Journal Entry 37: Setting and Plot

A story's setting may affect plot events. Think, for example, about a struggle between two friends that takes places in 2005 on a California beach in the height of summer. Then, imagine that struggle taking place two hundred years ago on a farm in New England in December. The actions, speech, and clothing of the people in the struggle would be very different. What other setting elements would be different? How might that affect the events of the story? What stories do you know that would be different if the setting changed? How would the events of the story be different in a different setting?

The argument could take place in the Ice Age at the Arctic with woolly mammoths walking around, or it could take place in the distant future on a planet far, far away, or it can even take place on December something in 2012 (while the world ends). During the Ice Age, those two friends will have to wear different clothing and they might not even know how to communicate, much less argue. In the distant future on a planet far, far away, those two friends would probably be using different languages and might even be a different specie. If it took place in 2012, which is actually not very far from the present, they would probably dress pretty much the same and also use the same language as we do now, but the whole tone of the story will be a lot different (might be all panicky and stuff). The story Cinderella would be a lot different if its setting changed. If it had taken place in the present, as in the twentieth Century, then there won't be a prince at all, and Cinderella's step-mother would probably be sewed.