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This article is a continuation from last week’s article on characterization.

The Importance of Setting

When a setting is successful, the audience comes to understand the story on its own terms and by its rules; the audience doesn’t question that an old hotel can bring ghosts to life in the presence of a powerful psychic; the audience instead fears for the pyschic’s safety while wintering in said malevolent building.

Setting is more important as a tool to help the audience understand the story than it is as a stage upon which the story takes place. Any given story can be placed in more than one setting, depending on which parts of the story the storyteller intends to emphasize, or on the storyteller’s intended audience. In The Lion King a story originally set in Denmark has been relocated to Africa and the human characters replcaed by a cast of animals.

Realizing that any basic story can take place anywhere, how can you be sure you have the right setting?

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People will tell you that the worst part of writing is starting with an empty page and not knowing how to fill it up. Personally, I disagree; I’m pretty sure the worst part is starting with an empty mind and having nothing to say. Everyone has two or three tricks that they swear by when it comes to getting past the first few pages and into the story — everyone who’s finished something, at least. But I’ve tried all of them and none of them have worked yet. At this point, what’s the next step?

Defining the Story

Most of what passes in our daily lives is not “story,” but rather “news.” Or even just “boring.” A lot of that depends on what you do for a living, really. What is universally true is that, even in the most exciting life, not every event is a story.

Story is what happens when settings, events, and characters collide.

Man bites dog is news, but not that great a story; if nothing else, its cliche from long, hard use in the journalism business. Bill Clinton bites dog at Obama’s inauguration, on the other hand… That’s a story.

I am already well aware that many of my peers think my approach to ficiton to be too fomulaic to be truly effective, and I do wonder sometimes if that’s true. But, frankly, even if it’s a mistake to pursue these concepts, it’s a mistake I can learn from.

So, all this in mind, it would seem the first step in writing is to define those three elements:

• Setting
• Characters
• Events

But what does that mean?

Today’s episode: Characters.

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