CREATIVE WRITING BUILDING BLOCKS
SETTING Part One
Make your settings feel real by focusing on people in place and how a par ticular location makes them feel, says author and tutor Ian Ayris
After
spending some time working through the Building Block of Structure, we found ourselves at the end of the last article faced with two further Building Blocks of Creative Writing – one marked CHARACTER and the other marked SETTING. The Building Block marked CHARACTER sits somewhat ragged.
I think we’ll leave that one for another day.
The Building Block marked SETTING, however, has beautiful flowers growing around its base and its edge is lined with the white hot rays of the noonday sun.
I like that.
So, what do we mean by the word Setting?
A Setting is so much more than a geographical location.
Yes, the geographical location is an important element of a Setting, but a geographical location alone does not a Setting make. A Setting is where a story is also the context within which the story takes place.
Let’s examine that word: context.
As you know, in this column I like to place the Building Blocks of Creative Writing within the context of our own lives.
If I was to use where I live as the Setting for a story, that Setting would be a council estate in East London – East London being the wider context of the Setting, the council estate being the more immediate geographical context. But as a Setting, the geographical area and the immediate geographical context can only provide a black and white cardboard cut-out. A painted curtain on an empty stage. And that is not enough. That is never enough.
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