Welcome to day 12 of PREPTOBER! This is a series of daily questions and prompts to help you prepare for this year’s upcoming NaNoWriMo!
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Today’s question is:
Where does your story take place? What is your setting?
Feel free to share your answer in the comments! I would love to hear your response!
Setting is a writing element that is frankly slept on.
It isn’t just the back drop of your story, it gives your plot, characters, and story context.
It is the single most important element that allows your story to take place.
I know you read that and thought— duh. The setting is *where and when* the story takes place.
But the story also cannot take place, happen, occur, without the setting either.
Let’s take a look at some examples:
Star Wars happens A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away. This allows for distance from the world as we know it but it also poses itself as a possible forgotten history. We are given the distance of time and space so that the wonderous space frontier isn’t outside the realm of believability while simultaneously giving the allusion that this may have happened long before our simple human recollection, and any familiarity we feel with the stories is natural because it’s us— but not us. Also, we can’t forget about spaceships, because what is Star Wars without light speed and piloting X-wing fighters?
The Hunger Games takes place in Panem, which is split into 12 districts and a capitol in post-war America in the distant future. This establishes the context for why the Hungar Games exist, why there is disparity between the humble mining community of District 12 and the lush excess of the capitol. Without this information, these two conflicting realities would have a hard time existing side by side. Also, it acts as an allegorical warning about totalitarian governments and the corruption of our future. All thanks to the setting
Harry Potter takes place in modern times (Actually the 90’s) at Hogwarts. Just like Star Wars, we get the feeling that this could have actually happened, could be happening rights now in fact, in a secret place beyond shuffling brick walls in seedy taverns. If we only looked hard enough we might be able to step into a world of wonder and whimsy. Hogwarts, which embodies everything that is good and mysterious, and magical is the perfect backdrop for the story. Not to mention that in essence, Hogwarts is a boarding school which provides ample opportunity for Harry and Friends to get up to mischief. The convenient absence of parents makes a boarding school the perfect place to set YA or children’s fiction. It’s the same reason why almost every Disney character is an orphan. It moves the story along without pesky parents weighing down the narrative. And Rowling solved this with one little element: The setting.
If you think about it, the story in each of these examples breaks down very quickly without the backbone of the setting propping it up.
Just so, you should give ample thought to your setting. But when your story could take place in any time at any place, it can be daunting to determine the exact setting.
Often, your first instinct is the answer. But these is one exercise you can do to make sure.
Go back to day one, and pull out that defining detail that we established for your novel.
Then take into consideration your characters and their desires and start brainstorming.
Set a timer for 10 minutes and on a blank sheet of paper write down every word or phrase that comes to mind when you think about the defining detail, your main character, and their main desire.
If you have trouble or get stuck, try writing down what your novel tastes, smells, feels, looks, and sounds like.
Pull in as many sensory details as you can. Create a wish list of all the elements you would like to include. Write and write and write until that 10 minutes is up.
For example, on day one I said the defining detail of the Hunger Games is hunger. So let’s create a word web of all the words you can think of that relate to hunger:
survival, starvation, running, cat and mouse, maze, challenge, puzzle, obstacle, hunting, weapons, skill, fight or flight, animals, hiding, terrain, fear, hungry, thirsty, shelter, deprivation, kill or be killed, and survival of the fittest.
After you’ve completed the exercise, what are you left with?
A list of the broader essence of your novel. If the defining detail is the focused essence, this is an expanded version of that.
Now that you have your list, I want you to circle or highlight 5-10 of the words that you listed out that are Non-negotiable. These elements *must* be in the novel.
This list will become your compass. So often when we are choosing elements to our story, we are actually saying “no” to what our story could be to uncover what our story actually is.
Look at your non-negotiable list, does is your current setting for your novel affirmed by the list? Or are there some discrepancies?
Can you shift your setting or make a little tweak that might accommodate your list better?
Sometimes, we assume a setting for our story without analyzing it’s importance to the narrative. Once we do, we might realize that the setting we currently have is just a place holder and there might be a setting even more relevant that we can use to make our story stronger. It’s important to pick this out early, because it is so important that we get the setting right.
So, what is your novel’s setting?
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