By Lisa Miller
While doing some fun reading this Summer, I was struck by the impact small setting elements can have on the character development of the story’s protagonist.
The Hidden Power of Small Setting Details
I’ve come to realize that the setting is so much more than the physical location and the time period in which a story is set. There are also social and historical context components to setting.
The seating chart of the head table at a future wedding reception. A social media post. A letter announcing a birth found in a box of old stuff in the garage. A familiar postcard pinned to someone else’s wall. The jumble of spices in a kitchen cabinet. The well-worn dining table with all the leaves left in so the entire family would fit at a moment’s notice. The tall grass and weedy garden of a neglected backyard.
At first glance, none of these items or situations feel important or powerful. More likely something to skim right by and think nothing of. Yet, the small details can impact the protagonist in relation to herself and her family and future.
Beyond Time and Place: Expanding the Concept of Setting
These were new ripples in story building for me.
The stone was cast for me while I read Shauna Robinson's book, The Townsend Family Recipe for Disaster. Warning: story spoilers in this article. I’ll explain how overarching, seemingly generic story concepts transform into these small pebbles of character discoveries.
This story is all about Mae Townsend learning how to be true to herself while still finding belonging and acceptance within her family.
How Setting Shapes Character Development
The protagonist, Mae, is a biracial woman in her twenties. Growing up, her mother’s White family made comments about her hair and occasionally used ugly language about Black people. Never letting her feel totally accepted in that family. Now about to be married into a rich White family, Mae’s fearful that the same will happen with her fiancé’s family.
Mae’s Black father died when she was a child. She’s had only a couple of interactions with any of his family because of a rift between the families of her parents. She treasures her childhood memories where he shared stories about his family and especially his mother and the meals she cooked.
Another legacy he left Mae was that it was best to ignore those slights or racist comments that happened over the years from some of her mother’s White family members. No confrontation or questioning, just ignore.
In other words, don’t be true to yourself or value yourself enough to question others that hurt us or ask them to stop.
In the Story Structure Safari class I teach at Margie Lawson’s online school Lawson Writers Academy, we start the class needing to know what genre a story is or at least could be. Genre helps us understand other foundation elements that are important for the story and the protagonist.
Using Domestic Story Elements to Enhance Emotion
If we look at what Genre this Townsend Family story is, it feels like a Domestic genre, a family story.
The Subject (what it’s about) of a Domestic story is the Health of the Individual vs. the Bond of the Family.
Other examples of story Subjects:
- Action Genre is Life vs Death.
- Love Genre is Love vs Hate.
- Crime Genre is Justice vs. Injustice
The subject of Individual vs Family feels very much like what Mae is struggling with. She has trouble claiming her own feelings and desires for fear that her new in-law family will reject her.
Her father taught her that ignoring and keeping the peace was the best way to get along. The message ingrained in Mae was that The Bond of the Family is more important than the Health of the Individual.
That feels out of balance to me.
For Mae, trying to build or maintain strong family bonds has caused her to make unhealthy choices that have made her feel bad about herself. She hasn’t stood up for herself when others made unkind or hurtful comments. She hesitates to give her opinion for fear it may be at odds with her new in-law’s ways of thinking or doing things.
An example of this Individual vs Family dynamic is at the beginning of the story, Mae and her fiancé, Connor, are making wedding plans with his parents. The wedding will take place at his family’s winery where they hold many weddings. Nothing but the best for their son and his fiancé. All their suggestions were so much more than Mae was used to. But she wants to be accepted into Connor’s family and so mostly goes along with what they want.
This also uncovers her Fatal Flaw: Being False to Herself.
Fatal Flaws and Internal Conflict
Each protagonist has an Internal Thread in the story that is made up of the Fatal Flaw and Internal Conflict. During the story, Mae will have to face that Fatal Flaw and make changes with how she reacts to and with others.
