(IC) Lesson Topic 4: Setting and Mood

Famous Southern writer and photographer Eudora Welty said,  "Fiction depends for its life on place. Place is the crossroads of circumstance, the proving ground of, What happened? Who's here? Who's coming?..."

Writers describe the world they know. Sights, sounds, colors, and textures are all vividly painted in words as an artist paints images on a 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.

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.

What is Setting?

Setting is the time and place of the story. Setting can add an important dimension of meaning and mood to a story.

What is Mood?

The mood of a story is the atmosphere that the writer creates in order to arouse a specific emotional response in the reader. Mood is the emotional response a reader has to a scene. Being aware of the setting and mood of a story can help put the events in the story in perspective.

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