More Than Just Describing Place: The Rules of Setting and When to Break Them
More Than Just Describing Place: The Rules of Setting and When to Break Them
BC Oliva
This exercise consists of a laddered series of writing prompts that alternate between generating prose and reflecting on that material. Broken into discrete sections, these prompts guide students toward examining setting’s relationship to other craft elements, like character and narrative. Students finish with a brief set of easy-to-remember and utilitarian “rules” to use going forward.
Bouncing back and forth between writing and discussion breaks the class up into manageable chunks. Progressing through multiple prompts provides multiple opportunities for students to participate in low-stakes writing, which makes the lesson more experiential and memorable. Students of all skill levels respond well to these exercises. Beginning writers find these rules easy to grasp and remember, which provides a solid foundation for other concepts. More advanced writers often find these rules cause them to interrogate their own assumptions or habits in relation to setting, which provides a creative kick in the pants. Because of that, I tend to run through these exercises early in a semester. Students respond well to the “rules” and often end up quoting them in later workshops and critique letters.
Step-by-Step Instructions
The following text is a suggested script to be delivered directly to the students, while rules are drawn up on the board.
Part I: Details
- Write on the board “Rule #1: Setting is a collection of time, location, and culture.” To students: For five minutes, describe a place, something you think of as a “typical setting.” This could be your childhood bedroom, a fantastical world, the DMV, nineteenth-century Tokyo, or something more vague like “the woods.” Write in the first person present tense and try to capture as much detail as possible. Remember all your senses—What can you see, hear, smell? And don’t forget Rule #1. What do you know about this place?
- To students: For five minutes, read over what you’ve just written and consider what each detail means to you and why it was important enough to include. If you could only pick three or four details to describe this place, which ones would they be? Why? What is the purpose of including certain details over others? Be specific. Lots of times the default answer is “because it’s interesting” or “because it’s really there,” but our goal here is to reach beyond the easy answers!
- Write on the board “Rule #2: Choose your setting carefully and with purpose. The details you include should be important to the story. Avoid treating setting merely as ‘texture’ or ‘background.’”
Part II: Characters
- To students: For the next set of prompts you’ll need to think of a character. They could be from a manuscript you’re working on or someone else’s. The only requirement is that you know the character well enough to understand how they would react in different situations. You’ll be using the same character for the next four pr