What is "Setting"?
Setting is the place where a story takes place. It includes; place, weather and time and usually lots of details and adjectives. In the above picture, the place is the beach, the weather is stormy and there is a cliff in the background. There is no-one on the beach but the horse which suggests it is an isolated place or a quieter time of day or year. The horse has no saddle which adds to the feeling of unsettled wilderness in both the sky and in the ocean.
What aspects are included in "Setting"?
+ the place
+ the things in the place + the weather |
+ the weather
+ the season + the time of day |
+ year
+ people around + culture |
Example of Setting the Scene in a book
Opening Lines of The Hobbit by JRR Tolkein
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort. It had a perfectly round door like a porthole, painted green, with a shiny yellow brass knob in the exact middle. The door opened on to a tube-shaped hall like a tunnel: a very comfortable tunnel without smoke, with panelled walls, and floors tiled and carpeted, provided with polished chairs, and lots and lots of pegs for hats and coats - the hobbit was fond of visitors. The tunnel wound on and on, going fairly but not quite straight into the side of the hill - The Hill, as all the people for many miles round called it - and many little round doors opened out of it, first on one side and then on another. No going upstairs for the hobbit: bedrooms, bathrooms, cellars, pantries (lots of these), wardrobes (he had whole rooms devoted to clothes), kitchens, dining-rooms, all were on the same floor, and indeed on the same passage. The best rooms were all on the left-hand side (going in), for these were the only ones to have windows, deep-set round windows looking over his garden and meadows beyond, sloping down to the river.
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Description of ...- hole in the ground
- round door - shiny yellow brass knob - comfortable tunnel - tube shaped hall - panelled walls - tiled floors -carpeted floors - polished chairs - pegs for hats and coats - all rooms on the same floor - only some rooms with windows - round windows - garden, meadows, river Emotive words...- not a nasty, dirty, wet hole
- ends of worms - smell - dry, bare, sandy - comfort - perfectly - very comfortable - polished chairs 22 Adjectives
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Inference is 'reading between the lines to guess extended meaning.
Analyse these opening paragraphs from famous stories and see what you can identify
1) on the lines
2) between the lines
3) beyond the lines
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ACTIVITY
"on the lines"
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"between the lines"
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