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Spaztique — The Four Dimensions of Setting
Published: 2014-03-21 02:36:07 +0000 UTC; Views: 11631; Favourites: 21; Downloads: 0
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Guide suggested by LightningLord3 and seeker3218.
The Four Dimensions of Setting: A Guide To World-Building
I. Intro
II. Location
III. Time
IV. Culture
V. Events
VI. Putting it all together.
VII. Summary
I. Introduction
If the opening sentence is enough to tip you off, I realized that over all of the topics I've covered, there's two I haven't really gone in-depth to: prose and settings. I've done characters, plot/structure, genre, series creation, and theme, but nothing much on setting (so sadly, this isn't the prose guide yet: I'll do that one later). So, here's a guide to help you utilize setting.
As fanfic writers, many of us think we can get away with skimping on setting because it's one of the things that comes packaged with our fandom. As I've said before, fanfiction allows new writers to only concentrate on plot/theme while the setting, characters, and backstory come pre-packaged. This allows newer writers to worry less about the other parts of writing to only concentrate on events, and half of the time, it works: the characters embark on a story that feels close to what they'd do, the world feels like it does in the original series, and backstory is utilized to shape the main story. Of course, the other half simply use the setting to go place to place to meet random characters. I normally skip setting because I believe it's such a background thing in stories, something we barely even tend to notice while writing the plot, but it seems to be for others either a weakness or an untapped resource. Either way, this guide is everything I know that has personally helped me enhance pre-made settings in fanfiction and dream up (or conjure from your nightmares) original places to set your stories.
The Zeroeth Law of Storytelling: Storytelling Trumps ALL.
A warning before we begin: as I mentioned in my guide on original character creation, how you tell the story is more important than any other element you put in it. It should look something like this:
Plot > Theme > Character > Setting
Or...
How you tell the story > What the story is really about > The depth/dynamics of those that act out the plot > Where it takes place.
You can tell a great story with a simple theme, simple characters, and minimalist setting. In fact, the great storytelling will bring the most out of that simple theme, elevate the characters to complexity worthy of scholarly study, and make people gawk over the well-used set. However, if you put the best characters in the best setting with the most profound theme, and that has the worst telling, it puts a cap on how great the characters, setting, or theme can be.
This is one reason I tend to skimp on setting: I personally don't normally consider setting very important, and yet I write it instinctively. I love to explore settings and see what these strange new worlds have to offer, but I do it as an extension of the plot, as a way to test and explore characters, and to vary on the theme. Exploring setting is just something I do playfully: while I build the story's plot, characters, and theme, I look for different places to use and explore them, see what cool things I can find, and then employ them in the plot.
Of course, when I'm pitched stories, novice writers seem to care only about setting. I get pitches like, "It's about this family in this small town, and there's a these shops, and this scientist has a big underground lab, and there's a stadium where they have deathmatches, and there's a portal to an alternate dimension... and that's the story! So what do you think?" Or they'll say, "I'm having trouble with my story. It's about this spaceship, and it's got a bunch of decks, an entertainment complex, a holographic park, and a zoo. I just can't seem to think of anything! I'm thinking of adding more places onto the ship, but I just can't think of what happens next!" They never explain who is on the ship, what happens, or why, and that's why they can't think of what to write: a setting is not a plot, but a place where a plot happens.
Don't come into this guide believing it will improve your plot skills. This is to improve your setting skills.
The basics and The Small Little World:
A setting is combination of these four elements:
'America,' he snaps back.
I tell him, 'That's a little grand. Exactly where in America?'
'Bob, it don't matter,' he says, 'This is an intrinsically American story! We can set this anywhere we want: the swamps of Louisiana, Park Avenue, the Rocky Mountains. This film's about divorce, Bob! What can be more American than that?! So we can just put this anywhere we want!'
And I have to point out to the writer it's going to matter severely where you set your story, because how people go about splitting up in the bayous is not the same thing as the million dollar settlements in New York, and neither have anything to do with the potato feilds of Idaho."
