No setting no story.

Essay by GApunkmonkeyHigh School, 10th gradeA, November 2003

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No Setting No Story

The setting is one of the most basic elements in a story. It sets the tone, paints a picture for the reader to imagine, and basically shapes the story itself. Without the setting the story could be set in anyplace anytime. You could have a story about space aliens corrupting the inhabitants of mars, but it's set in a ranch in the early nineteen hundreds. It just doesn't make any sense. If you don't have a setting, you don't have a realistic story.

When you have a setting, you set a mood, consciously or not. For example, anywhere you might venture in the world has a feeling to it, a mood. When you travel somewhere new, you see it differently than someone else might. Everything about that place is the same, it's just the way you as a person interpret it. You see it in a certain way, get a certain feel to it, and sub-consciously imprint in your brain that feeling to the room.

That's how you might remember it in the future. That's just how the setting is from a story, just you don't see it with your eyes, you read it from a text, and imagine it in your head as you keep reading. The way the author describes the setting is the mood, and the way one interprets it is the feeling. In "The Scarlet Ibis" the author sets a grim mood by phrasing a simple action in a certain way, "and their smell drifted across the cotton field and through every room of our house, speaking softly to the dead." (Hurst, p184)

Another thing about the setting that makes the story realistic is that it paints a picture. The more an author describes the setting, the...