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Creative story setting
Guide On How To Write A Creative Story Setting

Guide On How To Write A Creative Story Setting

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Every action in a story’s scene happens in a setting. To have that intriguing story, you need to put in substantial time and effort to come up with and properly describe a story setting that would captivate your readers. So this makes having a good knowledge of how to write a creative story setting fundamental to every fictional and non-fictional story writer or every intending good author.

Just like how having a realistic character makes your story more interesting and gives it some life. Same way, initiating a creative setting for your story is key in bringing your story to life. 

The setting of a story is a must irrespective of the genre and should be written in a way that the readers can feel it and appreciate what you are selling to them.

Before we dive into the guide to writing a creative setting, let us understand what a story setting is, and what makes it important in a story. 

What is Setting in a Story?

A setting is the bedrock of every strong story. It is a make-up of the place, time, atmospheric conditions, and physical structures that are present in a scene in which the characters exist.

Why is a Creative Setting Important in a Story?

  • The essence of writing a creative setting is to have your readers feel the moments and events in your Story. 
  • It reveals a lot about the personality of your characters.
  • It gives clarity to the story. For example, the theme, time, season, place, mood, or action that would likely take place.
  • Makes your story easily conceivable such that a reader can relate to the described environments.
  • Keeps a reader’s attention glued to your piece.
  • A creative setting also makes your story memorable. 

How to Write a Creative Setting in a Story

creative story setting

Your aim in having a creative story setting is to get your reader’s rapt attention, such that they zoom off into your created world and sail through with your characters.

To come up with a creative setting for your next story, you need to apply these strategies;

Plot the Story

The plot of your story would give you insight and more clarity on what scenes your story would have in order to plan the corresponding different settings it requires.

Tap from your Imaginative Senses

Go into your imaginative senses and creatively imagine a suiting environment that appeals to what you intend to communicate in your story. An environment that will suit the story you want to tell, be it descriptive, narrative, or expository. 

Create from Existing Locations

Sometimes you can factor in real-world locations from popular cities. Close your eyes to recall different settings you have experienced and create a setting from it.

In a situation where you aren’t great at retaining memory of experiences, take a visit to a location with a similar environment just as the theme you need, observe the environment, and pay attention to what your sensory system can pick.

Then write a description of this environment and keep it to be imported into the suiting story scene.

Create Settings with a Blend of both Imagination & Reality

Aside from writing creative settings from your imagination or culling from existing ones, you can also create a blend of both. This will give you a very unique and beautiful result also.

Highlight locations in a Creative Pattern

The environment should denote the geographical location, say a room in the south wing of the house. This helps a reader imagine the environment well. It also gives a good read when names are ascribed to places in your story, even if the addresses, buildings, or structures only exist in your imagination. For example; An off-white painted bungalow beside the oak tree situated at #2 Steve’s Street. 

Naming places in your story makes them feel more realistic.

Make it Memorable for your Reader

Bear in mind that your story setting needs to be as realistic and relatable as possible, such that your reader can actually picture and feel it in a real-life event. If it is too inept, you will bore and lose your readers.

Inculcate the Time and the Season

Time should be factored in, in a progressive manner just like in real-life situations. Write the setting of a scene to unfold with time. It would aid a reader to easily picture and digest the events described. If the time is static, your readers would get stuck and lost at a stage.

Introduce a time frame or season by describing directly or indirectly how dry the harmattan air or sun was that a character found it difficult to keep up with her breath after running or returning from a routine morning jog. Don’t forget to capture atmospheric changes. This goes hand in hand with time and seasons. All these paint good pictures of the season, time, and moment.

Capture the Correlation Between the Environment and your Characters

Show how the environment affects the actions and reactions of your characters. Like a windy cool morning can make a character cuddly, and a hot sunny afternoon can make a character sweaty and temperamental. 

Physical Structure 

Describe the physical structure such that the reader can tell where the character really is. The place…market, church, party, football pitch, etc.

The Described Settings Should Suit an Active Character

He can’t be at the church putting on a jersey meant for a football pitch, and vice versa.

Do Both Telling and Showing 

Being a little more detailed by describing the gallop road condition that she drives through to work daily would gain your reader’s attention more than just writing that she drives herself to work daily.

Make it more realistic by letting your reader into your world to actually feel, smell, touch, and see it all interplay. 

Make the Story Setting Simple and Uncomplicated 

Skip trivial details and focus on what is important. Every environment would always hold more than we perceive. So when you describe a story setting, don’t go on to capture every bird and butterfly that buzzed past. Keep it as simple as possible. Capture what is important to the story.

