Write beyond conventional ideas of setting to elevate your fiction!
Setting is the foundation for any story. Whether you’re thinking about character, motivation, obstacles, plot, or the feelings you want to invoke in your reader, setting is where your entire story takes root. This one-session class expands on traditional ideas of setting as merely the where and when of story. Writers will acquaint themselves beyond typical conventions of setting through a short lecture and brief in-class readings. Writing prompts and in-class writing time will be intermixed throughout. Whether you’re writing a realistic story or an otherworldly one that might involve more world-building, you’ll leave this class with concrete tools to apply to your current project or your next one.
Live video conference: This workshop will be held via our online video conferencing platform, Zoom. You can view brief tutorials on using the platform here. On the start date or the day before, participants will receive an email with login info (please check your spam if you don’t see it).
In this workshop you’ll learn:
- How people and place interact in stories
- How conflict and tension derive from setting as much as character
- How a character’s motivations are influenced by geography and time
- How writers can use setting to establish mood, tone, and genre for a piece of writing
Time requirements
- Workshop participants will be asked to find an example of setting from a book they’ve recently read to reflect on during the workshop.
Materials
- All reading materials will be provided.
Who should take this workshop?
- This workshop is designed for beginning and intermediate writers who are looking to elevate their work by applying craft techniques and theory of setting to their writing.
If you need an accommodation for this workshop, please contact us at access@writer.org. We will attempt to fulfill all requests, but advance notice is necessary to arrange for some accessibility services.
