How to Write a Short Story and Create a Setting
- 1). Decide what the story is about and who will tell it. Your setting requirements will be different in your space opera short story depending on whether your Buck Rogers-style hero or the green scaly alien is telling it. Similarly, the Indians live in a very different world from the cowboys, and a Victorian lady's world is very different from that of her servant. Your main characters, and especially your point-of-view characters, will be the window through which your reader views the world you create.
- 2). Create your setting concept. For example, consider the Victorian setting. You may be doing an upstairs-downstairs sort of story, where you compare the world of the wealthy to that of the servants. Your setting concept will need to include a number of things: the city where your characters reside, the house they live in, rooms where important scenes occur and the atmosphere change as you move from one part of your world to the next.
- 3). Research your setting, if necessary. This can be fun if your story takes place in your favorite bar, and it can be headache-inducing work if your story occurs in orbit around the fifth solid-ground planet in the Omicron-5 blue giant star system. Whatever genre you're writing in, get your facts straight before you begin making things up.
- 4). Write your setting up in your story "bible". Draw maps, if necessary. A story bible is a manuscript that contains the fixed facts you have created about your story's setting, characters, plot details and other information you may refer back to frequently. In order to be consistent throughout your story (and any potential future stories) you will need to keep the "facts" you create for your world consistent.
Maps are not necessary to every story, but can be useful. For example, in an Austen-style story set in a large Victorian manor, you may need to create a floor plan for the house or even a layout for the furniture in rooms where critical scenes take place. Use your own judgment as to whether you need one. - 5). Write your story, using the setting to move your plot forward. A good solid setting provides more than a place for your story to happen; it is a critical component of your tale. For example, in the well-known Jack London story "To Build A Fire," the setting--a frozen tundra--was as important as the unnamed main character, ultimately killing him. Your setting need not be so dramatic or critical to the story, but it must at least complement it. Think of the settings for your favorite stories: Bilbo and the Shire, Harry Potter and Hogwarts, Scarlett O'Hara and her plantation Tara. While the characters may be compelling, the setting is designed to bring out all that is most interesting in them.
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