My name is Black Beauty, and I am a horse.
My life will carry me from the green fields where I was born, into the thundering streets of London, and out again to the open countryside. I cannot speak — but I can show you every place I pass through, exactly as I see it.
In this lesson you will learn to build a setting, and to give it an atmosphere a reader can feel.
A setting is the time and place a story happens — but a great writer also controls viewpoint (who is seeing it) and draws on context (the world around it) to create atmosphere: the mood the reader feels.
We will travel through three settings. In each one you will stop time, frame what you see, and shape its mood.
I begin in a wide meadow, with a pond shaded by trees and a ploughed field beyond the gate.
Spin the hours — the season and the light will change. Stop the clock, and that is the farm you must describe.
Now the cobbles ring beneath my hooves. Smoke, crowds, carts, and the endless noise of the great city.
Spin the hours, then frame the city like a camera.
At last, the lanes open out into quiet country once more — hedgerows, distant hills, a sky that goes on forever.
Spin the hours, then list what you notice — and decide how each detail should make the reader feel.
From the farm, through London, and home to the countryside — you have built three settings and given each its own atmosphere.
Lesson complete. The rest of the meadow is still being built…