 Drama: February 14, 2007 Issue [#1545] |
  Drama
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| Several years ago, Honda ran a series of commercials for their summer clearance, and their slogan was "Timing is everything." The same applies for drama. With drama, time is both a part of the setting and also a separate story element. The duality of this concept can make it very baffling, so I intend to depict the most essential aspects of time in this newsletter. |
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Setting is composed of two crucial elements: time and place. When most people think of setting, the latter comes to mind. No one realizes the role that time plays in creating a worthwhile story. That's because time is intrinsically mind boggling. To make it easier on you, I'm going to address why time is key to setting development.
In the development of setting, time helps to establish three key components: everyday lifestyles, social mores and obstacles/pathways for social mobility. From these components, a writer can branch off to develop other time-specific aspects of a story: slang used in a given time period, clothing, even why a character might be motivated to commit a particular action. See how time can be lost when contemplating setting? It reaches deeply into other details of your writing, so it becomes a bit obscure in the pre-planning stages. That said, how do the aforementioned components work to enhance setting and influence other details in writing. Let's take a look.
EVERYDAY LIFESTYLES
While some people prefer living life without a schedule or plan, most of us follow a routine of some sort. The routines will vary due to a number of factors (age, location, occupation, socioeconomic status, etc.), but there are some common threads. We all eat, sleep, use the bathroom and have some task that takes up the majority of our waking hours. Likewise, aside from the routines of specific characters, large groups of people (such as a neighborhood or a town) have routines that either supplement or are integrated into how individuals carry out their daily lives.
Choosing an era in time will help you determine what kinds of goals must be accomplished in a day and what types of obstacles can thwart a character's attempt to complete them. After all, conflict interrupts routine.  That aside, when you choose an era, think about the characters you have in mind for your story. Gender, social class and other factors largely beyond their control can help you determine what types of routines they might have, even those they might try to escape.
One routine that comes to mind is that of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind. In the beginning, Scarlett had an individual routine rooted in her plantation lifestyle. Concurrent with that was the routine of those in the plantation circle, and events such as finding well-off husbands for the daughters of plantation owners were part of this latter routine. The (pre) Civil War era served as a launching point for the role Scarlett could have in her society and the steps she would have to take to reach that point. However, war proved to be a disasterous obstacle and obliterated the routine she called daily life.
SOCIAL MORES
Another characteristic of an epoch is social mores (or behaviors). Mores include what society finds (un)acceptable, how people introduce themselves to those they haven't met met before, how people perceive those who differ from them in some way and other myriad social interactions. Like routines, mores change throughout the ages. Some change at the same pace as routines, while others evolve more quickly. Mores can be the most tedious facet of time to handle, mostly because they have the most variables. Mores can differ among regions within a country and in groups smaller than that. Furthermore, mores differ more significantly among socioeconomic classes than the other two components of time.
One example of social mores providing a backbone for setting is The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. The book depicted, among many other things, how blacks perceived each other in the 1940s. "Lighter" skinned blacks treated "darker" skinned blacks with almost as much animosity as the whites in the area. However, both groups followed a common more: aspiring to whiteness. They aspired to this goal mainly through changes in physical appearance (such as imitating the hairstyles of popular movie stars of the era), but they also reject their own race at various levels of consciousness. Such actions were intended to blend into the white-dominated society of the Midwest, if nothing else to lead comfortable (if not rich) lives.
SOCIAL MOBILITY
Of the three components, social mobility is the most pivotal. This is because social mobility is not a universal concept. Generally speaking, social mobility is the ability to move among different economic groups or classes. It can be part of a routine or the root of a dramatic conflict. Because of its many facets, changes in social mobility create more drastic disruptions in large social groups (such as a state, nation or continent). Americans (among other First World countries) are used to a system where people can move among the different classes, but this ability is far from the norm. Aside from it being a Western-inspired concept, it is also much younger than more traditional systems of social classes. Thus, when you choose an epoch in which to set your story, find out what options were available for movement among the social classes, if such options even existed in your chosen timeframe. If you find limited options and do not like them, then consider legal or social obstacles which might hinder any character with a plan to break from the norm.
An interesting example of social mobility comes from the novella Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. In the case of Siddhartha, he moved among a Buddhist temple, the merchant class on the other side of the river and the boatkeeper who ferried passengers and freight across the riverbanks. While his movement among social classes was intended as a spiritual journey, it does show how being at the top of the social class ladder did allow for him to move with relative ease in a society where such movement is rare.
Indeed, timing is everything, especially when establishing dramatic setting. Time encompasses quite a few aspects of writings, which makes it easy to sometimes forget. Even so, it permeates all aspects of writing, including characters and their interactions with a given setting. So next time (haha) you sit down to write, don't forget to contemplate the importance of when in your work.
Until next time,
(sig courtesy of rose_shadow) |
This time around (so to speak), items with a rich sense of time in the setting are in the spotlight. Whether the past, present or even future, the eras in which these stories take place make a vast impact.
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While two antagonists had many of you scratching your heads in response, I received a fair number of comments about archetypes! Let's take a look at what you had to say.
From Steev the Friction Wizurd  I enjoyed your list of character archetypes. I love lists. They help organize thinking and generate new ideas. Websites like squid.org that generate random lists fascinate me. Great newsletter!
You love lists? Are you sure you're not my political science professor?  All kidding aside, you're right. Lists do help keep it together. The trick, it seems, is not losing the list(s). Glad you found my list useful.
From scarl : I really enjoy your drama newsletter. I never read or learned about archetype characters before but I can see that I have inadvertently made them by studying personality types in psychology. I noticed after reading your newsletter that perhaps certain personality types go along with certain archetypes. For example the personality type The Thinker has a tedency to be a professor/librarian.
Personality types and archetypes do share some similarities. However, archetypes tend to explain the motives of the character more than that character's personality or origins. That's not to say that a personality type cannot correspond to a given archetype. Sometimes a certain personality, occupation or even physical trait just naturally lends itself to a particular archetype.
From janellecharon: I'm really finding the list of archetypes you included in this newsletter helpful. It's really helping out in a piece I'm writing right. I recognized certain elements from some of my characters and other kinds of characters I was missing that would make the story better. So thanks for including that, it's been a big help. Keep up the great work!
Cheers,
Janelle
And I'm glad you find the archetype list helpful in improving your characters. Some of the most engaging dramas have solid character foundations, so constantly communing with your characters makes a big difference. Having a brief phrase to describe your characters helps as well, since it frees your mind of verbal clutter from long, drawn-out explanations of your characters. Why else would groups looking to promote something go for acronyms and short catch phrases? 
From billwilcox: Stikie!
I really thought you did a grand job on this newsletter. Keep up the good work.
Thanks, Bill! It sure took a lot of typing. Someone commented that I should have included examples of each archetype. That would have taken an even longer time, and I was hoping it would encourage readers to seek out their own examples of archetypes. I'd have posted this comment, too, if it hadn't disappeared on me. I wonder where it went....
For my next newsletter...you decide! That's right. You get to pick which topic I cover next! I'll either continue discussing time in dramatic setting or move onto setting. Which would you rather see? Tell me in this poll.
[Linked Poll's access is restricted.]
In the meantime, I'd love to hear your comments on setting, be it time or place. 
And if you happen to miss or misplace a newsletter, feel free to stop by "The Drama Box" [13+]. |
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