(Essay) The Inseparable Relationship Between Character, Setting and Conflict

A Story by Austin

This is an essay that attempts to show that conflict, character and setting in stories are not only important, but also interconnected. It also attempts to show how they're all connected to each other

I've been thinking about the various aspects of writing and literature in an attempt to better my own skills, and upon thinking, I've thought of what can be called the "cornerstones" of storytelling: plot, character and setting. In writing books I've perused, these three subjects are treated separately, most likely than not, in order to focus on the creation of each individual facet. This is understandable, but I think there's a lack in observation of the relationship between them, and I feel like the three elements are not only connected; I feel like they're inseparable.

Well-told stories entertain, first and foremost; once this is accomplished, they have the power to speak to the human condition(i). After all, stories are human creations that are composed of elements that represent our reality. Characters are our selves and consciousness, settings are our surroundings and situations, and plots are not necessarily challenges, but rather incidents worth recording(ii). There are other elements of fiction, such as tone, theme, point of view and style, but since the three basic components of the human reality are the self, the universe and the problems we come up against, it seems fitting to conclude that a story’s internal reality is composed of character, setting and conflict(iii).

It’s not enough to create these three elements in a story and then write a story with them; it is also necessary to acknowledge how they’re connected to one another. A story with a vivid setting and a fleshed-out character but no connection between them will make it seem like the characters are ghosts in the world, or that the setting is merely a background instead of an integral part of the story. A story with a vivid setting and a dire conflict but no connection between them will make it seem like the conflict has no place in the world, or that the setting has no place in the tale. And finally, a story with a fleshed-out character and a dire conflict but no connection between them will raise the question of where one should invest in the story, if it’s worth investing in at all. This essay will set out to prove that by having a strong connection between the character, the setting and the conflict, a story will feel more interconnected, have more weight to it, and speak to the human condition more effectively.

This essay is not intended to provide a panacea for writing woes. It’s not even meant to provide a way to make beautiful fiction; that comes, I think for most if not all paths, with a deep look into the human condition, finding issues we have, and writing about them in a meaningful style. This essay is meant to look at the separate elements that make up a story’s internal world, and to discuss how connected they are, how stories are worse when the relationships are not acknowledged, and a few ways to acknowledge the relationships.

The most commonly acknowledged relationship in fiction, and by far the most significant when thinking of the human condition, is that between conflict and character. The dynamic between them is so common, it has been categorized by its types: man vs. man, man vs. nature, man vs. society, man vs. self, and so on. This relationship guides very event within the story when the two elements are present. If this relationship is weak�"that is, if a conflict doesn’t really affect anyone, or if no character is fully invested within the conflict�"then the story will not have a driving force, and there will be no reason to invest in it.

Conflict & Character

How is this relationship created and strengthened? I think it must first be noted that problems don’t register in people’s minds until it affects them in some manner. Therefore, I believe the first thing that must be acknowledged in creating a strong conflict-character relationship is to establish how to conflict affects the character. This could be, to name a few, physical, psychological, social, familial, financial, spiritual or patriotic. The conflict can either be an injustice or wrong inflicted, an endangerment of something dear, or a want for something unpossessed. In any case, in order for the character to become invested in the conflict, it must put the current state of the character’s life up to change.

Out of this, the character must form a motivation to deal with it. Just as people have reasons to deal with problems, so do characters have reasons to deal with theirs. This is where the character initially affects the conflict�"giving it scope, importance, and stakes. The motivation can most likely be found by thinking of what’s important to the character, giving him or her something to fight for. If a character doesn’t have motivation to deal with the conflict, then the fight against it will appear mechanical, instead of having something to fight for.

Once the conflict has enough of an effect on the character, and the character has enough motivation to deal with the conflict, then the two spend the rest of the story wrestling for domination. Their paths through the story are not side-by-side, but rather intertwined, with challenges coming up, weaknesses to overcome, and moments where the character is stronger than the challenge. This intertwining of conflict and character is the most significant relationship of writing a story, since it enables character growth and development. Conflicts are, essentially, opportunities for enlightenment, to find out more about both life and one’s self. It is with this relationship, throughout the story, that we learn how powerful the conflict is, how powerful the character is, and (thinking of ourselves as the characters) how strong we could be. When we connect with a character, we want to see that character grow and change, confront the looming problem, and conquer it. The struggle has its ups and downs�"hence the intertwining nature, which leaves neither the character nor the conflict as the dominant force all the time�"and ignoring this intertwining nature will make the story very one-sided, without much of a struggle and not much for the reader to invest it.

