The last two blogs covered the basics of complications in story. Now it’s time to look at how complication and context work together to strengthen your tale.
Context is the foundation for everything. It colors perception and fact. It changes minds and tugs on emotion. Without context, a story is nothing more than an anecdote floating in space.
Context provides the background, backstory, setting and structure that holds the details of a story together and gives the reader the framework necessary to understand. Without this, the reader cannot know how to feel.
Let’s look at an example: Say your best friend comes to you wearing shorts and a geeky tee shirt and asks how she looks. You might think she looks great and even be a bit envious at how she can pull off the casual outfit so well. But then she tells she’s going on a first date to a French restaurant. Suddenly that tee shirt and shorts aren’t looking so good. Why? Because of context. Knowing where she was going influenced your feelings about her outfit.
The same thing happens with characters. Context is the frame through which we view events. It helps us place characters in time and place and situation. It tells us if they are the product of their upbringing, society, a traumatic experience, circumstance, environment, climate, socio-economic class, race and more.
The context of your story is the world and circumstances that form around your characters and affect every reaction and complication thrown at them.
Here’s another way of thinking about it: When you were a child and got caught by your parents doing something you ought not have done, you probably told a story. I know I did. “It wasn’t me” or “the dog did it” or “you wouldn’t believe why I had to sneak out at night to play in the yard” and then I’d proceed to spin a tale. Oftentimes my story explained why I did what I did or why they should understand. The story provided context for why I misbehaved or I told it to divert attention and blame. Either way, context helped. It provided the why or motivation behind my actions and made them easier to understand.
The same holds true for your characters. You can have a character in the same outfit, in the same building, doing the same thing, but alter the context and it changes how the reader feels about your character and the situation. This is because context has power and judgement contained within it.
It’s a lot like the law used to be, before mandatory sentencing. Context allowed the judge to adjust the sentence to fit the variables of the crime. It wasn’t a “one size fits all” solution. It’s like the difference between dining and dashing for the thrill of it and stealing a loaf of bread because your family was starving. One is a flat out crime and the other, while still being a crime, is understandable and forgivable.
That’s the power of context. It changes opinion and feelings about subsequent actions. It provides the reason and motivation for characters, which makes stories come to life. Without context, you risk losing emotional connection with your characters. You also risk losing the narrative.
We, as readers, need to know what motivates characters to act as they do, because that tells us whether their act is noble or dishonorable, kind or cruel, hopeful or hopeless—all of the elements that feed character development.
Context is deeply linked to character development. We are the product of our background, of what has come before. Our lives provide the context for what happens to us or at least our perspective of it. If your character is a grumpy old man, he will see events differently than a young, optimistic girl would because our attitudes come from the world we inhabit.
Situations also rely on context. In the example above about your friend’s outfit, the situational context provided the emotional response. Without the surrounding details, readers cannot understand the world of a story. It’s all interconnected.
Context is also deeply linked to complications, which can only work if the reader understands how those complications came about and how they will affect the character.
In the next blog, we’ll explore five ways to maximize context in your story.