Lesson 3.02 Where Are You?

"Every story would be another story, and unrecognizable if it took up its characters and plot and happened somewhere else... Fiction depends for its life on place. Place is the crossroads of circumstance, the proving ground of, What happened? Who's here? Who's coming?..."

 - Eudora Welty

Snoopy, the character from the comic strip Peanuts, begins his imaginary novel with, "It was a dark and stormy night." That isn't very descriptive, but it does tell the readers the setting is at night in the rain.

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Setting

Through the setting, writers use their words to show readers where and when the story takes place. The importance of the setting varies depending on how it functions in the writing. How a writer describes a setting might contribute to the mood or atmosphere of a story. Setting may also provide some of the external conflict for the character. Setting may also serve as a symbol. Some authors minimize the setting in order to put more focus on the characters and dialogue. It all depends on how a writer wants to use the setting in the story.

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The Great Gatsby

Look how F. Scott Fitzgerald relies on setting in Chapter 3 of The Great Gatsby.

"There was music from my neighbor's house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motor-boats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam. On week-ends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra gardener, toiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers and garden-shears, repairing the ravages of the night before."

Fitzgerald doesn't say it was a hot summer's day with lots of parties; he shows the readers the setting through his descriptions.

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