From this anecdote, McKee launches into the concept of "The Small Little World": your setting must be small enough for you, the writer, to get a grip on what is happening. For example...
- Even grand stories take place in a small little world: vast fantasy tales may have entire maps of kingdoms and family trees, but it is still a small little world: you know where each kingdom is, who each character is and where they are, and where they're going and what they want.
- War and Peace is simply the episodic tales of two Russian families, set against a vast backdrop of Europe in turmoil.
- Stanley Kubrick was a master of these: The Shining had the lobby, the ballroom, the bedroom, the hedge maze, kitchen, and Room 237. Dr. Strangelove: Or How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb had only three main settings: the war room, General Jack D. Ripper's Office/Base, and Kong's Flying Fortress. Full Metal Jacket had the barracks, the training course, the bases in Veitnam, and the urban combat zones.
- Back to the Future series, across the series, has the Doc's Lab, Marty's 1985/1985A house, the 1985/1955 school, Hill Valley's town square, the 1955/1885 McFly house, the 1955 Banes house, the diner, and the dance hall. Part II adds Biff's hotel casino. Part III adds the cave, canyon, and railroad.
- Touhou Project limits each game to about nine locations: each stage is a potential place, and each ending takes place at the heroines home. The best Touhou fanfics stick to one: the worst tend to go on a grand tour of Gensokyo (though, this can be said of any fanfic).
- Visual novels and harem romance stories are beginning to get formulaic when it comes to this: you have the school, the home room, unused rooms, the club rooms, the character's home, the others' homes, and various "special places" share for romantic moments.
A good way to tell if you have a "small little world" is to see if you can "map it". Either draw a physical map or even just a simple "mind map", showing where each character/event/whatever frequents. Take note of how many times your characters visits each location, because varying settings with varying character dynamics give different results each time. If you begin spreading your characters too thin, the story may take on a disconnected feel, as if nobody ever leaves their designated location (though, this can be used for effect; to basically define the character by the setting, though people may want to see them outside of that setting eventually).
II. Location
Location - The Effects of Location on Story
Where does this story take place? Is it a natural setting like the outdoors or even in space? Is it unnatural, like a city or suburb? As mentioned earlier, where you put your story effects many of the other elements. One important thing to remember is that the setting is the arena in which you test your characters, so design it in a way that pits them to that test. Where you place your story changes what's available to test the character.
When you place the story somewhere, you affect what's possible to happen, for how long, and the culture of this society. Here are some basic questions to sculpt your society:
- What country is this in? If it's a fictional setting, what culture does this society borrow from? Research this society's culture, traditions, and why they developed these ideas.
- What geography is this place in? What business, trades, or lifestyles does such a place promote? You can't exactly tell a dudeical surfer story that takes place in Idaho, but you can in a setting with a decent beach. Look up what kind of lifestyle the people of this climate live in.
- What are the classes of people in your location? Are they all rich, poor, middle-class? If fictional, is there a radically large gap in the different classes (like Kill La Kill for instance?)? How do they all live? Why does this gap exist? Why has it lasted this way for so long?
- How did this society came to be? Why did they choose this place? How did they adapt? It wouldn't make sense to have a bunch of clumsy oafs living in the high mountains with gusty winds: a society that chose that place would be good at mountaineering.
- If it's a hypothetical location (sci-fi or fantasy), what physical laws does this place follow? How does this society live in accordance to those laws? How do they use them for their own life/work? If your characters live in a zero-gravity environment, it wouldn't make sense to have stairs or flat beds: this would be your chance to show off the props of a zero-gravity environment, like weightless sleeping bags and such.
- A society that has not adapted to the weather/climate (cold-weather people living in hot places, clumsy people in places with high falls).
- A setting where the characters cannot achieve their goals (again, surfer in Idaho) or achieve them too easily (gold miner begins the story in a gold deposit, and the story goal is only to strike gold, and not something else like in the Droopy Short Grin and Share It.)
