1. What Are Setting and Plot?
Feature Menu
Setting
Influences problem and resolution
Gives sense of reality
Creates atmosphere
Plot
Basic Situation
Conflict
Complications
Climax
Resolution
Your Turn

2. Setting
The setting is where and when the action of a story takes place.
Some stories, like trickster tales, can take place almost anywhere.
Coyote
Brer Rabbit
The settings may differ, but they have little effect on each story.

3. Setting However, in many stories, setting is essential to the plot.
A rain forest
The Arctic
A big city
The setting in each of these stories controls the action. The story couldn’t take place anywhere else.

4. Influence on Story’s Problem and Resolution
Setting
Influence on Story’s Problem and Resolution
In some stories, characters are in an external conflict with the setting:
people surviving on a cold mountain with no food
animals trapped by a raging forest fire
a person marooned in a small boat in the middle of the ocean
The setting poses a challenge. If the characters triumph over the problem, the story has a happy resolution.
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5. Setting Gives Story a Sense of Reality
Vivid details help make a setting seem real. You can imagine
• how people live and dress
• what they eat and where they work
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6. Setting Creates atmosphere
Writers often use setting to create an atmosphere or mood.
Somber
Creepy
Relaxed
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7. Setting
Quick Check
The smell of pine made Ben dizzy—or perhaps it was the height. Either way, he and Tara had lost the desire to chat.
Squirrels scampered and chattered in the limbs that supported the heavy wooden floor. Birds flew in close by to have a look at them, and all around them the long arms of pine trees waved in approval of the old hideout.
Which words in the passage help you imagine where the scene takes place?

8. Setting
Quick Check
With just enough kerosene to last until the next wagon to the fort, Mama turned down the lamp and set it on the hearth. It was Josh’s turn to poke at the coals and make the room glow.
Jenny was outside tightening the wire door around the henhouse. In another week, they could fill out a form for claiming their little part of the new territory.
Using the details of this setting, tell when the story takes place.

9. Setting
Quick Check
The elevator opened onto a dark, narrow hallway. One after the other, identical-looking doors lined the long corridor.
From behind one of the doors came a faint scratching sound. Glowing dimly, a sign at the end of hall probably said EXIT, but cobwebs almost completely covered the letters.
What mood is created by the details of this setting?
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10. Plot Plot is the series of related events in a story.
Plot answers the question, “What happened?”

11. Plot Most plots have four parts. Complications Basic situation
Resolution
Climax

12. Plot You can diagram a plot like this:
The resolution usually wraps up the “loose ends” of the story.
The climax is the “high point” of the story.
These events are the complications.

13. Plot
Basic Situation
The first part of the plot tells you about the story’s basic situation.
The basic situation usually answers these questions:
Who is the main character?
What does the main character want?
What stands in the character’s way? In other words, what is his or her problem, or conflict?
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14. Plot A conflict is a struggle.
In an external conflict, a character clashes with an outside force:
another character
or a situation.

15. Plot
Conflict
An internal conflict is a struggle that takes place within a character.
The character might struggle to overcome fear, to exercise self-control, or to gain confidence.

16. Plot
Conflict
When the conflict involves a setting, the setting is often extreme or life threatening.
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17. Plot
Complications
As the characters try to solve their problems, complications arise.
Complications are additional problems that prevent the main character from resolving the conflict.
Complications create suspense in the story.
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18. Plot
Climax
When a story reaches its climax, it has reached its most exciting point.
In the climax you find out how the conflict will be resolved, or worked out.
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19. Plot
Resolution
In the final part of the plot, the resolution, the main character’s problem is resolved.
In a mystery . . .
In a fairy tale . . .
In an adventure . . .
the clues are explained.
they all live happily ever after.
the survivors may be rescued.
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20. Plot Quick Check 1. Who do you think the main character is?
As the hot July sun slipped below the horizon, a cooling darkness filled Central Valley.
Lisa had just fallen asleep when the windows of the trailer rattled like a snake giving warning. The trailer swayed back and forth. Lisa could hear the baby crying. Papa yelled, “Outside! Get out! Get out! It’s an earthquake!”
1. Who do you think the main character is?
2. What do you predict the external conflict will be?

21. Plot Quick Check This passage takes place a little later in the story.
The earth groaned, and a river of mud slid down the canyon. The family huddled together in the dark.
Mama tore up a sheet to make a sling for Papa’s broken arm. Papa shined his flashlight on the wreck that used to be the trailer. “It could explode,” he warned. “Don’t get any closer.”
This passage takes place a little later in the story.
3. What complications have come up?

22. Plot Quick Check 4. What new complications have come up?
The baby kept crying. Lisa’s mother said, “I have nothing to feed him. What are we going to do?”
Suddenly the earth rumbled again. Lisa looked back at the trailer and saw fallen electric wires dangling all over it.
4. What new complications have come up?
5. What do you predict the family will decide to do? Why?

23. Plot Quick Check This passage takes place later in the story.
Lisa stumbled down the side of the canyon. She could hear a siren coming closer. The lights of a helicopter shone on her like a spotlight. “Stop! Help us!” she cried, frantically waving her arms. The copter drifted to the ground.
This passage takes place later in the story.
6. Why is this event probably the climax of the story?
to Lisa?
to the baby?
to the mother?
to Papa?
7. Write a resolution for this story. What happens to the family?
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24. Analyze Setting and Plot
Your Turn
Identify a story in which setting plays a crucial role.
Try to think of a story in which a character struggles with a setting that threatens his or her life.
Then, analyze how the setting influences the problem and its resolution. 33

25. Analyze Setting and Plot
Your Turn
Choose a book, movie, or other story that you know well.
Draw a plot diagram like the one shown here.
Add labels describing the key parts of the story’s plot.

26. The End