כאשר ההגדרה משתנה

A change of place signals other changes

• When a setting changes, it may suggest other movements, changes or shifts in the narrative.
• So a move from a house to a hospital, or a summer to a winter, is rarely only logistics.
• Ask what else changed at the same moment — the answer is usually in the same paragraph.

Moving from the kitchen to the courtroom may change more than the wallpaper.

Settings can be set against each other

• Settings may be contrasted in order to establish a conflict of values or ideas associated with those settings.
• So two places in one story is a structure, not a coincidence.
• Name the value each place carries, and you have named the story's central conflict.

Which place does the story call home?

• When two settings are contrasted, one is usually treated as the place the character belongs to.
• That treatment is a judgement, and it may not be the character's own.
• A story that calls the city an escape and one that calls it an exile use the same two places for opposite arguments.

Time counts as a setting change too

• Setting is time and place, so a jump of ten years is a change of setting.
• It can suggest exactly the shifts a change of place would: a new social situation, new limits, a new self.
• Students look for movement between rooms and miss movement between years.

A setting-change pass

• Mark every change of place and of time.
• At each, name what else shifted in the same passage.
• Where two settings are contrasted, name the value each one carries.