The relationship between conflict and character is paramount to any story that has these two elements in it. Each story is a case-study into our own lives and our problems. With a powerful threat and proper motivation, the conflict and characters within a story can face off in a meaningful manner. The results of the meaningful interactions are gravity and growth of the problem, growth and development in the character, and a story that evolves from merely existing to one that grows as it continues being read.

Character & Setting

Taking problems out of a story, a character will also interact with the setting. In real life, it is impossible for a person not to be influenced by his or her surroundings, and people have the power to shape their surroundings as they desire. If the relationship between character and setting is weak�"that is, if the character doesn’t do much with it, or if the setting has no effect on the character�"then the character will seem like a ghost in the world and, more likely, the setting will just fade into the background.

How is a proper character-setting relationship established? Going back to our own reality, the world around us teaches us primarily through our senses. Therefore, to create a vivid setting that interacts with the character, it seem that one must simply acknowledge the important effects the setting has on the senses of the character. From a distance, a setting will have an effect on the person’s sight; depending on the situation, it may also have an effect on the person’s senses of hearing and smell. In proximity to the character, the character can use all of his or her senses to get a sense of the climate of the place.

The senses give the character an immediate sense of how things are; there is also what effect the setting has based on its scales and challenges. Our surroundings teach us, and they also challenge us. Harsh weather endangers us, tall cliffs and dark caves provide greater challenges�"basically, nature can provide its own challenge for characters (hence man vs. nature). This is important because in a story where there is a big focus on the setting, an author can have a lot less empty space in his or her story by having nature be the challenge.

Speaking more to the human condition, a setting can also encompass a society, and society teaches people how to live through customs, laws and regulations. This poses a further challenge to a character because now life’s not just about survival, but about coexisting with the society. Not only does the society teach the character; it also admonishes the character for going against the standards society implements. And with differing values and customs in societies, this creates a broad spectrum of how the character will be received. This challenges the character to either stay true to his-or-herself, or change to the standards of the society he or she finds himself or herself in.

These are all the ways that settings teach characters about life; in our quest for evolution and understanding, every human is a case-study into what works and what doesn’t for survival and maintaining peace. Therefore, every human has some effect on the setting. Societally, if we take each individual character in a particular setting as a some of the whole of that society, then the character’s interactions with characters within that society (such as a club, a job, or a village) will not only affect the characters within the society but also the society as a whole. New ideas will be introduced, current ideas will change, and old ideas will perish, all thanks to what the character introduces into the society.

Physically, a character may not interact with distant physical settings at all; what is important to know is that a character can manipulate his immediate surroundings in order to survive. This will probably take care of itself, as if a writer is writing a particular scene where a character needs to survive, the character will look around and use what he or she can to survive. This isn’t as big a deal as societal influencing, I believe, but it may be worth noting that what the character does may have an impact on the setting later on; manipulation of the setting may also help the character while also harming the setting, as in creating a campfire that sets a forest ablaze. The physical surroundings aren’t as forgettable as societal surroundings, but it’s important to note that a character can use his or her surroundings to his or her advantage.

The relationship between character and setting is not so much intertwined as it is more mixed: characters move about in and leave marks on a certain space. The setting depends on the reader taking note of it to not just be a background, and having it affect the character in some way will bring it more into focus. A character’s mark on a setting will make him or her seem to have an impact on the story. Taking the case-study idea of life into mind, a character is the human entering an environment, and we the reader observe how we could handle ourselves given the circumstances.

Setting & Conflict

The least notable relationship among the elements, not insignificant but the least relatable to the human condition, is the relationship between the setting and the conflict. Even when we’re not at a place to learn experiences and face problems, worlds still exist and problems still arise. Although it’s not relatable to the human condition as much as conflict-character and character-setting relationships, acknowledging how a problem affects the surroundings or how the setting deals with it will make the conflict feel like it has more of a presence in the world, and it will make the world that’s facing it feel more integral to the overall tale.