Just enough detail to show the reader what the environment looks like, so they can picture it in their mind. But not to over-describe and bore your reader.

Imagine reading a story and after like 2 pages, you realize the author still went on to describe every nook and cranny in a house.

If a leaky roof at the garage has nothing to do with the plot, then why mention it? Except the leaky roof caused a lot of damage in the garage. Such that your character got so confused on how to clean up the car and still drive down to the interview on time beating the already building up early morning traffic. If not, then we are not interested in the detail. Just tell us she hurried to the garage and drove off in her new classic Toyota.

Make Use of Figurative Language

Using figurative language like metaphors, and similes can make the description of your story’s setting more fascinating. 

“As she stepped into the room, it was as silent as a graveyard…”

Figurative language really spices up your creative writing in a special way.

Conclusion

Writing a creative story setting is a key factor to be considered when planning a captivating story. The simple way to do this is to be detailed but at the same time not too detailed. And also, try to have it appeal to the 5 human senses.

Was this helpful? I would love to read your feedback in the comment section below.

writer's block
How to Overcome Writer’s Block

How to Overcome Writer’s Block

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What is Writer’s Block? 

Writer’s block is that creative freeze moment when your brain goes point blank for a moment and you struggle for ideas on what to write. My previous blog post on how to overcome creative block explains this more in an elaborate manner.

Even the greatest of authors experience this at some point in their writing journey. Yeah! They all do. No one is immune to writer’s block.

What I will share here with you is how to equip yourself, such that when next this inevitable blank moment strikes, you won’t be lost and stranded. You would know exactly how to tackle it.

Let’s look at the possible causes of writer’s block. You know a solution to a problem starts with a definition of the problem. A patient is half healed after a successful diagnosis. The major problem faced is not being able to understand the root cause of a problem. Once a root cause is figured out, then a solution to resolution wouldn’t be far-fetched.

Possible Causes of Writer’s Block

1. Imposter Syndrome:

The moment you permit self-doubt to engulf you, you will surely lose focus on what to write. Erase every form of self-doubt and believe in your abilities. If anyone can do it, who else if not you?

2. Poor Authority on the Subject Matter:

Having zero knowledge of a topic you are tasked to write on can predispose you to experience writer’s block. I for one encounter this when I have an unfamiliar topic to create content on. 

3. Lack of Resources:

One thing is to have poor authority on the subject matter, and another is to lack resources. You know you can have zero ideas on a topic, but have resources made available to you to read through and develop content.

Yes, it’s the 21st century, and resources seem to be everywhere on the internet. But surfing the internet on its own is a skill set not possessed by all. So for a person who has no authority in a certain field, and lacks the digital skills to surf for the right keywords and required resources, there would be no escape from writer’s block. 

4. Lack of Interest:

If a topic is uninteresting to you, you most likely will battle with blocks in an effort to come up with good content. Writing is not just about passion when you have to narrow it down to an unfamiliar and strictly formal niche with so many limiting rules. When you write on a topic within your interest, ideas flow more and you tend to experience little or no blocks because you are self-sufficient with ideas and experiences to write on.

5. Fatigue:

When your brain is stressed and in need of rest, but you keep stretching it beyond its elastic limit, you are in for some blank drama, lol! 

fatigued man

6. Hunger:

There is a popular saying that a hungry man is an angry man. The same is applicable to your body which supplies nutrients to your brain. Why is breakfast said to be the most important meal of the day? Because the brain needs a supply of insulin after a long fast over the night, so the name – ‘breakfast’. The brain requires a supply of nutrients to function better at its fullest capacity. A hungry man is prone to writer’s block.

7. Anxiety:

When you are anxious, your creative level would be low. Content ideas flow best when your mind is at ease. Free your mind from any form of tension before you start writing.

8. Unoriginality:

Trying to be who you are not in grammar by forcing big fanciful words, can limit the flow of ideas and land you in a block. It’s better to be as simple as possible.

9. Lack of a Writing Plan:

When you have a writing plan, this would guide you to prepare ahead for your writing, so you don’t end up stranded. When you have no writing plans, you most likely might find yourself in an unprepared state to develop good and readable content.

10. Nothing:

Sometimes the blank just happens and you can’t explain it.

Ways to Overcome Writer’s Block

Now that we have gained a good understanding of what writer’s block is and its possible causes, let’s see ways to overcome it. I bet from the explanations of the causes, you can already have some remedies yourself.

Nevertheless, I won’t leave you all by yourself. Here are ways I recommend based on experience to overcome writer’s block;

1. Pause and Get Some Rest:

Excuse yourself to get some fresh air. Take a stroll, take a shower, and if possible take a nap, later return to your writing to do better.

