Setting, Background and Story-World

An episodic drama series (be it broadcast or online) lives and dies by the intensity of its dramatic pressure cooker. To have enough fuel to sustain multiple narratives over many hours of screen time (and often multiple seasons) the story-world must be capable of piling on consistent dramatic pressures, pressures which are authentic to that world and compelling enough to keep the stakes high for the characters who live in that world.

This truism is self evident in the eternal functionality of the Precinct Drama where the place of the story-world is naturally dramatic with its dramas, quite literally, walking through the door each episode of their own accord. Hence the Hospital (ER, Greys Anatomy, All Saints) and the Police station (East West 101, NYPD Blue, numerous incarnations of Law + Order) as perennial dramatic story world settings. But the principle also extends to other precincts such political institutions (The West Wing), illegal frontier towns (Deadwood), Spy Agencies (Spooks) Courtrooms and Legal Firms and Legal Firms (Rake, Boston Legal).

These examples of the Precinct Drama embody the fundamental that the Setting must be a natural magnet for drama, Dramatic events (or events that spawn dramatic conflicts) must organically occur in these places and so dramatic pressure is organically sustainable through the series.

By contrast, other episodic stories without a central dramatic precinct at the core (Breaking Bad, Sopranos, The Wire, Arrested Development, Weeds) must self-generate the primary dramas through other means - characters, external pressures, constructed circumstances. In either case it is the story-world, the setting and the background of that world which provides the basis for character drama to play out.

But recognizing the importance of Setting, Background and Story-world in sustaining episodic drama should prompt us to actually ask what each of these terms actually means; what is the difference between a Setting, Background and Story-world? How can we make these terms tangibly and specifically useful to writers and directors of episodic stories?

Too often words such as Setting, Background, Story-World are used interchangeably; casually bandied around without clarity as to how they might differ. Yet each of the three ideas of Setting, Background and Story-world can offer something unique and specific to the development of a series and, similarly, if a project is weak in its conceptualization of any one of these then there are potentially direct ramifications for the dramatic sustainability of the show.

So let’s take a closer look at what each of the three terms might mean and how writers can use the difference between them to understand their project better and make it dramatically stronger.

Setting:

The where and when as the here and now. The underlying basis of the Setting is that it is immediate and in the present. The setting is the place of the story not as it was, but as it is. The setting is the time and place the characters function in and whilst this may appear obvious it’s important in recognizing the role Setting plays as opposed the Background and Story-world.

The specificity of the Setting positions the audience to experience the series from a particular place and time as if it were the Here and Now. Thus Deadwood’s setting of “the late 1800’s, Black Hills South Dakota” is more than just a place, its a prism through which the viewer will ‘read’ the series. Setting is really analogous to a Vantage Point - the setting positions the viewer to see the world as alive in a perceivable present.

Background:

The background differs from the Setting in that it is specifically what has lead to the ‘current’ situation embodied in the Setting. The Background is to the Setting what the Backstory is to a Character - a set of contexts and influences, events and incidents that have occurred off-screen but which have shaped the time and place the audiences perceives as the here and now of the story. So to continue with the example of Deadwood; the Background encompasses the series of events and circumstances that lead to the existence and legal predicament of a camp/town on indian land. The discovery of gold, the end of the civil war, Custer’s defeat at the battle of Little Big Horn and the treaty with the Sioux indians are all factors in the Backstory of Deadwood. Without these events and circumstances the natural drama of the setting is ill-formed. 

Story-World:

So if the Setting is the here and now and the Background is the events that shaped the here and now, then what is the Story-World? In one respect we might see the idea of a Story-World as to imply a macro term encompassing Setting and Background along with characters and even plot events. But the notion of a Story-World has a further implication not encompassed by any of these other terms which gives it a specific function in devising a narrative series. The Story-World represents the Rules; the governing principles and parameters by which occupants of the Story-World (characters and events) will adhere. 

Such Rules come in many forms but we might think of them as fitting two broad categories - Internal Rules and External Rules. The former deals primarily with those parameters concerning character behavior, events and systems extant in the diegesis of the narrative. A perfect example might be seen in the production bible for the animated series of Batman (which you can download as a PDF). Here a set of rules about Batman’s behavior, what he will and wont do, what he does and doesn’t do, are clearly laid out.

“Batman does not work directly with the police. He’s not a member of the force or a deputized agent. There’s no Bat-signal or hotline, they can’t contact him.”

This entry sets out a clear relationship between the hero and the authorities and in doing so creates a a focused dramatic paradigm for the whole series - Batman doesn’t trust the police and the police don’t trust Batman. 

On the flip-side, External Rules are those that concern themselves with structural, conceptual, technical or logistical elements - methods of depiction and organization. A good example of an External Rule can be seen in the production bible from the remade TV series Battlestar Galactica (download the Battlestar bible as a PDF). 

“Our ships will be treated like real ships that someone had to go out and film with a real camera. That means no 3-D “hero” shots panning and zooming wildly with the touch of a mousepad. The questions we will ask before every VFX shot are things like: “How did we get this shot? Where is the camera? Who’s holding it? Is the cameraman in another spacecraft? Is the camera mounted on the wing?”

Here the creators of Battlestar are dictating from an external position a method of viewing and visual depiction to be consistent across the series and based on a particular desired aesthetic relationship with the viewer. 

One one level the careful prescription of such rules serves the decidedly pragmatic demand of episodic series development in that it helps keep a team of individual writers and directors on track and prevents stories being skewed away from the show’s original intent over time. On another, the setting out of clear Internal and External rules is the fundamental mode of authorship in an episodic series that provides the plausible base for the audience to engage with the narratives told in that story-world. When stories break the established rules of the story-world plausibility of the story itself is undermined. Your audience will believe Anything so long as it is governed by rules… 

Words like Setting, Background and Story-World can be found sprinkled liberally in discussions and writings about storytelling, episodic series and other cinematic narrative forms like games. But rather than a set of interchangeable words with fuzzy meanings we can make these terms far more focused and, most importantly, Useful to filmmakers by being specific. Specificity not just for how each term can be seen to refer to different things but also specificity in how the three elements of Background, Setting and Story-World relate to and inform each other.

Comments

[popularculture]

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