Overcoming her Fatal Flaw and becoming True to Herself or maybe to Value Herself is the result of that internal shift Mae must make during the story to become a healthy member of healthy family, righting her previous Individual vs Family dynamic in the process. Now how does any of this link up to my big splash up of linking small setting pieces to a story?
Let’s look at how four setting elements impact her goal of being true to herself and finding belonging and acceptance.
One of the small setting elements that impacts Mae right away is that pesky reception seating chart. Mae feels nervous because none of the invitations she sent to her father's family have received a response. The groom’s side has a couple of hundred or more coming. She overhears two of the groom’s aunts mentioning how few people were coming from her family.
So, we see this imbalance of expectations right off. In response, Mae lies to Connor’s parents and adds her dad’s sister’s and her cousin’s names to that head table seating chart. She doesn’t want anyone to know how estranged she is from her dad’s family. She just wants to fit in. Unhealthy lying sparked by the pressure of needing to fill all those seats.
Her fiancé, Connor, understands and is totally supportive and wonderful to her. Her desire is to return that support at this important time of their wedding and in the future. She knows that at least with Connor she belongs no matter what.
A Social Media Post
But planning for the wedding gets interrupted when Mae discovers that her paternal grandmother has died, and her funeral is listed in a social media post. Mae’s kept up with her father’s family only online through social media. She’s shocked and saddened by this loss and compelled to go to the funeral of this woman she missed connecting with after her father passed.
Social media posts feel like part of the setting too. A part of today’s society. This one, changes Mae’s goals in the short term. She wants to meet her father’s family and connect with at least some of them. Be a “Real” Townsend.
Death and missing and remembering loved ones are situations most readers can relate to. So, I’m rooting for Mae in her journey to find connections with this family she’s mostly known through her father’s colorful stories. I want her to fill up that seating chart because the story and Mae’s situation has impacted me. I’m invested in what happens next.
Mae’s father would return alone to his hometown every Fourth of July for the family BBQ. That event became, in Mae’s mind, a mythic gathering. Something she hoped to attend one day.
Details from the Past
The story shifts to her father’s hometown. Her father’s family is surprised to see Mae at the funeral, but her Aunt Barbara gives her a hug and calls her sweetheart. She had done the same at her dad’s funeral. Mae is grateful she has at least one ally. At the family meal after the funeral, Mae finds out there are no plans for that special Fourth of July BBQ in just a couple of weeks. No opportunity to taste her father’s favorite mac and cheese dish that only his mother could make.
The family she just reconnected with feels like it is fracturing, with some moving away and plan to sell her grandmother’s house. Mae wants this connection to stick. She volunteers to move into her grandmother’s house to get it ready to sell and host one last Fourth of July BBQ. She’ll try her hand to recreate the mythical, coveted mac and cheese. This may be her last opportunity to get to know and be a part of this branch of her family.
A Massive Family Table
When Mae enters her grandmother’s house, she notices the well-worn, giant dining table with all the leaves left in. She can envision her father and all the family sitting down to a table covered with a variety of yummy, homemade dishes. So different from the house she grew up in and where she often ate alone when her mother, a nurse, worked the night shift at the hospital.
The massive table spoke to the importance of family meals, and everyone had their own spot. No splitting up on multiple tables or having to squeeze chairs in. Whetting Mae’s appetite for a welcome place at this family heirloom. Seeing this table increased her resolve to bring the Townsend family back together one more time.
Grandmother's Kitchen
The kitchen is well stocked with pots, pans, mixing bowls, and cooking utensils. The cabinet by the stove contains a jumble of spices. She could feel the energy, love, and connection that had filled the center of the grandparent’s home. If she closed her eyes, she could almost see her grandmother shooing her father away as he grabbed a quick taste of the welcoming, bubbling dishes.
Again, this setting a stark difference from the kitchen she grew up in. With its well-used microwave oven and frozen dinners.
As an adult, Mae loved cooking and trying new recipes. She feels like maybe that love of cooking was inherited from her grandmother Townsend. The new setting tells her she’s where she should be.