2. Tap into Your Creativity:

Explore your mind when a block hits, and apply your creative abilities. Try writing it in a reverse direction. Improve your imaginative skill

3. Make Hay While the Sun Shines:

Prepare yourself ahead of your writing, and make plans for even unforeseen writing opportunities that may come. Read lots of books, including content you can find on the internet. If you have made the decision to venture into writing, you should add reading to your hobbies. 

4. Be Versatile:

This would help you to be able to talk and write about any topic irrespective of the niche. Develop yourself.

5. Make Research:

young man making research

Ensure to research very well on a subject matter before launching into it to write. Have a good understanding of what you intend to write about.

6. Be Intentionally Spontaneous:

Know what you intend to achieve with your writing. The reason would guide you. It is said that the end determines the means.

7. Don’t Proofread While Writing:

This is one of the mistakes most beginner writers make that lands them in a block. Don’t proofread your work while writing. Permit the ideas to flow, write them all down as raw as they come, then return to them much later to proofread. Pausing to read halts the flow of ideas.

8. Have Enough Scheduled Recreational Time -’ Self-Love’:

Care for yourself. Hang out with friends. Create a ‘me-time’ to give yourself a good treat. This helps you to be at ease and in your best creative state. Take a lot of rest – as a content creator, and content writer, one of your greatest enemies is lack of rest. This really reduces your creative ability.

9. Make Use of Writing Prompts:

Use writing prompts to guide your writing. When nothing comes to mind, a writing prompt can gear you in a direction, right or wrong. Just get started first.

10. Free Write:

When nothing comes to mind, apply freewriting. Just type away or write away on whatever comes to mind. Even if you tend to rewrite it all over, the secret is just to start writing or typing it. The rest of the ideas would eventually start flowing. Afterward, return to revise and make edits.

11. Kill Off Imposter Syndrome

When fear and self-doubt start creeping in, kill it off. Believe in your abilities and kick on.

12. Hone Your Writing Skill

Work on yourself and hone your writing skills. A good command of writing will aid you to overcome writer’s block.

13. Work in an Environment that Spurs Your Creativity

dealing with writer's block

Find an environment that spurs your creativity. Environmental factors can cause writer’s block.

14. Plan Ahead

Have a content calendar to save you from a lack of topics and posts, and a writing calendar to inspire you to write more often.

15. Keep It Simple

Keep the lines running in simple grammar. Forcing yourself to use big fanciful words can send your brain to the blank phase.

16. Defy Norms

Try it your way. You need to defy norms most times to achieve greater things.

17. Eat Well

sliced bread with sandwich

Don’t work on an empty stomach. Ensure you are well-fed before you venture into writing.

Conclusion

Knowing that writer’s block is a natural experience helps you relax and know that you are not experiencing an odd event.

I hope you got answers to your search intent. Which of the listed ways to overcome writer’s block do you intend to experiment with? Kindly share in the comment box below.
How To Make Your Characters Talk in a Story 

How To Make Your Characters Talk in a Story 

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There are different ways to make your characters talk in a story. The essence of this is to create a realistic character voice and have a window through which your readers can peek into the personality and thoughts of your characters. 

This is one of the areas most new writers find challenging. Thus, sometimes they shy away and hide behind narrative and descriptive writings, skipping the totality of the main actions which bring their characters to life.

To make your characters talk, you need to work first on character creation. You need to create and develop characters who feel real like humans in real life.

Good character creation is a major required skill for every writer who wants to someday have a best seller story out there, possibly on Amazon kindle or other popular online book sites.

Knowing how to develop believable characters in a story, is a prerequisite to making your characters talk in a story. It will expose you on the way to assign real life personalities to your characters, in order to flesh them out and make them to be easily relatable to by your readers. 

Ways to Communicate a Characters’ Voice

When you make your characters talk, you try to aid them to voice out – air their views, thoughts, emotions, challenges, dreams and interact with one another.

A character voice can be communicated through a dialogue, monologue, body language, thoughts, sign language, etc

To successfully communicate a characters’ voice, you need to know who your characters are, then you can properly determine the voice they will talk with.

Strategic Ways to Make Your Characters Talk

Define Your Characters

While working on your character development in a story, before you proceed to make a character talk, start by defining who your characters are. Create each of their personalities and note it down to avoid a mix up of personalities.

Become the Characters

Then assume the states of your characters, bearing in mind the personality of each of your characters. Imagine yourself in the character’s body and experiencing all the plot of your story.

