Last week, we explored setting - the time period, place and duration of your story. Setting can add a unique element to your story. It can highlight themes, serve as a metaphor for plot or character, or expose the central message. Let's look more closely at how you can use your story's setting to develop your main character.

Consider the homework assignment: Pleasantville. In this 1998 feature film, two siblings find themselves back in time inside a 1950s TV show. The film explores "original sin" and our fears around a variety of human behaviors. It seeks to expose how our own prejudices lock us inside a colorless world - because we see the world literally in black and white.

Setting is crucial to the storyline. David and Jennifer's own world is fraught with parental neglect. When they arrive in the Pleasantville family as Bud and Mary Jane, it at first seems a better fit. Quickly, their outside ideals influence this idyllic town and expose the hidden prejudices and fears. Color plays a major role, specifically red, as does fire.

The town is flat, lawns are trimmed, fences are abundant. The physical setting is another character in the story and serves as a metaphor during the siblings' and citizens' transformations.

As you develop your plot and observe your character's journey toward solving his problem, consider how the setting mirrors or counters this process. You can play the what if game to explore possibilities.

What if your timid character who must find the courage to come out hides inside the town library? He feels safe in the words of others but can't find his own.

What if your angry adolescent who must confront his abusive father lives in a multi-story apartment building with no elevator (electrical outage, under repair, etc.)? His struggle to climb the stairs home each day mirror his internal struggle to confront his father.

What if your character's antagonist, the school bully, must take several different buses to get to school? The numerous transfers offer a metaphoric opportunity for change.

Keep exploring and play the what if game. Even if you choose to keep your setting in the background, there is always room to play up simple features - an ominous financial district, a pristine newly constructed church, streets named for civil rights' leaders.

Share your ideas here.
More fun with setting and time next week.
Until then, write on!

A story is not a story without a place and time. Setting can make the story. It can be another character on the page. Hogwarts and 4 Privet Drive live and breathe as much as the characters. The pristine Capitol coldly greets the innocent Katniss and Peeta. Whether a mysterious island (Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, Lord of the Flies, Island of the Blue Dolphins), a stark dystopian future or past (The Giver, Divergent series) or a lush outdoors (Bridge to Terrabithia, Call of the WIld), your story's setting is as important as your characters.

How do you make it real?

First, you must find a setting that matches your plot and character.

Second, you must select a specific time period (present, past, future to start with), a place (real or imagined) and a duration (passing of time from page 1 to the end).

Last, you must treat your setting - as stated previously - like a living, breathing character.

No. 2 - Select a time period.
This may be obvious if you've all ready planned a sci-fi, dystopian or historical novel. However, you may still need to consider how far into the past or future you want to be.

Setting your story in the historical past requires a commitment to research. Do not be lazy with this if you choose to write a tale in Victorian England; you might accidentally write that your poor character "turns on the light switch".

Setting your story in the near distant future - say, 2085 - with America in complete poverty or Venezuela as the new world superpower might be a little unbelievable. However, opening your story with these same scenarios in 2185, might not be as hard to believe.

Of course, if your story takes place in modern day, you can have as much fun as you want because it's fiction. If you choose a modern day setting but make clear it's in a parallel world (2015, New York City with Jim Carrey as mayor), the world is yours!
(Homework: watch the film Bladerunner.)

No. 3 - Personify your setting.
If you've dabbled in step 1 (matching your setting to your character), this won't be too tricky. Not too...

Let's try this exercise. Take out your drawing pad and pencil. Sketch a place that looks like:

1. an awkward, shy, teenager
2. an angry football captain
3. a smart but clumsy office worker

Now, go the other way. Sketch a character that looks like:

1. a neglected city
2. a lush country meadow
3. a snowy mountain village

In my second novel, Birds on a Wire, the teens spend a lot of time at the Orange Shack, a hole-in-the-wall taco stand next to a wire-fence enclosed orange tree orchard. Both places personify something about the characters. In the end, the orchard can't remain as it always was, and neither can the characters. Something must be destroyed.
(Homework: read Hansel and Gretel or Snow White.)

Share your thoughts below on how you make your setting real.
We'll have more fun with setting next week.
Until then, write on!