In tonight’s craft class, we studied how Cheryl Strayed always gives the reader a sense of what she’s seeing and experiencing in Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. She does this by creating vivid settings, also called place.

Setting is defined as the time and place where the events and experiences described happen. Writers have many ways of grounding the reader in time and place, but the following include some of the most common elements used:

• physical appearance
• location and time
• history of the place
• atmosphere and climate
• people
• objects

We used the last paragraph on page 263, which extends to the top of page 264, to look at how Strayed depicts her current location. Then, we committed these elements of setting to this Writing About Place chart.