- A setting with a backstory plot hole (unarmed peasants living in a town surrounded by monsters that have been there for centuries with no means of fighting them, characters living in a barren setting that has no food or drinkable water and have still survived for years with no visible food source).
- A setting where the right characters are not utilized or are misplaced (character lives in a thug-free ghetto, plot involves kid in police-heavy town having to solve a crime himself without any police appearing in the story)
- You'll find the limits of technology available. If it's sci-fi or fantasy, this is where you dream up the cool stuff.
- You'll find the normal meeting places, favorite activities, and how everyone makes a living.
- You'll discover the culture, entertainment, sports, and food of this society.
- It will be a world simultaneously unlike what we normally experience (that which is different), and yet close to what we experience (that which is more the same).
- You'll have access to the right characters for the right situations: no more putting everything in the main characters' hands, or at least having an excuse to remove the extra help, answering the question, "Yeah, well what if the hero didn't have _____ to help them?"
Location - Symbolism
While where you place you setting will affect the culture, there's also some grand symbolism in each setting you use. Other writing advice says "make the setting its own character," and this is partly that: you dress this setting up and give it traits.
Although we like to think of settings as either natural or unnatural, writing teach John Truby believes this is a trick question: virtually all settings are symbolically natural. To explain this, look at how settings are used in works:
- Oceans/Space are used for going to deeper/outward into the free-floating unknown, full of mystery, danger, and (of course) adventure. Just look at any sea epic or space epic.
- Forests can act as both a cathedral to nature and a hunting ground for prey, where both the natural (animals, killers) and unnatural (ghost, monsters) can stalk.
- Jungles are forests on caffeine: you're reduced to prey, and it's kill or be killed. Ever noticed how much gritter jungle combat is in comparison to forest combat? Compare the typical WW2 action flick to a Vietnam film/Pacific Theater story.
- Any extreme weather (desert, ice, hard weather) is brutal and makes life inhospitable. In Star Wars, Luke lives on Tatooine, a desert planet where farmers farm for water, and he's later lost on the dangerous ice world of Hoth, then finally taken prisoner back on Tatooine; each time in the first main setting alone.
- Islands are worlds of isolation, surrounded by the Ocean setting (or, metaphorically, Space). Of course, put the right cast on the right island, and crap goes down over time: just look at Lord of the Flies, Lost, The Tempest, or King Kong.
- Mountains, in the words of Robert McKee again, are where great things happen (after all, Moses was given the Ten Commandments on a mountain, not in his kitchen). It's where nature and heights go to extremes, and the higher you go, the more connected you are with the heavens.
- In contrast, we have the Plains, which is smooth and accessible, but at the same time, where boring things happen. It is only when you add nature to this element or contrast it with something else does it come to life.
- Rivers are natural paths, always flowing in one direction, either for good (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Princess and the Frog) or for ill (Apocalypse Now and its source material Heart of Darkness, Deliverance).
- Adding weather to any of these will modify its usage. Compare adding lightning and storms to the ocean as to a jungle or mountain. Compare adding snow to a plain or mountain. The combinations will result in a wide variety of emotions, but how you use them is up to you. (I know people are going to run up to me after this and ask for a definitive list on what weather causes what emotions, but it's really your call for what feels right.)
- Altitude plays a part, too. The higher you go, the closer you are to the heavens. The lower, the closer to hell or rock bottom. Many story climaxes tend to involve characters ascending buildings or descending deeper into a stronghold.
So, where do man-made settings fit into the above symbols?
- Any story set on a vehicle (train, plane, ship) is set on an island: an enclosed space that is surrounded by vast space.
- Cities may be portrayed as mountainous (think of the climax of The Matrix), oceanic (many sci-fi/steampunk cities love this: think Bioshock Infinite), like jungles (think Spiderman swinging across the skyscrapers, and Batman soaring across on a glider), or forests.
- Roads can act in place of rivers.
- Weather effects also apply to these settings in the same way as they apply to nature. Just as lightning atop a mountain is "epic", lightning atop a mountainous building/structure is also epic.
