Lesson on Creating Setting By: Mrs. Trudy A. Miller The creation of setting is integral to creating an interesting, spellbinding story. Setting influences the mood of the story and heightens the conflict. Good storytellers create good settings by using imagery and description that makes the reader see what is happening in that special movie theater in the head. In other words, good storytellers make the story come to life for the reader. Read the four selections on the following pages to get an idea of effective settings. The first example is from the novel Jaws and describes the vanishing of the great white shark s first victim. What kind of mood do you think the author, Peter Benchley, was trying to create in this passage? The second example is from the novel Roots by Alex Haley. The protagonist, Kunta Kinte, has been captured in the jungles of African and thrown into the hold of a slave ship. Hailey wanted to describe the horrors of what that experience was like. Do you think he has succeeded? The next two examples are from two very famous short stories. As you read them, ask yourself what kind of mood each author was trying to create. Can you see a picture in your head? As you can now see after reading these four examples, the creation of setting is very important indeed. You are now going to create a setting. First, focus on what kind of setting you want to create and what kind of feelings you want to evoke in your reader. Perhaps this is a setting that you want to use latter for the short story of fiction you will be creating at the end of this marking period. Or perhaps this is just a piece in which you want to practice creating setting. Regardless of your ultimate goals, the objective is to create a piece that evokes a specific mood in your reader, whether that be fear, pleasure, romance, humor, or whatever. When you have decided what kind of mood and what kind of setting you want to create, picture it like a movie in your head. Concentrate on that movie very hard. Experience that movie with as many of the five senses that you
can. Ask yourself: What do I see? Hear? Smell? Taste? Touch? Then try to capture this all on the page. This is using imagery - trying to create an image in the mind of your reader by drawing upon the senses. It is this technique that produces good writing, writing that your audience will enjoy reading. You are to create your first draft with your heart, that is you are to pull up this movie in your mind and just capture what you are experiencing and get in down on paper. You are not to stop to proofread or edit. You will do that in later drafts. As follows are the criteria for your piece: 1. Do your writing in Google.docs and share with me, and give me editing privileges. 2. Title your piece: Setting Essay 3. Put the following headings at the top of your page: Creative Writing Your Name Setting Essay Period Rough Draft Date 4. Use 12 point Times News Roman Font 5. Double space the body of your work 6. Have between two to three typed pages no less and no more. 7. Create a complete rough draft before you edit. 8. When you are done with the rough draft, create a final copy from the rough draft. You will do you editing in the final copy. 9. When you are done with your final copy, print both your rough draft and your final copy. Attach your rough draft to the back with a single staple in the upper right had corner. Submit your finished work. 10. This assignment will count as 100 points, and you will be assessed on the criteria for effective writing per the PSSA Domains. 11. You will have three class periods to create this piece; that also includes the reading of this tutorial. You may work on your piece both in and out of class.
From The Monkey s Paw The talisman fell to the floor, and he regarded it shudderingly. Then he sank trembling into a chair as the old woman, with burning eyes, walked to the window and raised the blind. He sat until he was chilled with the cold, glancing occasionally at the figure of the old woman peering through the window. The candle end, which had burned below the rim of the china candlestick, was throwing pulsating shadows on the ceiling and walls, until, with a flicker larger than the rest, it expired. The old man, with an unspeakable sense of relief at the failure of the talisman, crept back to his bed, and a minute or two afterward the old woman came silently and apathetically beside him. Neither spoke, but both lay silently listening to the ticking of the clock. A stair creaked, and a squeaky mouse scurried noisily through the wall. The darkness was oppressive, and after lying for some time screwing up his courage, the husband took the box of matches, and striking one, went downstairs for a candle. At the foot of the stairs the match went out, and he paused to strike another, and at the same moment a knock, so quiet and stealthy as to be scarcely audible, sounded on the front door. The matches fell from his hand. He stood motionless, his breath suspended until the knock was repeated. Then he turned and fled swiftly back to his room, and closed the door behind him. A third knock sounded through the house. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below. The man's hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled his neck. It was attached to a stout cross-timber above his head and the slack fell to the level of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon the ties supporting the rails of the railway supplied a footing for him and his executioners--two private soldiers of the Federal army, directed by a sergeant who in civil life may have been a deputy sheriff. At a short remove upon the same temporary platform was an officer in the uniform of his rank, armed. He was a captain. A sentinel at each end of the bridge stood with his rifle in the position known as "support," that is to say, vertical in front of the left shoulder, the hammer resting on the forearm thrown straight across the chest--a formal and unnatural position, enforcing an erect carriage of the body. It did not appear to be the duty of these two men to know what was occurring at the center of the bridge; they merely blockaded the two ends of the foot planking that traversed it. Beyond one of the sentinels nobody was in sight; the railroad ran straight away into a forest for a hundred yards, then, curving, was lost to view. Doubtless there was an outpost farther along. The other bank of the stream was open ground--a gentle slope topped with a stockade of vertical tree trunks, loopholed for rifles, with a single
embrasure through which protruded the muzzle of a brass cannon commanding the bridge. Midway up the slope between the bridge and fort were the spectators--a single company of infantry in line, at "parade rest," the butts of their rifles on the ground, the barrels inclining slightly backward against the right shoulder, the hands crossed upon the stock. A lieutenant stood at the right of the line, the point of his sword upon the ground, his left hand resting upon his right. Excepting the group of four at the center of the bridge, not a man moved. The company faced the bridge, staring stonily, motionless. The sentinels, facing the banks of the stream, might have been statues to adorn the bridge. The captain stood with folded arms, silent, observing the work of his subordinates, but making no sign. Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him. In the code of military etiquette silence and fixity are forms of deference.