What makes a setting feel like a character itself?
Let’s find out by dissecting some memorable ones, then creating out own living, breathing setting ourselves!
During the last stream, a subscribers requested that we go over how to make a setting feel alive.
Watch what we did here, or scroll down for highlights.
Dissecting Memorable Settings and Crafting Our Own
- When creating an interesting character, it’s important to give them goals, strengths/weakness, likes/dislikes, and more
- And the same is important when you’re creating an interesting setting, to make it feel ALIVE
- So let’s go over 5 questions to answer for a good setting, take a look at how they work with some real story examples, then use them to create our own setting together!
Five Questions to Answer for a Good Setting
1. What is this setting’s overall purpose?
– Your setting is more than just “where the story takes place,” it needs to have a GOAL
– Example: a convenience store’s purpose could be “a place for people going nowhere to get nothing”
2. What are some locations within the setting and what is their purpose?
– A setting is not one place, it is made up of smaller ones, each with STRENGTHS/WEAKNESSES
– Example: a convenience can have locations like freezer aisle, candy section, medicine shelf, hot dog stand, etc. which each do different things
3. What are some factions within the setting? (Cultural, political, personality, etc.)
– Every setting has different factions, giving the setting its own LIKES/DISLIKES
– Example: the convenience store has employees, regulars, weirdos, and corporate
4. Twist some of those purposes/locations/factions, make them fun/unique.
– The worst thing you can do is have a setting be generic/boring, SPICE it up a bit!
– Example for frozen food: the cooler is broken and the drinks are always lukewarm
5. What are the ripple effects of those twists? How did they historically/physically come about?
– Thinking about both the past and future of parts of the setting makes it feel ALIVE, not static
– Example for frozen food: caused by the repair guy dying in the machine room and everyone’s too scared to fix it, but one of the regulars loves the warm drinks and buys one every day to drink it alone in the toilet
BONUS: What are some secrets in this setting/locations?
– Even if they don’t play into the story right away, secrets can give a setting more DEPTH
– Example: a hidden spot in the candy section where cameras can’t see anything, with a tile that leads underground
Example 1: Hogwarts in Harry Potter
(Note how answering the questions helps add new cool answers to the next questions.)
1. What is this setting’s overall purpose?
– School for teaching kids about magic
2. What are some locations within the setting and what is their purpose?
– Great Hall: meeting place, cafeteria
– Dorm rooms: for sleep/study
– Forest: as the school grounds
3. What are some factions within the setting? (Cultural, political, personality, etc.)
– Four different dorms/houses that students are sorted into based on their personality
4. Twist some of those purposes/locations/factions, make them fun/unique.
– Great Hall: four tables, one for each house, huge feasts magically appear
– Dorm rooms: guarded by a living portrait, all portraits in the school are alive
– Forest: filled with magical creatures, some dangerous
– Four houses: each has a mascot: griffin, snake, eagle, badger
5. What are the ripple effects of those twists? How did they historically/physically come about?
– Great Hall: kids are sorted in front of everyone by a magic hat
– Dorm rooms: staircases are alive too, kids get lost sometimes just going to classes
– Forest: used as punishment/detention for students
– Four houses: each house is based on one of the four founders of the school: Gryffindor, Slytherin, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff
BONUS: What are some secrets in this setting/locations?
– There’s a room in the school that’s hiding a valuable magical treasure, the secret to immortality
– The Slytherin founder didn’t want to teach half-bloods, so he put in a safeguard against them
Example 2: Northern Water Tribe in Avatar: The Last Airbender
1. What is this setting’s overall purpose?
– A bastion against the Fire Nation and the place for Aang to master waterbending
