Settings

Setting is the place and time in which the story takes place.

Overview
The setting is the environment in which a story or event takes place. The setting can include specific information about time and place (e.g. Boston, Massachusetts, in 1809) or can simply be descriptive (eg. a lonely farmhouse on a dark night).

In works of narrative (especially fictional), the literary element setting includes the historical moment in time and geographic location in which a story takes place, and helps initiate the main back drop and mood for a story.

Setting has been referred to as story world  or milieu to include a context (especially society) beyond the immediate surroundings of the story.

Elements
Elements of setting may include culture, historical period, geography, and hour.

Along with the plot, character, theme, and style, setting is considered one of the fundamental components of fiction. and novelist Donna Levin has described how this social milieu shapes the characters’ values.

The elements of the story setting include the passage of time, which may be static in some stories or dynamic in others with, for example, changing seasons.

Types
Settings may take various forms:
 * Alternate history
 * Campaign setting
 * Constructed world
 * Dystopia
 * Fantasy world
 * Fictional city
 * Fictional country
 * Fictional crossover
 * Fictional location
 * Fictional universe
 * Future history
 * Imaginary world
 * Mythical place
 * Parallel universe
 * Planets in science fiction
 * Simulated reality
 * Virtual reality
 * Utopia

Particulars
Locale – planet, country, city, building, field, woods, vehicle, at sea, in space. Any place where you can put characters and action.

Weather – rain, snow, sunshine, fog, temperatures, hurricanes, droughts, and so forth.

Objects – any physical items a character can touch or use or refer to (think props).

Era – a time period (medieval Europe) or a moment (the sixties in the U.S.)

Time – An age or epoch or a specific year, even a time of day or a season.

Culture – laws, social practices, societal taboos, societal expectations, politics and government, entertainment/games, religious practices, education, war, mores, technology.

Geography – type and/or condition of land to include mountains, plains, lowlands, islands, cloud cities, volcanoes, and so on. Terrain. Plant and animal life.