UNIT 1
FICTION
Setting
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The setting of a story is where all the action happens. It is the specific place, timeframe and world where the story happens. The setting of a text tells the reader a lot about who holds the power in a story and who will have none. It can give an insight into the relationships between characters and influence how a character thinks and feels. It can tell us about the environment of the world and the impact this might have on the characters. Settings can be like our normal everyday world or can be completely fictional depending on the story.
READING
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Read the three extracts below, which are taken from well-known novels that use the five senses to craft engaging settings.
Extract A: Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
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The public-houses, with gas-lights burning inside, were already open. By degrees, other shops began to be unclosed, and a few scattered people were met with. Then, came straggling groups of labourers going to their work; then, men and women with fish-baskets on their heads; donkey-carts laden with vegetables; chaise-carts filled with livestock or whole carcasses of meat; milkwomen with pails; an unbroken concourse of people trudging out with various supplies to the eastern suburbs of the town. As they approached the City, the noise and traffic gradually increased; when they threaded the streets between Shoreditch and Smithfield, it had swelled into a roar of sound and bustle.
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Extract B: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
Next moment she found that what was rubbing against her face and hands was no longer soft fur but something hard and rough and even prickly. ‘Why, it is just like branches of trees!’ exclaimed Lucy. And then she saw that there was a light ahead of her; not a few inches away where the back of the wardrobe ought to have been, but a long way off. Something cold and soft was falling on her. A moment later she found that she was standing in the middle of a wood at night-time with snow under her feet and snowflakes falling through the air.
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