A Birth Announcement
While clearing out things in the garage, Mae found a letter from her father to his parents, in a box of old stuff. It announced her birth and there was a picture of her cute little newborn face. The letter referred to a hope that the families could get past some of the bad feelings from before. She had no idea what that meant, but at least her grandmother had saved the letter and the picture. When she showed the letter to her aunt Barbara, she found out the terrible rumors her maternal grandmother had spread about her grandmother Townsend when they were young girls.
This was the source of the families’ rift. Something neither of her parents had shared with her. Mae could at least better understand the hard feelings.
But Mae could still feel a hesitation in the Townsends around her. She knew there was something else involved.
A Post Card
She’d made friends with her cousin Sierra and had gone shopping, becoming friends, cousins. They stopped at Sierra’s apartment. Mae noticed a familiar postcard pinned to a wall. One just like her father had sent her years ago and was still on her wall at her mother’s house. She unpinned it and turned it over. Right away, she recognized her dad’s handwriting. Signed just like the one she had: Love, Dad.
This was a lightning bolt revelation. Her parents had lied to her about being an only child, when she had an older half-sister. No wonder the Townsends acted weird around her. They didn’t know that she was clueless about the connection. Mae had some harsh words for her mom about keeping this secret all these years too.
Sierra had some soul searching to do too when she realized her dad lied about who she was to all his wife’s family. But Sierra’s dad had been dead for years, so there was no one to stay mad and hurt at.
Once Sierra and Mae came to grips with the reality of their relationship, they decided to make up for lost sister time. A stronger family relationship developed too. From them she learns how to better stand up for what she values and not be disrespected.
Dramatic Character Shift
With a sister and aunts and cousins rooting her on, Mae was able to find her voice to claim the respect she deserved from all those around her and express her own desires and feelings. Be True to Herself.
A social media post, that massive family table, a birth announcement letter, her grandmother’s kitchen, and a post card, five very small elements in the setting of this story. But they all sent ripples across how Mae’s view of herself and how she fit into both sides of her family. Each small setting pebble helped Mae discover more of her own true self.
Creating Emotional Impact with Setting in Your Own Writing
I’ll leave you with one activity. Walk through your house or apartment. Make a list of at least fifteen elements within that setting that could provide a nudge or a big wow for a protagonist in your story.
I’ll reveal a few from my list:
- A picture, on my refrigerator, of my son and my nephew in front of a two seat Cesena plane. My pilot son had just taken him up for his first small plane ride.
- One of my father’s paintings hung above the fireplace. This one of a blue jay and a flying squirrel.
- In a box in the closet: The telegram from my father telling me he had just gotten remarried after divorcing my mother a few months earlier. I was starting my sophomore year of college.
- Hung on the wall in the garage: The canoe paddles my husband and I used while on our honeymoon in the Boundary waters in Canada.
- Every time I turn on Brit Box to watch an English mystery. These types of shows were my mother’s favorite and we watched them together when she lived with my family.
Don’t sound all that wow, but with the right set up they could each have an impact on the characters in your story.
What small setting detail in your own writing has had the biggest emotional impact on your characters or readers?
About Lisa
A veteran teacher, as well as certified counselor, Lisa's passion for teaching met her love of writing contemporary, young adult fiction. A native Texan, her stories take place in Texas with strong, smart female protagonists in an ethnically diverse cast of characters. Lisa writes what she knows, what she lives, and what she cares about.
After not finding the writing classes she needed, Lisa spent several years on a deep study of story structure. She then merged her passions into a powerful and well-loved online course she teaches at Lawson Writer's Academy: Story Structure Safari. She is continuing to expand her teaching journey and has joined the staff at No Stress Writing Academy where she is developing new classes, including a new class based on these insights into setting. You be able to find that class in 2025 at Deleyna Marr’s No Stress Writing Academy.
Sle loves writing, reading–especially mysteries, movies–can’t ever get enough Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart, and Audrey Hepburn.
Learn more about Lisa at her website: LisaWMiller.com.
Top image from Pixabay.
