Creative Writing: Setting Approximate Time Needed:   45 minutes Lesson Summary:   Students will develop a setting for a story (involving assignment previously completed using the Creative Writing: Characterization lesson plan) by combining research on a particular career with elements of setting studied in literature classes. Lesson Objective:   Students will develop web searching skills; articulate and utilize the elements of setting by understanding the roles of both reader and writer; and exercise creative writing skills by conceiving of a unique setting for a story. Materials and Resources: ECOS Career List Helpful Hints:   Teacher should have completed lesson for Characterization before proceeding to this lesson on Setting. Teacher might want to compile--ahead of time--a template for a short list of setting traits so that students can work within a structure. Teacher might also use this template to briefly review a rubric for the assignment to be evaluated. Activities Review the definition of setting. Setting: the time and place in which the events in a short story, novel, play, or narrative poem occur. A setting may serve simply as the physical background of a story, or a skillful writer may use setting to establish a particular atmosphere, which in turn contributes to the plot and theme of the story--from Adventures in English Literature, Harcourt Brace and Jovanovich. Compile, with the aid of the class, a list of essential traits for a good setting. List might include things such as: suggestive name (if it is a specific locale); physical descriptions; and literary devices to invoke these traits (e.g., symbol, image, metaphor, simile, etc.). Once the class has established a list, and drawing on information gathered in doing the lesson on Characterization, students then compose a list (perhaps using a teacher-made template) of descriptive setting traits for a unique location for their story. Students might combine their imagination with information culled from a particular ECOS career profile. For example, Joan is interested in the life of a government agent. This, combined with a student’s imagination (or even information learned in history class), might generate setting ideas. She discovers, using ECOS, that working for the State Department might require someone to travel abroad and to handle sensitive documents or engage in espionage. Drawing on her own creative impulses, perhaps a story read in class, and perhaps information learned about a foreign country in history class, Joan then creates a list of descriptive traits (words, phrases, etc.) for her story’s unique setting. Either continuing in class or as homework, students compose a descriptive paragraph that evokes only the primary setting of the story. Evaluation:   Students may be evaluated on their setting paragraph, based on the setting traits established in class or on the teacher’s rubric. Unit Goal:   Using this lesson and the lessons for characterization, tone, plot, and theme, teacher can ask students to combine these five major aspects of narrative to create their own short stories.