Here are some examples of what just a few changes in props can do to a location: you have an office with a black, plastic IKEA desk. On it is a budget office computer. On the desk itself, you see one of the following...
- Stacks of soda cans, rock music CDs.
- Various manga, hand-built Gundam models.
- A leather binder and an ink pen.
- A midi controller keyboard and a sampler pad.
- A bloody knife and a pair of black gloves.
III. Time
When does this story take place? Now this one is quite easy if you're doing it in our timeline, but you can also do variations.
A story can take place either in the past, in the present, a hypothetical time (future or alternate reality), or a location where time is meaningless.
The Past
The past allows us to get distant with the dramatic events; some of which feel too close to home if portrayed in the present. To properly portray a story in the past, this requires plenty of historical research. Luckily, history scholars have written tons on the cultures and ways of thinking of past civilizations and peoples. Here are a few tips for writing about the past:
- Understand that the past is not the present. Don't think you can write about a teenage ditz who loves to go shopping and hang out with her friends in the medieval times, where women were expected to cook, clean, and make babies (not to mention sleep with the lord of the estate if she is a virgin, also known as the "Rite of the First Night"). Look up past cultures, absorb them, mentally live among their people and see what it is like for them. To you, it mean seem odd, but to them, this is everyday life (remember this for when we get to the culture section, especially regarding how you shouldn't point out how the past is different from the present).
- Because the past is not the present, people will think differently. Formal logic was not formally codified until the Greeks and their philosophers. The scientific method would be much, much further off. In the Renaissance, it was common to speak virtually every language and be skilled in math, science, philosophy, religion, history, and art, and yet civil rights were barely an afterthought. Slavery was not only legal about 150+ years ago, but seen as necessary and practical to the point where Representative Preston Brooks beat up Senator Charles Sumner with a cane for an anti-slavery speech. Psychology itself has only existed for less than a hundred years. In this case, look up the history of philosophy to know where one movement of thought begins and another ends.
- Because the past is not the present, your available options for what can affect the plot change. Cell phones killed a number of tropes and started others. Without the internet, you had libraries, and without libraries, you only had wise elders. In fact, TVTropes has a trope for this concept called Trope Breaker : an event of peace of technology that makes a trope unworkable. This will be one of your easier research assignments, as TVTropes already has a nice long list of what history has destroyed in terms of plot options, but remember: looking up general history will help you figure out what else is available.
- And, of course, people in the past will behave differently. Back in the early 1900s, the legs of tables were covered because it was considered "too sexual". Fifty years ago, you'd actually dress up in formal clothes to go to amusement parks. In the height of the 60s/70s, you'd only get a slap on the wrist for going naked to a pool/swimming park. And let's not even begin on how certain mental illnesses (or even regular illnesses) were treated before the days of real medicine. When they say, "People never change," they mean the basic fundamentals like wanting a balanced life, fighting for survival, attaining knowledge, and loving one another (look up Greek literature, and you'll see they wanted the same stuff out of life we did), not social laws (again, look up Greek literature, and you'll see their social habits and practices differ greatly from ours). If you've researched everything thus far, you will find how people acted in the past.
The present is what we're familiar with, though years from now, it will eventually end up as a period piece, now matter how well written or timeless, dating your story back in The Past. Though, unlike The Past, you don't get the added hindsight. You do, however, have the honest insight in the now with no filter coloring past events. So, years from now, when people read or see your story, they'll get the most realistic portrayal of that time period.
In fact, here's an interesting thing to note: look at normal, low-key stories that were written 60s or 70s and set in the "modern" era. You'll actually find it's more timeless than our modern portrayals as a world full of hippies or disco nuts. Look at virtually all of Harold Ramis's filmography: Caddyshack, Vacation, Ghostbusters, Stripes, Back To School, Groundhog Day, all set in the era they were made in, but other than minor changes in technology, they feel timeless. With these (among other accomplishments), Ramis has not only cemented himself as the greatest comedy writer of his era, but also one of the greatest writers period.