Think in the way the character with such a personality should think and pour out “your” thoughts. Express your ideas, thoughts, emotions in that style. 

Do the above for each of the characters to develop their voices. This will be easier for you if you are good at observing and listening to people in real life. From experiences you will find it less difficult to coin voices. You can pay attention to how people talk in real life, then imitate the trend in your interactions, or dialogue to sound real. 

Create a Voice

Based on the assigned personalities, the character voice can be developed. Individual voices and talks would vary based on an individual’s personality. An illiterate would sound differently from a literate, a male would sound differently from a female. A rich man wouldn’t sound the same as a middle class, or low class. Also, the topic and trend of their discussion would differ. Consciously come up with a unique appropriate voice pattern for each of your characters.

Bear in mind that different characters are bound to have varying opinions and wouldn’t always agree, just as is applicable in real life situations.

Create Dialogue

Create a dialogue between your characters. This gives off more details to a reader about your character and their personality. What they encounter and struggle with. How they think, talk and react to situations.

Add Body Language

You can also make your characters talk through body language. This act alone speaks volume more than even voice. Don’t forget the saying that actions speak louder than voice.

Revise

Revise by reading to see what the voices sound like. Do they sound real? Can you relate them to the real people you know, or have met? Make some adjustments where there are excesses of actions, reactions and wordings.

Conclusion

Don’t be in a hurry when working on character creation and character development, because this is one of the most important foundation of any successful interesting story. Building this creative writing skill right, would increase your authority in story writing be it fiction or non-fiction.

What other ways do you apply in making your characters talk in a story? Kindly share in the comment section below.

How to Avoid Plagiarism
How to Avoid Plagiarism

How to Avoid Plagiarism

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Plagiarism is a form of theft which involves stealing someone else’s words, work or idea without acknowledging the person – citation.

This can happen consciously or unconsciously. Intentionally or unintentionally. But no excuse justifies this illegal act. 

If you haven’t had an in depth research on what plagiarism is and the different forms, then you most likely might be guilty of this offence without knowing. “Ignorance is no excuse”, remember. 

Read on to learn more about plagiarism and how to not be a victim. As it is a punishable offence, especially when it comes to academic research works. 

Forms of Plagiarism

  • Self-Plagiarism: This is using or borrowing from your former published works without citing them. Amazing right? Who would have thought this as an offence? It’s your work anyway and you can choose to do whatever you like with it, right? So I thought too, but the fact remains that it is against legal citation.
  • Copy & Paste: This requires no debate. It involves lifting other author’s words or works word for word and at the same time not citing or referencing them. Some authors term this Direct Plagiarism. 
  • Complete Plagiarism: This happens when an individual takes the complete work of an author, and submits it in disguise as theirs.
  • Paraphrasing: This involves stealing another’s words and idea and tactically changing some of the words but still retaining the message or idea and failing to reference the original source.
  • Duplication: This is when you share or submit the same work of yours to different publishers or editors without their knowledge and permission.
  • Mosaic Plagiarism: Mosaic plagiarism happens when a researcher intentionally lifts the words of an author and imbed them in between theirs without bothering to alter the words, use quotation marks or even cite the author.
  • Inaccurate Citation: This is where a writer or researcher wrongly cites a wrong author or work for the work of a different author, knowingly or mistakenly. It can also be a the act of citing a non-existent source for a stolen idea merely out of laziness.
  • Accidental Plagiarism: This is by omission. It happens when a writer takes information from an author or incorporates the works of another author and unconsciously forgets to cite or reference the author.

Implications of Plagiarism

Plagiarism and Reputation
  • Plagiarism can result in a loss of reputation and credibility. Such that no one ever trusts the originality of your work.
  • It can lead to legal punishments for copyright infringement
  • It devalues the efforts of the original authors
  • It makes it impossible to find the real source of a research when one needs a further verification of data, this applies majorly in the scientific or medical fields.
  • It robs you off the opportunity to hone your writing skill and authority, leaving you dependent on others and not trusting your abilities.

Ways to Avoid Plagiarism

Everyone can easily be liable of this offence even without knowing. So it is best to abide by plagiarism law as much as possible.

Ways to Avoid Plagiarism
  1. Avoid copy and paste.
  2. Always cite your references. 
  3. Make use of quotation (marks) when quoting an author word for word in a situation you want to avoid losing the original meaning.
  4. Paraphrase
  5. Introduce your ideas.
  6. Make notes on the go as you take information from other authors, so you don’t forget who and where to cite.
  7. Confirm your work legally passes plagiarism score with an online plagiarism checker. 
what is Haiku
What is a Haiku? | How to Prepare Students to Write Haiku

What is a Haiku? | How to Prepare Students to Write Haiku

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Haiku is a brief traditional Japanese poetry, with unrhymed lines. It is known to focus on making a brief comment on a moment about seasons or nature within the author’s environment, creating clear contrasting natural imagery while applying a “cutting word” – “Kireji“.

