Setting by Jack M Bickham

Author:Jack M Bickham [Bickham, Jack M]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-03-23T07:00:00+00:00

Doing an exercise like this may feel mechanical. No matter. I urge you to do it, writing it step-by-step in the order I've just given you. I think the work will give you a better feel for how setting can have direct impact on character. The better you come to understand this interrelationship, the better you can tailor setting to character, and vice versa.

USE OF SETTING AS A CHARACTER

The tactic of making a setting into a character was mentioned previously in connection with my novel, Twister. It seems appropriate to reiterate the point in the context of this discussion. In short, the point is that sometimes a setting (or aspect of a setting) can be so overwhelmingly important in development of the plot (and the characters' lives) that it seems to take on a life of its own. This is a dynamic which cannot be forced; nothing could be cornier than trying to breathe life into a setting not vital and central enough to "take over" a story. But setting can become a character when setting, plot and characters blend perfectly.

In Arthur Hailey's Hotel, for example, the setting also becomes something of a character in its own right, practically taking on a life of its own. Similarly, in Hailey's Airport, the terminal building and everything it contains seems to become for the reader almost a huge living organism itself. In stories of the sea, the sea often becomes the central antagonist, and seems (even in a classic narrative poem like "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner") to become malevolent.

Clearly, setting and character are inextricably tied in the dynamic of fiction. But setting can affect fiction in other ways, too, as the next chapter describes.

CHAPTER 9

HOW SETTING ADDS TO STORY MEANING AND VITALITY

In designing the setting or settings for your story, it's important to remember that the setting, and how you handle it, may go far toward finally defining what your story means. In addition, your work on the setting may stimulate your imagination to explore story angles and ideas that weren't at all in your original concept of the tale.

STORY MEANING

Selection of setting can profoundly affect story meaning because some themes may be difficult or even impossible to examine in a certain kind of setting, while a different setting could make these same themes seem almost inevitable as a concern of the characters in such a place and time. If you begin planning your story to be played out in a rough, isolated wilderness setting, for example, that choice may at the outset be nothing more than a convenience for you, or the first idea that leaped into your mind.

But selection of such a setting virtually eliminates some story themes and makes others likely.

For example, if you choose to set your story in a rugged, isolated mining town in the Klondike a century or more ago, it's hard to imagine that your story's meaning could have much to do with any of the following:

• The pressures of high society on

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