Story Building Tools: Setting
Every podcast tells a story. What story are you telling and why listeners will care? Where and when your story takes place. At a macro and micro level, every podcast has a setting. How much is revealed to the audience depends on the style of your podcast.
What is Setting?
Where and when your story takes place. The Setting or parts of the setting are often revealed at the beginning of a story. Other parts of the setting may be revealed other times it is left ambiguous so that the audience can fill in their own information.
Geographic location: May be set in our world or an imaginary world. What region, country, state, city, or neighborhood does your story take place in?
Physical location: Immediate surroundings to a character. Full of specific details to help create an image in the audience’s minds.
Physical environment: Weather conditions, climate, and other forces of nature.
Social and cultural environment: Societal norms and trends specific to the setting and the characters that inhabit it. Often, a larger societal issue or phenomenon may be used as a backdrop for the characters (A war, pandemic, protest, fashion, music, slang, etc.)
Time period: When does your story take place? Can be in the past, present, or future. Other details may include a season, time of day, or time of year.
How can I use Setting in my Podcast?
At a macro level, every podcast has a setting. How much is revealed to the audience depends on the style of your podcast, but here are some questions to consider:
Where are you recording? Can you connect to your audience better if you incorporate this into your podcast?
Are you recording at your home, your office, a professional studio?
Are you located in a city or suburbs? What is happening in your surroundings and does it affect the podcast at all?
Are your topics evergreen (meaning episodes will always be relevant), or do episodes need to be consumed in a certain timespan to be relevant?
At a micro level, every episode has a setting. How much is revealed to the audience depends on the style of your podcast, but here are some questions to consider:
Are you telling a story with characters? Can you provide more background by revealing their setting to the audience?
What is the context of your topic? If you’re talking about Basketball, are you talking about the NBA or Basketball as a whole? If you’re talking about politics, how zoomed in are your topics?
If you’re doing an interview, where is your guest recording? Will revealing this information give your audience better background?
Are you both in the same room or are you calling from across the country? Does revealing this information make the episode more personal or more global?
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