Inklings: Setting, Where Everything Happens

I think I may have jumped the gun a little last week when I discussed the first of the three parts of the story, the beginning. Before doing that, I had meant to talk about the setting, which is where your story takes place. The fun thing about writing fiction is that you can write about anything, anyone or any place.

Your story can take place anywhere. The only limit is your imagination. Setting encompasses a few things:

• Place--Where does your story take place? It could be in your school or your neighborhood or your state. You may want to have it take place in another country. In the case of my Deliverers series, they start out in our world, but wind up taking place on other worlds that I pull from my imagination.

• Time--Your story does not have to happen in the here and now. You can write about another time. Historical fiction novels like My Brother Sam Is Dead do this. Their authors do a magical job of bringing us to another time like the Civil War or Ancient Greece. 

• Society--The types of societies you write about also make up part of the setting. In the Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling uses modern day English society as the initial setting, then thrusts Harry into a secret society of witches and wizards unlike anything he--or we--have known before. This society has distinctly different customs from our society. That's one of the things that makes the series so much fun.

So now you have all the basics, an idea, characters, setting and an outline. You've made a beginning. You're off an writing! Next week, I'll talk about the meat of your story, the middle. See you then!