Scenes, Setting, & Plot
Scenes are Building Blocks
Each scene should be a building block that brings your character closer and closer to the climax. Use the opening scenes to explain the setting and character, and slowly build your way up to the suspenseful ending. Make sure you take your time; this is something that needs to build gradually.
What is the Setting?
Setting is where the story and all the action takes place. Setting = time + place + culture.
Stories often have more than one setting - but all settings should be related to the characters situation/conflict and be realistic for the readers. You can begin with a scary setting, but you can also make a normal setting slowly become scarier over time.
Remember that horror is derived from wanting to make the unknown known and setting plays into this. Stories often have more than one setting. All settings should relate to the characters’ situation/conflict and be realistic for the readers.
Prompt: Begin describing a scary setting using sensory details (try to avoid using sight details)
Prompt: make a normal setting slowly become scarier over time (focus on mood details and try to create juxtaposition)
How to Make Your Setting Real
Other Ideas...
Practice choosing and describing perfect settings. Think of a few characters and a plot, then choose a room in your home where the story can develop.
The Plot
Plot is the plan of action that takes place in a play, novel, poem, short story, etc. When we read a story, we continue reading because we are waiting for the resolution of a conflict, or the solution to a mystery, a moral to the story, or just a plain happy ending (or tragic for a scary story). This is what keeps us reading the story!
Things to Keep in Mind While Developing Your Plot...
Each scene should be a building block that brings your character closer and closer to the climax. Use the opening scenes to explain the setting and character, and slowly build your way up to the suspenseful ending. Make sure you take your time; this is something that needs to build gradually.
What is the Setting?
Setting is where the story and all the action takes place. Setting = time + place + culture.
Stories often have more than one setting - but all settings should be related to the characters situation/conflict and be realistic for the readers. You can begin with a scary setting, but you can also make a normal setting slowly become scarier over time.
Remember that horror is derived from wanting to make the unknown known and setting plays into this. Stories often have more than one setting. All settings should relate to the characters’ situation/conflict and be realistic for the readers.
Prompt: Begin describing a scary setting using sensory details (try to avoid using sight details)
Prompt: make a normal setting slowly become scarier over time (focus on mood details and try to create juxtaposition)
How to Make Your Setting Real
- Showing characters in action provides the details readers need to feel the mood of a setting.
- Showing what characters see, smell, hear, taste and touch keeps a setting alive and vibrant.
- Use the characters sensory descriptions (how “it” felt, tasted, smelled, looked).
- Use dialogue to infer setting (“Get us a beer, will you luv?”, “Wanna beer, mate?”).
Other Ideas...
- To strengthen your setting, show the weather, fashion, modes of transportation, communication, and any other items you feel necessary.
- To enhance your knowledge of a setting, visit the area (if you can). Use your senses and record your experiences.
- For any settings you’re unable to visit, use your research skills; become a writing sleuth. Look at maps, newspapers, local idioms, speech patterns, social practices, types of food, etc.
- Almost all of Stephen King’s novels are based in Maine, because that’s a place he knows inside and out.
Practice choosing and describing perfect settings. Think of a few characters and a plot, then choose a room in your home where the story can develop.
- As an example: A kitchen where a plumber attempts to retrieve a diamond earring from a drain as the frantic owner paces in the background. Show the characters interacting within the room. Perfect the setting you chose by focusing on the five senses and making the mood and atmosphere fit the characters’ situation. You’ll soon find the setting taking shape before your very eyes!
The Plot
Plot is the plan of action that takes place in a play, novel, poem, short story, etc. When we read a story, we continue reading because we are waiting for the resolution of a conflict, or the solution to a mystery, a moral to the story, or just a plain happy ending (or tragic for a scary story). This is what keeps us reading the story!
Things to Keep in Mind While Developing Your Plot...
- For a plot to advance, your characters must make choices. Good choice, bad choice, accidental choice—characters must take actions towards resolving the conflict. Quite often, characters in scary movies make the wrong choice, such as opening the closet door when they hear a noise inside instead of fleeing.