I haven't put a lecture on this page, because the concepts are pretty short and simple. That doesn't mean they're not important, though!

Setting sounds as if it means where the story takes place, and that's exactly right. But it's also much more than pure physical location. When we consider setting and its effect on the story, we look at several things:

• The exact nature of the place: urban or rural, small town, seashore, mountaintop, lonely country farm, etc. If the place has special characteristics, take note of them: for example, the smell of grass, a haunted house next door, the roar of the surf.
• Climate and weather. These may be important to the meaning of the story. A country home in a howling blizzard is different from a country home basking in the hot sun of July. Storms often occur when characters are in turmoil.
• Time of day and time of year. In the U.S., we tend to associate day with openness, honesty, and cheerfulness; night is more apt to represent such ideas as quiet, secrets, perhaps evil. Similarly, we think of spring as the season of hope, summer as carefree, and so forth.
• Social aspects of setting: the community, ethnic group, or other social grouping may make a difference in the story.

As with other aspects of fiction, setting is a contributor to the overall effect of the story. So it's not enough to merely identify the setting. We must also work out what the setting contributes to the story. Usually, setting helps create a mood or atmosphere, and/or it contributes meaning.

For example, if you set a story in a damp cellar at night, with only a bare 25-watt bulb for light, and there are shadows moving slowly along the mildewed walls, you may have a scary mood or atmosphere suitable for a horror story. If you include a subtle sense of decay in that cellar, and your story is about the protagonist's moral decay, you are using setting to help create the theme, or meaning of the story.

To take another example, suppose you set your story in the fall, and devote some time to describing the dry leaves, the smell of smoke, and a chill in the air, you may be creating an atmosphere of nostalgia, especially if you throw in some apple-bobbing and Hallowe'en candy. On the other hand, if you leave out the apples and candy, and your protagonist is ill, you might be using your setting to help present a theme about the end of the year and the end of life.

One caution: don't get stuck on the obvious. Sometimes students say things like, "Well, this story is set in the country in the 1800's, so the character has a hard time when she decides to run away. It was hard to get anywhere in those days." The only response to that observation is, "So what?" Does that fact contribute to the meaning of the story? or even to its atmosphere? Not really. In that case, the time and place are really just givens -- the story has to be set somewhere, at some time. Look instead for what the setting contributes to the ideas in the story.