1. Setting and Characters: Painting Pictures with Words Ms. Stewart English Communications 11

2. Why is setting so important? Setting is so much more than where the action of a story takes place. It can also determine how characters behave and even influence the mood of the story.

3. Why is setting so important? Eudora Welty said, "Every story would be another story, and unrecognizable if it took up its characters and plot and happened somewhere else... Fiction depends for its life on place.”

4. Why is setting so important? Writers describe the world they know. Sights, sounds, colors, and textures are all vividly painted in words as an artist paints images on canvas. A writer imagines a story to be happening in a place that is rooted in his or her mind. The location of a story's actions, along with the time in which it occurs, is the setting.

5. How does language play a role? Setting is created by language. How many or how few details we learn is up to the author. Many authors leave a lot of these details up to the reader's imagination.

6. Descriptive Words Using descriptive words allows the reader to get a sense of the aspects of the setting that the author is highlighting. Please see your handout.

7. Creating a Picture Through Words Imagine that you must tell someone what the below picture looks like using words… How would you describe it?

8. Writing Activity A Choose one of the following pictures and place yourself within the setting. Using vivid imagery and figurative language that appeals to as many of the five senses as you can, make your chosen setting come alive to someone who is not with you. Step1: Choose a picture. Step 2: Study the image. Look at the setting carefully. Step 3: Begin your narrative description by stating, "I am sitting, standing, walking (use an action verb) in........ In the course of your description, be sure to relate how this setting makes you feel. Does your description evoke or spark any personal memories of similar settings or feelings? Be sure to include these in your narrative. Remember: it is said that the sense of smell brings back the strongest memories. Step 4: Hand in Your Narrative

9. Picture 1 Picture 2 Picture 3

10. Writing Activity B Choose one of the following pictures and explain how the setting influences or defines the character within the picture. You will need to define the character and then explain what it is in the setting that makes you draw the conclusions that you do about the character.

11. Picture 1 Picture 2 Picture 3