Setting may or may not be an important factor in the story of incident.  What is meant by setting?  It is an inclusive term.  Time, place, local conditions, and sometimes descriptions of nature and of people are parts of it.  When these are well cared for, we get an effect called “atmosphere.”  We know the effect the atmosphere has upon objects.  Any one who has observed distant mountains knows that, while they remain practically unchanged, they never look the same on two successive days.  Sometimes they stand out hard and clear, sometimes they are soft and alluring, sometimes they look unreal and almost melt into the sky behind them.  So the atmosphere of a story may envelop people and events and produce a subtle effect upon the reader.  Sometimes the plot material is such as to require little setting.  The incidents might have happened anywhere.  We hardly notice the absence of setting in our hurry to see what happens.  This is true of many of the stories we enjoyed when we were children.  For instance, in The Three Bears the incidents took place, of course, in the woods, but our imagination really supplied the setting.  Most stories, however, whatever their character, use setting as carefully and as effectively as possible.  Time and place are often given with exactness.  Thus Bret Harte says:  “As Mr. John Oakhurst, gambler, stepped into the main street of Poker Flat on the morning of the twenty-third of November, 1850, he was conscious of a change in its moral atmosphere since the preceding night.”  This definite mention of time and place gives an air of reality of the story.  As to descriptions, the writer sifts them in, for he knows that few will bother to read whole paragraphs of description.  He often uses local color, by which we mean the employment of epithets, phrases, and other expressions that impart a “feeling” for the place.  This use of local color must not be confused with that intended to produce what is called an “impressionistic” effect.  In the latter case the writer subordinates everything to this effect of scene.  This use of local color is discussed elsewhere.

Perhaps the writer wishes to make character the dominant element.  Then he subordinates plot and setting to this purpose and makes them contribute to it.  In selecting the character he wishes to reveal he has wide choice.  “Human nature is the same, wherever you find it,” we are fond of saying.  So he may choose a character that is quite common, some one he knows; and, having made much of some one trait and ignored or subordinated others, bring him before us at some moment of decision or in some strange, perhaps hostile, environment.  Or the author may take some character quite out of the ordinary:  the village miser, the recluse, or a person with a peculiar mental or moral twist.  But, whatever his choice, it is not enough that the character be actually drawn from real life.  Indeed, such fidelity to what literally exists may be a hinderance to the writer.  The original character may have done strange