History of Haiku

As a teacher or tutor, teaching this style of poem successfully, requires you to travel back in time to its origin and understand what it really means, how it came about, the controversies, how it got translated to English language and the changes or applicable rules. Read full history here.

Characteristics of a Haiku Poem

Not every poem about seasons or nature is a Haiku. There are rules and characteristics a poem needs to meet to be characterized as one. However, the traditional form changes a bit in style and rules across different languages, but still maintains an aspect of the traditional form.

Haiku and Nature
  • A Haiku is known to maintain a 17 syllables structure termed “On” in Japanese.
  • Traditional Haiku is expressed in a single line, while the Haiku in English is usually split into 3 unrhymed lines.
  • In the Contemporary English form, it usually contain a style of 5-7-5 line format. The first line should contain 5 syllables, second line 7 syllables and the third line which is the last line also 5 syllables.
  • It must be about seasons and nature.
  • It must use simple words for easy understanding. Big words make it loose its quality.
  • In the Traditional form, it must have a “kireji” – “cutting word”, sometimes in the middle or on the last line as a closure.
  • It should evoke vivid imagery.
  • It should apply a contemplative tone.
  • It should be brief and direct.

Examples of Haiku From the Masters

Here are a few excerpts from the Haiku Masters:

You can observe that these masters maintained some consistency in their poems….they either had a subject matter of a season, nature or weather. And their poems also create vivid images of the moments or situations described.

“A Poppy Blooms” by Katsushika Hokusai

I write, erase, rewrite

Erase again, and then

A poppy blooms.

“Over the Wintry” by Natsume Sōseki

Over the wintry

Forest, winds howl in rage

With no leaves to blow.

“A World of Dew” by Kobayashi Issa

A world of dew,

And within every dewdrop

A world of struggle.

“The Old Pond” by Matsuo Bashō

An old silent pond

A frog jumps into the pond—

Splash! Silence again.

Haiku by Matsuo Bashō reading

“Quietly, quietly,

yellow mountain roses fall –

sound of the rapids“.

How to Write a Haiku

If you have read up to here, you surely have gotten a great understanding of what a Haiku is and the principles that applies in writing one of yours.

Below are a few simplified guide on how to write a Haiku;

  • Decide on the subject matter: Choose whether the poem would be about a season or nature. For example what goes on in your immediate environment or surrounding.
  • What type of Haiku to write: Decide whether to stick to the 5-7-5 writing style or if you would want to explore your creativity with a different structure and make an adjustment to the 17 syllables rule.
  • Make use of brief phrases: Haiku doesn’t require long phrases. Maximize words, each word should count to achieve a brief and expressive poem. In the Japanese Haiku, the poets make use of popular imagery words that symbolizes seasons. You can apply this in your locality, make use of words that popularly describes or symbolizes seasons, nature, or weather.
  •  Master to add kireji: Make use of breaks and punctuations to add pauses in the rhythm. You have the freedom to feature this at any preferred section of the poem – middle or as a closure.
  • Apply Oxymoron: Introducing oxymoron can simplify creating imagery in a Haiku. Where by you introduce and compare two contrasting ideas as we can see in the earlier given examples from the renowned poets-“Masters”.

How to Prepare Students to Write theirs

observing nature

Here are simple guides to prepare your students to be able to self-develop their Haiku;

  1. Teach them to observe nature, seasons and their environment and appreciate them.
  2. Teach them to pay attention to what goes on in their environment to be able to interpret and describe them.
  3. Teach them how to be creative and tap into their imaginative senses.
  4. Teach them the art of creative writing.
  5. Teach them the principles of Haiku.

Conclusion

Haiku seems simple but might not be the easiest poem style there is. Nothing prepares you for the mastery of this art as much as understanding the history, principles, and developing your creative senses as well as sensitivity to your environment.

Kindly take a minute to share your thoughts about Haiku in the comment section.

About Us

The Writer’s Corner is a Lagos-based creative writing school for children between ages 6 – 17. We teach children creative writing and teach teachers how to teach children creative writing.

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Phone: +234 706 2906 996
Phone: +234 802 9154 151

Email: info@thewriterscorner.com.ng

Contact Us

Phone: +234 706 2906 996
Phone: +234 802 9154 151
Email: info@thewriterscorner.com.ng