If you're going to write in the present, here are some tips...
- Understand the present. You have your corner of the world, but remember that you share this world with about 7 billion other different individuals. Know how to accurately portray people that aren't you (but this is just general writing knowledge).
- Don't be timely: if you must use your era, represent your era. The beauty of exploring the past is we can delve into situations that are allegorical to the present without becoming an instant period piece. The failure of the Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, currently the world-record holders for worst screenwriters of all time, make their living on nothing but pop culture jokes and references of whatever time they were writing their latest "spoof". Look at others failures like Xanadu, which cashed in on the roller disco craze, or many 90s extreme sports movies. All stories will eventually become period pieces in the future anyway, but how do you want to be remembered? An embarrassment of your era, or a representative of your era? Back To The Future took place in the year it was released: 1985. The 1985 aspect was played to the hilt: the clothes, the Huey Lewis music, Marty skateboarding by an aerobics class, it all screams 1985, which will come into play later when Marty goes back to 1955. Even 20 years later, we get a great sense of what it was really like in 1985, because that's what it was like in 1985. Fads will pass, we'll look back at our cliches and laugh, but if you just write life as lived, it will live on forever.
- Be sensitive to future politics/movements. Writers not only learn from the past, but look to the future. While we cannot guess everything that will come into being, we must understand that our current ideas will soon be outdated in the future, our technology will be looked on in the past as relics, and our social virtues and vices will greatly differ. When you write, be on the cutting edge of ideas and concepts. Watch TEDTalks if you want some interesting futurism topics to get you ahead of the current populace.
The hypothetical allows us to dream up the impossible and make it real. We can travel into the future and make inventions/societies that haven't yet existed, or we can change our present, or perhaps change the past. Here, the limit is our imagination, but even then, it is our final job to make this setting make sense.
Like the modern setting, it is possible to end up being timely. Family Guy made fun of this with their gag about a movie, "Depressing 1970s Sci-Fi Movie Starring a Guy In A Turtleneck", wherein a typical sci-fi hero, thinking he escaped an enemy corporation in a red desert, finds another building with clones full of himself inside. His female sidekick with big hair and a short miniskirt says the only other option is to shoot himself. He obliges, dies in the desert, and she pulls off her face to reveal she was a robot. The camera slowly zooms out over the desolate landscape as Moog synthesizer music plays. This was part of a huge trend of down-ending sci-fi movies that swept the 1970s under an underdog film Star Wars showed them all how it was done.
Star Wars doesn't take place in the future: in fact, the first thing it did to blow away audiences was opening with the text, "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away." You had heroes in Japanese robes or western regalia, jazz music played by bug-eyed aliens, the villains wore essentially Nazi uniforms (even the mooks were called Stormtroopers), battles were modeled after WW2 films and Japanese Period Dramas, and the character dynamics were modeled after classical Hollywood romances/adventures/comedies. Audiences expected Luke Skywalker to try to use The Force, miss, and the film would simply end with the rebel base being destroyed. Nope: breaking a chain of down-ending sci-fi films about guys in turtlenecks, Star Wars ends in an unironic happy ending (all of the heroes survive for a grand award ceremony and come out as galactic heroes), and sci-fi went from allegories about modern nihilism to epic adventure.
The hypothetical also applies to alternate timelines and fantasy worlds. The world of anime seems to know how to do this quite well: Puella Magi Madoka Magicka is a fantasy series, and yet it seems to take place in a futuristic setting, adding contrast to the magical elements. Kill La Kill sets its story in what's seemingly modern-day Japan, but in an anachronistic city with separate districts for the different classes, with its school, essentially a military academy so the higher-ups can take over the world with super-powered school uniforms, at the very top of the city. Any series that uses giant mechs definitely qualifies: we don't have the technology, but in these series, they do.
