over the years in the States. Common words used all the time back in the eighteenth century are outdated today or not used at all because they are offensive or recognized as racist. How religious people were, as well as moral and societal attitudes, were often determined by the time.
Place: Where are we?
Place is more than simply a physical description of where the character is. It should involve more than one of the five senses, such as sound, smell, taste, touch. Someone who is waiting for a train in Moynihan Train Hall in New York will have a far different experience a person waiting in an old church in the Italian countryside.
There are the non-physical characteristics of the setting that will impact your story. What is the education system of your location? The upper-class schools of Beverly Hills will be much different than poverty-stricken areas of Detroit, or a parochial school. Neighborhoods, social standing, and economics all put characters in different settings, no matter the year.
Combining the different elements is key. Setting is the context, the foreground of your character’s actions. People exist in a specific time and place. This will contribute to personality, values, and what kind of problems or obstacles befall your protagonist—or villain, for that matter. Setting impacts how the cast of characters that peoples your tale react.
If The Help had taken place in sunny Southern California instead of the ‘60s American South, would it have worked? Or take The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and instead of tornado-stricken Kansas, set it in Mars int eh year 3022. Somehow, I don’t think it would have the same lure to the same readers.
Setting is as equally important as plot or character. Writers will spend hours strategizing and brainstorming story arcs and conflict, and pay little attention to where everyone is. A big, BIG mistake. The place your story is staged provides the backdrop for where your drama will play out.
What are some of the elements to setting?
Locale: This covers everything from which country or state to neighborhood, street, or even a specific house.
Time of year: Which season is it? Are your characters sweating in the heat or skiing in deep powder? It is a holiday or a significant date such as the anniversary of your heroine or hero, or of a battle perhaps?
Time of day: Is it night, dawn, or twilight? The time of day your story is set is an important feature and may vary throughout; however, it will create a particular visual in scenes.
Elapsed time: Over how many minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, does your story play out? You don’t want to confuse your reader by not being clear. Is the passage of time important to your story?
Weather: Does the weather and its lighting effects influence events in your story? If your protagonist is running through a desert for help at midday, the feel and the mood are going to be significantly different than if they are making their way down a city alleyway on a foggy night.
A few more elements you might want to give some thought to: climate, geography, era, social/political/cultural environment, population, ancestral influences. Setting can and should be a character in its own right. Think of it as painting a portrait of a place where the central character is the place linked to the protagonist. One of your goals as a writer—and yes, we as writers have many goals as we weave our stories—is to make the setting a part of the heart of the story.
A few last tips:
Give your setting purpose. Remember it is its own unique character with its own unique voice.
“Show, don’t tell” as much as possible. Show the ferocity of the storm, the thickness of the fog, the wildness of the waves, or the rhythm of the city. Don’t tell your reader it’s the Scottish Highlands in 1309—show the landscape, the thatched cottages, the laird’s keep.
Detail, detail, detail. Is it a luxurious BMW or a beat-up Volkswagen bus your protagonist is driving? Is your heroine staying in a plush hotel sui9te or a weathered saltbox cottage on the edge of the sea?
Use all your senses. What does the place look like, smell like, sound like, taste like?