Setting Pt. 2

In Part 1 of this topic, I discussed the feeling of a setting. Here, in Part 2, I want to dive into our origins in a place and how it informs a character’s development—as my father wrote in one of his songs, “peoples and places go together.” None of us chooses where we’re born. What part of the world. What ethnicity. What class. And no matter how you alter your life or how often you change locations, you will always be “from” a place. (Ridiculous how we judge each other so disdainfully for circumstances in which we just appear, but I digress.)

Setting has more impact on us than we may realize. Places shape us. For many people, where they come from is who they are. I had a hard time grasping this at a young age. How could I possibly agree to be lumped in with an enormous population spread out across vast landscape? Or find pride in its abhorrent beginnings and the continued impact of that history? I just didn’t understand it. (I can’t tell you how hard it is for me to not turn this into a political post—you can take the girl outta poli-sci, but you can’t take the poli-sci outta the girl.) As a nomad, I go to places with histories I’ve studied and written about in university, and their sense of home and nationalist fervor makes more sense to me than my own. Yet, in my travels, I can attest to jumping on the correction that I am Canadian and not American, so there’s obviously something there.

It’s our responsibility as storytellers to analyze what influence the setting might have on our characters, whether in the moment or how they develop. Writing fiction allows us the opportunity to dig beneath the reflection and ask questions about who we are, how we came to be that way, and how it prompts our interactions with other people. As I always tell my writers, storytelling is an exercise in empathy. This does not mean our characters must be empathetic, or even be likable, but with depth and authenticity, we can provide readers with new perspectives that make them consider experiences and consequences beyond their own. When we enter this world, before we ever know who we are, we are assigned to a place and our shaping begins. Through the culture and history we inherit, and the stereotypes and assumptions placed on us because of those, we collect the pieces of who we will become. Ideally, we never stop collecting. Most of these pieces are eternally flexible, though some may be more rigid and heavier than others to alter or discard, but that early piece of place stays rooted.

Many of our rooted pieces connect to roots set in other places around the world. And some have their rooted pieces burrowed straight down. As we develop our characters, we may not need to explicitly state details of their every piece, but as the writer, asking these questions flexes the empathy in you, which not only transfers onto the page, but that undercurrent of knowledge will also make your character feel fuller. Whether you are a novice writer or a well-practiced scribe, consider all the ways setting can fuel your story. Self-reflection on where we come from and how it informs who we are is a great place to start when we’re stuck defining and refining our characters.

I know I’m lucky to have been born and to have grown up in the place where I did. I’ve never had to fight for my right to land or had the validity of my identity questioned—as Dad sings, “everybody needs a place to place their body and not worry that they might become extinct.” I’m grateful I was raised to be curious and open about circumstances beyond myself because it has softened others to allow me into their perspectives and experiences, revealing new pieces for my own collection. Winnipeg is place I can feel unique and accepted for every weird, goofy part of me. I know I would have been shaped differently in another setting. But as a nomad, I’ve had the luxury of finding places that feel like home for different parts of me, which has been a gift. So I’ll continue my wandering journey, like the Roma people of my heritage, finding where home feels right and discovering new places where I can enrich who I am and be reminded of how beautiful this planet is for its variety of settings and the people who come out of it.