You can usually feel when a story is still setting things up and when it has properly started. Today you name that shape: exposition and early rising action, and how setting pushes what happens.
Your anchor text is the novel or short text this class chose and has been reading in this unit. Have that book open on your desk, plus any notes from the cover and openings work, before you move on. If you do not have the book or those notes yet, ask your teacher for the class anchor title and the pages you are using today before you move on.
You will practise on a short extract written for this lesson, then build one Plot and Setting Map of your anchor text so far: a short analytical piece for your Communication Portfolio that shows how place shapes early events.
Use these terms when you map a story:
| Term | What it means for you | Real example |
|---|---|---|
| Exposition | Your map's first stretch: people, place, and the situation before trouble builds | A new starter on her first shift in a small cafe, the manager showing her the till |
| Rising action | What shifts so the reader leans forward | A regular sends his order back, just after the manager has gone home |
| Setting | Mark details that push or block a character | A cafe so small that every customer hears every mistake |
| Plot structure | Today you only need exposition and early rising action | First shift at the till, then the complaint, then she has to handle it alone |
Worked example from a short scene written for this lesson: "The cafe was so small that the whole queue could hear the till beep, and every mistake that came after it." That one line puts her in a public, cramped space where nothing can be hidden. The setting already makes a mistake louder and help further away, before any new event arrives.
Below are early moments from a short journey extract written for this lesson (not your anchor text). Drag each card into Exposition or Rising action. If one could sit in either place, put it down and be ready to say why.
This sort is practice only. The only piece you file is the Plot and Setting Map in the next step.
This is your Communication Portfolio piece for today: a Plot and Setting Map of your anchor text so far.
1. Type a few sentences from the opening or an early chapter of your anchor text into the marker below.
2. Mark four details of the setting. For each one, write a sentence on how it shapes what happens: does it push a character, block them or change the feel of the scene?
3. Press Copy for my portfolio, open Enter Your Work below and paste your marks under Setting annotations. Then fill in the rest: the title, the exposition, the early rising action and the characters so far. One sentence on each is enough.
4. Copy your map into your portfolio folder as m1_l14_plot_setting_map_<your-initials>.
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