Put the same man on a beach and on a frozen creek and you've got two different stories. Here's how a writer builds the place you can almost feel.
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Students will learn that setting is the time and place of a story, sort sensory details into sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste, and explain how a setting can act on a character, using short excerpts from Jack London's 'To Build a Fire'.
Setting is more than a backdrop. Weather, season and time of day are part of it, and in the best stories the setting makes things happen.
A sensory detail is anything a reader could see, hear, touch, smell or taste if he were standing there. Good writers pick the senses that matter instead of using all five every time.
Naming only the place and forgetting the time. 'The Yukon' is half a setting, and 'the Yukon on a winter morning at seventy-five below' is the whole thing.
Sorting a feeling into the wrong sense. Numb fingers are touch, and a crackling sound is hearing, even though both come from the cold.
Have the student stand in the kitchen with his eyes closed for a minute, then say one thing he heard, one he felt and one he smelled. The written task at the end is the same exercise on a place he picks.
The Klondike Gold Rush ran from about 1896 to 1899, and Jack London spent the winter of 1897 to 1898 in the Yukon. The lesson says this in one line before the excerpts, and it's added from the historical record.
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Before You Start
The words this lesson uses. Tap a card to see what it means, then come back to them whenever a question uses one.
Part One
Questions about the story you just read. Pick your answer straight off, or press Find it in the story if you would rather hunt for the sentence first.
Part Two
The word cards are at the top of this page. Look back at them as often as you need, then answer.