Here are tips for writing the hypothetical:
- Understand the future is not the present, and that other worlds are not our own. When writing for the future, don't write as if it's present day with only a few minor changes. Back to the Future II did this for comedy, but playing this straight is lethal (again, look at the depressing 70s Sci-Fi movies with the guy in a turtleneck). Styles changes, cultures change, and technology changes. In the theoretical, you're allowed to make it like ours (the Ace Combat series used to be great at this before deciding on going for the Future route instead of alternate worlds), but the further you expect us to go, the more you better get ready for an original, well-thought-out world. To get on the cutting edge, look up futurist literature or check out futurism talks like that of TEDTalks.
- Build the culture from scratch. To preview what's to come in the culture part, basically have a decent knowledge of world cultures, creatures, myths, and more. Draw upon how cultures build their societies and incorporate it into your setting. Although I recommend taking up psychology to write characters, take up sociology to write detailed settings. The more you must make your own society, the more you will have to research. It's pretty easy to make an alternate world where fake brands exist, technology is a little different, and even the subcultures are different (Quentin Tarantino's universe is close to like our reality, but not quite). The further you go out there, the more you'll have to either model after other cultures or develop on your own. Even borrowing things, as Star Wars does from Japanese period dramas, Westerns, WW2 movies, and classic fantasies can result in amazing results.
- While a hypothetical world can be surreal, there's a limit. Alice In Wonderland, anything by Monty Python or Jean Luc Goddard, these works are set in surreal worlds unlike ours. We'll get back to this in the culture setting, but while you can make strange futures/hypothetical timelines, understand that you can eventually cross the line into irredeemably odd. Quest For Camelot may take place in a fantasy-based past, but there are so many strange elements that it feels needless. Compare with Looper: audiences are initially confused by the fact some of the population has telekinetic powers, and it seems utterly arbitrary for a good chunk of the film. The whole time, everyone, both characters and audience, think the telekinesis think is pointless. The characters think it can't be for anything useful, the audience thinks it's just odd to include, but by the climax, somebody uses it and it reveals an important plot point, thus making it absolutely vital to the setting and story.
There are stories where time has no meaning. Most tales about animals like Animal Farm or Watership Down, and tales of theoreticals and concepts like Flatland or The Dot and the Line don't take place in the past, present, or future: they simply are. In this case, you don't really have to worry about how time affects the story, because it doesn't. In this case...
- Focus on the culture. Even animals and shapes have lives, and since there's no history, you simply focus on what they do and how they act.
- Avoid making it contemporary unless you want it to take place in the present. If you're writing a story about a bunch of cells trying to survive a virus outbreak like a war story, you have two options: portray it as realistically as possible and make it timeless, or tell it like a war story parody, complete with the gruff sarge, the whiny rookie, the dashing hero type, and so on. The second option can still be entertaining in the hands of a good writer, but since you're modernizing it, you'll have to pay attention to all of the tips and hints listed in the section on The Present.
- If you encounter a story premise that has no timeframe, don't sweat it. This is why this has its own section: it's okay not to have a time in your story. If you can't put your story anywhere, then don't agonize over where it fits on a timeline, because it doesn't need to fit anywhere if that's the case.
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Comments: 3
One thing I think you should highlight / pay attention to is that when using a real world setting (or even an established fictional one) is to not rely on stereotypes or common knowledge without checking whether or not these so-called facts are, in fact, true. Otherwise you can get embarrassing mistakes like, say, repeating blatant falsehoods about the middle ages that were actually made up in Ivanhoe. Or other things that will attract smart ass internet commenters.
That aside, this is a good through exploration of setting.
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Since no one seems to gotten this (gee, Avian people don't all share a pedantic interest in history, who'd have thought), this is a reference to the whole "Lord's Right" thing which never actually existed.
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already posted this comment in the RaidCall chat during the reading of this guide earlier today, but I had a personal experience with starting a story too early. When I was originally writting Walking Netherworld, I was starting with David's school life and build up to how he reaches Gensokyo when I realized that it was better to just throw him into Gensokyo directly, where I would be that much closer to getting to the action.
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