When a Setting Changes
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.
When a setting changes, it may suggest...
Ask what else changed at the same moment — usually in the same paragraph.
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.
A ten-year jump counts as a change of setting.
Setting is time and place, so movement between years counts.
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.
What kind of setting change is this?
Sort each shift by its type.
Settings may be contrasted to establish a conflict of ____ or ideas.
Name the value each place carries and you have named the central conflict.
A jump in time is a change of setting. Setting is time and place, so ten years passing can signal every shift a journey would — new limits, a new social situation, a different self. Looking only for movement between places misses half the changes a story makes.
Match each setting to the value it might carry.
The conflict of the story is usually the conflict between those values.
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.
Select all the steps of the setting-change pass.
Counting is not analysis.
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.
The story moves from the farm to a rented room in town. What else changed in that paragraph: he stops being addressed by his surname, and stops being owed anything. Two settings contrasted — one carrying obligation, the other anonymity — and the conflict is between them.
When a setting changes it may suggest other movements, changes or shifts — ask what else changed in the same passage. Settings may be contrasted to establish a conflict of values, so name the value each place carries. And since setting is time and place, a jump in years is a setting change too.