Workshop 3

What is setting? Participant1: “Where the story takes place.” Exactly. The setting is the story’s location. It’s also the time when the story takes place. Time could be the time of day or year— the season— or the era. We used Times Square as an example of a setting. The location is the same, but the atmosphere is different depending on the time. Six p.m. On a Saturday night versus Six a.m. On a Sunday morning. Or, Times Square in the eighties versus Times Square now. To create an atmosphere, we discussed using sensory details: sight, smell, feel/touch, feel/mood. We wrote on the first prompt: Describe a place you once lived.  Participants read. Then, Participant2 read the mentor text: Puerto Rican Paradise. We discussed the two settings in the piece, Harlem in the 1940s, and Puerto Rico. We wrote for another 15 minutes on another place we lived that was different than the first.

Prompt: Describe a place you once lived.

"Growing Up at Home in London, England"
By Keith

I grew up in a valley outside of London. I recall the joy I had as a young child, playing on my family's property. I thought the whole world was full of tall trees and everywhere I looked it was green. I made my own make-believe forest with my friends, and it was like we owned the world in our minds. We would turn our playing into an adventure. I still think about it today, the wonderful times I shared with my friends growing up in a make-believe castle. I would not trade those memories for anything.

I spent a few months in Brooklyn some years ago, which was in the city, where I did not see a lot of trees. Mostly there was a lot of buildings cramped together, rats running around at night outside. Gunshots can be heard nightly as I tried to sleep, police sirens can be heard in the distance almost always. Now this was no doubt a grown-up world. There was no room for my imagination to be present at this time. Things were just so real from when I woke until I slept.