Creative writing Bringing Character and Setting Together

Once you have one or more characters and a setting you need to bring them both together.

Incorporation There are several techniques or ways to incorporate a character into a setting.

Ask yourself these questions Does the character fit in with the setting? If yes do they fit in realistically? If yes, you will probably need to add some twists into the plot later to make it interesting

Disparity Some of the best writing involves characters in an unlikely setting For example: Harry Potter, a small boy becomes a wizard at a mystical school or Children transported to a mystical land in Chronicles of Narnia So when you are thinking about character and setting you might want to try to place the central character in a slightly unlikely situation, but not one that’s entirely unbelievable.

An example Character Setting

Involving other characters in the plot We now have a character in an unusual setting: A boy and a haunted house. The boy will be the central character also know as the protagonist

The next step is to introduce an ‘enemy’ or antagonist This character is going to create problems that the central character will have to overcome

Antagonist (bad guy)

Antagonist We need a brief description of the protagonist. Physical appearance but more importantly background and personality. Do this now.

Helping hand Now we have a protagonist (good guy) and an antagonist (bad guy). A third character can be used to help the protagonist to overcome challenges. Helping hand can take the form of someone you wouldn’t expect.

Helping hand

We need a brief description of the character, particularly how he came to be the helping hand. Do this now.

Beginning to develop the plot Now that we have our characters we need to create a plot.

Every story has a beginning and middle and an end Beginning: Introduce protagonist Middle: Introduce problem for protagonist to overcome End: Resolution to the problem the protagonist faces

Narrative We now need to decide who is telling the story. 1 Protagonist 2 A Narrator If we are using a narrator we need to decide who the narrator is and when is it being told

We now have nearly everything we need The final piece of the puzzle is an audience. Who are we writing this story for. Once we have this we can begin to write. Note: you should be thinking of your audience from the start of the writing process