Setting Your Memoir
The Where and When of Your Story
Eudora Welty wrote “...you couldn’t write a story that happened nowhere.”
The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms describes setting as “The where and when of a story.”
For a memoir, as for any story, fiction or non-fiction, the setting gives it context and texture.
The setting can tell the reader much about the story before any action has taken place. Consider a busy early morning commuter train, a dark alley at night, a playground filled with laughing children, a crowded airport, a deserted beach: each of these convey to the reader different senses: perhaps frustration, fear, sadness, fun, relaxation. Before any action has begun already the reader knows something.
Setting tells us more than simply scenery against which the action can take place, it can create atmosphere and enhance the reader’s experience.
What is Your Setting?
An important early decision is to place your memoir. It may be set in a time period, set in a place, set in an environment – get down to specifics.
Think of the time period: for example - life as a lifeguard from the 1960-1962.
Think of the place: living at Sydney's Bondi Beach.
Then consider the environment: being a member of the Bondi Icebergs.
With your writing you now need to recreate this world for your reader. What was Sydney like as a city to live in during this period? What did the beach look like? And so forth.
You can focus on obvious details, but you can also provide information on aspects that are perhaps lesser know. Using the example above, perhaps this writer could provide details on what it was like inside the club house.
Setting Creates Mood & Atmosphere
Setting is a tool that the writer can use to create a sense of mood and atmosphere. Consider how a different setting can change the mood of the story.
Have the same character and then place them on the end of the pier in a storm. Then place them in a thatched cottage in front of a roaring fire. Then have them laying on a towel on an isolated beach.
Taking the effort to describe your setting, in an interesting and engaging style, can enhance your story and save you trying to create atmosphere through description, dialogue and other means. For example, rather than saying the atmosphere was tense, the writer can create a setting which suggests this.
Setting Enhances Action
If you think of your character in the foreground and your setting as the background, they can either by in harmony or conflict.
If the character is in harmony with the setting then the atmosphere suggested is one of calm. If they are in opposition there is a sense of change.
Memoir writers can use setting to great effect. It is a useful tool to support characters, create mode and atmosphere and suggest change. Take your time to develop your setting and it will greatly enhance your overall story.
See also Making Your Memoirs Real and Framing Your Memoir
Writing - Setting is an article on setting orginally published in 1922.
Setting your Memoir
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