Setting - Where are we and how did we get here?

Setting on its most base level seems quite simple - it is the place and time of the story. On the primary level setting is an important as aspect of the "populating" of a story, that is, the things in a story that lend it the ability to suspend your disbelief, to cause you to forget that what you are reading is a fiction and to invest in the characters and the narrative. Part of that involves filling this fictional world with a setting that readers can "see" and that supports our imaginative conception of the "world" a given story takes place in.

But setting should also serve a dramatic purpose, if it is going to maximize its usefulness as an element of fiction. The stories that best use setting use it in a dual capacity. Think of Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown - this story, at its outset, describes a Puritan street in a town, but it is not until Brown enters the forest that the setting is fully rendered and used to help turn the forest (the wild) itself into a sort of a character. "The Open Boat," by Crane is an example from this week's reading. Obviously, setting plays a large part of the story. They are drifting at sea in a life-raft. The place, or physical surroundings, cannot help but play a large part in the story, after all, the setting is part of the conflict/complication in this story. But ask yourself what purpose the setting serves when the boat comes within view of land - the setting is described there as well, and it has an effect upon the characters and subsequently upon our reading(s) of the story.

That is to say, setting can also affect characters' motives/actions/emotions, as well as being the basis for conflict. In Richard Ford's "Great Falls," think of the part that "place" plays in the developing conflict between the mother and father.

Setting is a major force when used to its utmost advantage - it can help drive the conflict and can even affect characters, sometimes it can even be seen as a character of sorts - and it is often an overlooked part of the story - kind of like good bass players in rock and roll bands. you almost never notice them until they are removed from the mix.