2. What are some locations within the setting and what is their purpose?
– Wall: to protect the city
– Palace: where the chief and warriors live
– Spirit oasis: a spiritual place for the tribe
3. What are some factions within the setting? (Cultural, political, personality, etc.)
– Male waterbenders, female waterbenders, animals native to the north pole
4. Twist some of those purposes/locations/factions, make them fun/unique.
– Wall: made of ice, has no doors, can only be passed through by waterbenders
– Male/female waterbenders: men train to fight with their powers, women train to heal
– Hybrid animals like koala otters, turtle seals, and buffalo yaks
– Spirit oasis: surrounded by lush greenery and has two fish in a pond, one white one black
5. What are the ripple effects of those twists? How did they historically/physically come about?
– Waterbenders: women are given a betrothal necklace by their grooms to be
– Animals are used by the residents, ridden into battle
– Spirit oasis: the two fish are actually the Ocean and Moon spirits, removing them has dire consequences
BONUS: What are some secrets in this setting/locations?
– A hole underwater in the wall, where turtle seals hang out
– The spirit oasis can bring someone to the actual spirit realm
Chat then voted that we answer the questions for this setting:
An upside down tower hanging from a cliff that is the physical manifestation of social media.
Here’s what we came up with:
1. What is this setting’s overall purpose?
– A place built so that people from different places can come to speak freely, connect with each other, and share ideas2. What are some locations within the setting and what is their purpose?
– A dark pit beneath the tower: where the authorities can toss people who are disrupting the tower
– An endless library: you shout a book and it comes to you, also anyone can write anything they want into any of the books
– An aviary: anyone can speak a message into a bird, give them something to sniff, then have them fly off to the person that item belongs to and speak the message
– A giant pool: anyone can write a message, put it in a bottle, and set it afloat, or go swimming in it, whenever somebody looks at your message and responds, the bottle glows brighter
– A stage: anybody can come to pursue their dream and try to become an entertainment idol3. What are some factions within the setting? (Cultural, political, personality, etc.)
– The Admins/Mods: in charge of the Tower
– Normies: regular users of the channel
– Autothinkers: people who do/post terrible things, but they’re such engaging users that the Mods don’t stop them
– Trolls: purposely trying to disrupt the facilities
– Spammers: trying to cheat the system by overloading it
– Robots: chatbots but people can’t tell the difference4. Twist some of those purposes/locations/factions, make them fun/unique.
– Tower itself: to enter you must pass puzzles (captchas), escalators connect the different floors (they can break down, people disrupting), like a vertical shopping mall
– Dark pit: gladiator arena for people who disagree to fight over, usually BOTH are knocked into the pit
– Endless library: starts to become full of people’s private info supposedly locked with keys, but you can purchase spoof keys to open them up if you have enough money
– Aviary: start selling emoji/emoticons that you can send people on the birds
– Giant pool: all of the beautiful, brightly lit bottles in the pool contain horrendous messages, since they get responses
– The stage: sections are sealed off to people who don’t have certain levels of rep (reputation)
– The factions: everyone wears masks to stay anonymous5. What are the ripple effects of those twists? How did they historically/physically come about?
– The captchas: real people have been helping the bots get through the puzzles, smuggling them in
– Escalators: users are out of shape, get scammed into workout programs, trolls hide under them like bridges
– Dark pit: came about so that the Tower is not on any nation’s land, a neutral place, but as it expands the pit beneath it needs to be dug bigger, destroying the towns around it
– Private info library: started collecting private info from masks as a deal between the admins and mods, nobody cares because it gets them more specialized deals/sales, common addiction where a person can’t stop looking at their own book
– Rep levels: people take everything that those with high rep levels say as fact
– Anonymous masks: came about so that the warring nations wouldn’t know who was who inside the “equal” space, however using them for too long turns you into an autothinker as a side effect, pictures of people’s real faces sell for obscene amounts of money, there are trolls constantly trying to remove people’s masks and take picturesBONUS: What are some secrets in this setting/locations?
– Every room has a backdoor, but only explorers/guides known as Hackers can find them
– Wildlife in the tower includes ‘bugs’ – mysterious anomalies that seem to have unexpected effects on the world
– There’s no book in the library on the tower itself
– Floor 404 of the tower does not exist.
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you join us on Twitch.
And you missed the stream, you can still watch them on the YouTube channel or watch the full stream reruns.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
Featured image: Pakutaso