STEP FIVE: SETTING & TIME
Where does your story take place? Across how much time? These are questions of the setting, scale, and pace of your story. Every narrative has a place, and its specific sights, sounds and smells will give your story texture. Scale relates to the physical and/or thematic areas of focus. Pace is how quickly or slowly the story moves through its sequence of events.
WHERE
The setting is the location of your story. Think of the place that your characters inhabit. What does it look like? What does it smell and sound like? How does it make your characters feel? Are they hopeful for its future? Are they concerned about its present path? Does it make them feel safe? Vulnerable? What physical details about this place reveal deeper truths? Be specific in your description. It will help bring the world of your story alive for your audience.
As you consider the setting, think about what scale best fits your narrative:
- Are you telling a personal story?
- A local one?
- A national, or regional story?
- A global one?
Each scale has its own benefits and drawbacks. A personal story has the upside of feeling real and concrete. Audiences can grasp the individuals involved. However, working on a small scale can sometimes make the relevance of your story seem limited. In contrast the universal importance of global stories like climate change are much more obvious, but they can also seem abstract or overwhelming. Thankfully, you can move between scales as you share your narrative. Feel free to zoom in and zoom out as you see fit. Share local details that make your setting feel authentic and lived in, then widen the lens to show how this local conflict ties into national, regional or global issues.
For examples of how activist storytellers have integrated setting into their messaging, look at the case study below.
RELATED CASE STUDY
For examples of how activist storytellers have integrated setting into their messaging, look at this case study.
USE MICRO STORIES
We often like to think of the BIG story. A million acres of forest. An entire planet threatened by climate change. But big stories can be hard to understand for many people. Why not go small? Really small! This can sometimes be the best way to capture the meaning of a story at a level most people can really digest.
For example: The images of Omran Daqneesh captured the inhumanity and suffering of Syria. He became the “face of Aleppo.”
Life is Suffering: This video story captures the struggles of Mexican immigrants in America.
You can even tell a story in a sentence: Subject + Predicate (a person/thing/idea/place + action/condition/effect of subject): “They shoot the white girl first.” – Toni Morrison, Paradise
SLOW PEOPLE DOWN
Pacing in storytelling is very important. You want to tell certain parts of a story quickly and other parts slowly. In a high paced world, varying the pace of storytelling is important. Slow down your story at significant moments in the story arc. Let the people take in every detail. Pile on the details. Add more and more!
This Soviet era cartoon is an example of how slow stories can be evocative: hedgehog and the fog.
DIG INTO THE SETTING
- How do we characterise the world? Broken, hopeful, a battlefield, a community, a machine, scary, inviting
- What scale do we use: abstract, distant, regional, national, local, personal
- Sensory details: Sight, sound, smell, touch.
- Meaning: who lives here; who wants to live here; who’s visible; invisible; memories, history, dreams, ambitions, failures, heartbreak; symbolism of setting: i.e. a ship, a capital building, a statue.