There are two types of stories I can think of where the setting-conflict relationship really stands out: man vs. nature stories, and stories where there are no characters. In the former, the conflict’s effect on the setting is meant to make it more menacing for the character facing nature to deal with. In the latter’s case, this could mean either that the setting is the main focus (as in “There Will Come Soft Rains”), or that the characters are seen as a society and not really as individuals (such as in “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World”), where we are meant to observe a place rather than a single self. In both cases, the setting-conflict interaction stands out.

When dealing with a setting-conflict relationship in any other type of story, I think we should take strictly geographic settings as entities untouched by humanity, and societies as a larger version of a character�"that is, with an effect from the conflict and a motivation from the setting. Any conflict that affects a setting, whether geographic or societal, with have one of four effects: a detriment where the setting suffers, a benefit where the setting gains, a mix of benefits and detriments, and no effect at all. A setting, in return, will not only react (or not react) to the conflict, but will be set at a certain level of “readiness.” Is the setting prepared to face it? Does it have the proper technology and knowledge? If not, does it at least have the resources? If not, what will happen to the current way of life? A setting in this manner can be treated as a character, in that it is an entity that constantly reacts to the conflict and the changing state of the conflict.

I stated that setting-conflict relationships are the least important relationship in regards to the human condition, but something can be gleamed from acknowledging this relationship: why does the conflict matter? There are many different cultures and places, so where does the specific conflict actually matter, and where does it not? What are the universal problems we deal with? Lack of love? Struggle for resources? Stories are looks at problems that affect us, and having a specific type of setting or various types of settings will help us look at the problem in the grand scope of life.

The conflict-character relationship helps bring problems into the focus of how it affects us, the character-setting relationship helps shape the internal world of the story, and the setting-conflict relationship helps put the conflict into a larger scope. It must be acknowledged, though, that since the self, the universe and struggles are in a neverending state of interaction so long as we exist, character, setting and conflict actually interact as one, inseparable from the other two. In the most basic of states, a character exists in a setting where the two influence each other�"one through senses and laws, he other through ideas and actions�"and these two are constantly struggling to maintain and better their state of being.

So in terms of writing, there are three crucial questions I think can be asked while acknowledging these relationships:

1. What effect does the conflict produce? We read stories for the conflict, and whether it affects the character, the setting or both, it will speak to the human condition in some manner.

2. Why should the conflict be dealt with? Life is a constant struggle, and stories are a small piece of life. Therefore, there must be a reason that the conflict should receive focus to us.

3. When does the conflict have the upper hand, and when does it not? This is more in line with writing the actual plot of the story rather than planning it out. This is basically asking, how does the story go?

Addressing these three simple questions, I believe that a story can have more fleshed out characters that have a stake in the story, a setting that actually shapes the world instead of just being background, and a conflict that actually has the gravity to warrant attention. All three of these elements will come together to create a story not just with existence, but with life.

Endnotes:

(i)The idea that stories can speak to the human condition comes from two sources. The first place I received it is from Holly Henry, my currentpy professor of Literary Theory and Criticism. The second is from an excerpt from an essay by Germaine Necker de Staël’s Essay on Fictions, which was found in The Notrton Anthology of Theory and Criticism: second Edition (excerpt from pages 507-515). “…if [stories] touch our hearts, they can have a great influence on all our moral ideas.” (de Staël 508)

(ii)Specific words and ideas from this sentence come from a quote by innovative fiction writer Ronald Sukenick: “New fiction requires new criteria, but such criteria will be rooted in the essentials of the medium: not plot, but ongoing incident; not characterization, but consciousness struggling with circumstance; not social realism, but a sense of situation; and so on.” This quote was found in an essay in one of the books from The Norton Anthology of American Literature: Seventh Edition, Volume E (though I don’t remember the page numbers).

(iii)Plot is more often considered a literary element than conflict, and a conflict is a part of the plot, but since conflict is what guides the plot, and since plot, in our reality, refers to a plan of how something’s going to play out, I shall talk about conflict rather than plot in this essay.