The amount of detail in school setting

[ButterflyEmpress]

How much detail and realism is necessary for a school setting?

I'm writing a romance slice of life webtoon that takes place in a college. My main characters have declared majors & career goals, but I want to focus on their personal growth and relationships. From other shows, comics, etc that have school settings everything is kept vague. Example in LMLY, the characters are paired together to work on a project, but it's never stated what the project is or when its due.

I'm indifferent to that sorta thing, but since it's a common trend I wonder if people find it annoying.

[SoftWonderBun]

Depends on how much of the story actually relies on the school setting itself. The focus probably shouldn't be their school routine if that's not the desired plot people are looking for with your genre type. It really depends on your story but most the 'daily routine' of characters usually falls to the wayside once the main plot actually gets rolling anyway

[Legendofgenii]

Yeah, in the movies they tend to only show exciting things/lessons, like dissecting a frog, sports, or some tragic field trip.

[DNoble]

It's just a matter of how relevant it is to the plot. If one of the characters is, say, arachnophobic, and they have a biology assignment that requires them to study spiders, then perhaps the details of the assignment are more relevant for that situation.

If it's just a romance story wherein the relationship between the two main characters is the central focus, then 'being in school' is probably enough. However, if you're focusing on more than just the romance, then determine what is necessary for the narrative.

One of your characters might be worried about their home life or relationship with their family. In that case, what classes they're taking and what assignments they're working on aren't exactly relevant. Another character, though, might want to study law and be worried about passing the BAR, in which case the classes and assignments are central to the character's goals.

And, of course, this doesn't have to be separate from the romance. One thing I personally find cloying in romance stories is when the romance is everything about the characters and nothing else matters, when in real life, romantic relationships are just a part of someone's life, and how those relationships interact with and affect the other parts is fertile ground for storytelling.
Maybe that character studying for the BAR is about to give up when their crush/partner shows up with coffee and words of encouragement to give them the final boost they need. Maybe the arachnophobe leans on their lab partner in the assignment about spiders and that brings them closer together. Who knows, the possibilities are endless because people are more than their relationships.

That is very much my personal preference talking, and many people actively like the idea of romance being the center of the universe as far as a story is concerned, so your mileage may vary. It just depends on where you want your focus to be and what is useful, relevant, or interesting to advancing the narrative you want to tell.

[Lensing]

How much detail and realism is necessary for any story?
For some stories it´s enough to know that the story plays in a school with no further
information.
I personally never think about realism, I know other people who do.
The story touches me on an emotional level or not, the mood of the story comes
across or not but that has never anything to do with the setting being realistic or not

[RobertBMarks]

How much detail and realism is necessary for a school setting?

Well, you have to focus your details on what is important to the story. I mean, if your protagonist is majoring in economics but that's nothing more than setting and background, the only thing you're going to do by having a chapter where they attend an economics lesson is bore your reader to tears (and I say that as somebody who once attended a defence economics conference during my War Studies MA not realizing what I was getting into, and getting completely lost as each model reached their 27th variable).

The objective is a feeling of authenticity, not full accuracy. What the characters interact with has to feel real. So, you need to have them interact with the things that a college student would interact with (studying for exams, buying textbooks, residence life, etc.), but any of those things that aren't relevant to the plot or character progression can be handled as throwaway lines (such as a character ending a chapter by saying "Gotta go - I've got an assignment to finish up for tomorrow").

For an example. there was this animated show years ago called Undergrads that managed to so perfect capture the first year residence experience that when I watched it, I was literally thinking "Did that, did that, had a friend who did that, almost did that..." - and you never see the characters in a classroom. But, everything else felt right, so you just took it as a matter of faith that between the events on screen, they were taking classes, writing assignments, and studying.

So, concentrate on the detail that is relevant to the story, make sure that the things that aren't relevant are properly hinted at, and it will all feel authentic to the reader.

[Jenny-Toons]

Since it's a college setting, you really get into the whole "college is what you make it" vibe, which was definitely how I went about it. Now, if you're thinking of making a college setting that's large, this is easier to do because there's so many options for your characters to do personal growth.

You've got student government bodies, living in the dorm and doing dorm activities, hanging out with friends after class, going to the library after hours, maybe even touring the town they're going to college in. School wise, it can depend on what majors they're doing and who they are as people when it comes to studying. You can also think about if your characters have any scholarships that have meet-ups with the scholars.

Majors like Engineering and Computer Science do have a lot of study groups. I know for myself, I was in a lot of group chats and discords dedicated to different classes. People posted syllabus, notes, old HW -- you name it! And a lot of people bonded that way. It's not uncommon to find people dating or having friends from their classes and similar majors. In terms of deadlines, these are usually based around midterms and finals. If you've got a big project for a class, that's usually turned it around finals or around the 2nd mid term exam.

For my college, we worked in semesters (fall and spring). The first mid term exams were often around October/March, a 2nd one somewhere in November/April, and the finals during December/May before winter break/summer break. Engineering homework for me was weekly, so deadlines were often at Sunday (11:59pm). Mini Projects were closer to the midterms and finals dates, so you can go wild with that.

There's also the difference between commuting to college versus living on campus. I actually did both, and I'll say the experiences were different. For the first four years, I lived on campus. I lived in a suite with two doubles and four singles (double means you have a roommate, single means you live by yourself). I had a single and my friends for those years were my suitemates, people from my major, and some scholarship buddies.

After that, the last two years were spent commuting. I actually made more friends in my major because of that, kept in touch with my scholarship buddies, and made friends with people going the same route home.

I hope some of this helps!! If all else fails, it never hurts to ask people about their college experiences. What they enjoyed about it, what they did to develop relationships and what growth they saw in themselves. I'd definitely say I enjoyed college more than high school -- more ways to become a responsible adult, more chances to grow as a person on my own terms, and different ways to cultivate my education!

[powerplantanimations]

I just include stuff that never really happened in my High School. A bunch of cliches and all that. :v

[RobertBMarks]

I hope some of this helps!! If all else fails, it never hurts to ask people about their college experiences.

Just to add to this, if you want to know something about the college/university experience, ask people about theirs. Do NOT rely on movies or television. I've only seen one get the experience right, and that was Undergrads...and it only dealt with dorm life.

[TheLemmaLlama]

since it's a common trend I wonder if people find it annoying.

I guess I can see myself finding it annoying if it feels like the college setting is just window dressing - like sure, nominally the story is set in college but it could just as easily be set anywhere else with no meaningful changes

Basically, like others have said, add enough detail for it to feel like an authentic college experience, and for it to not feel like the characters' lives revolve around romance and nothing else - but no need for detail for the sake of detail :]

[ButterflyEmpress]

@jennytoons @RobertBMarks I have lived in a dorm for a year before and enjoyed it, but that was almost a decade ago. I have been snooping around on college sites for info I never knew/forgot, but there are some things that require a log in unfortunately. A lot of what you mentioned I haven't even thought of or experienced myself so I'll definitely consider looking into them.

I honestly did worry that people might be taken out of my story if say they didn't see the exact homework assignment in one of their core classes. So that was silly of me lol!

[system]

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