The patterning of human behavior is key to the concept that the study of the spatial arrangement of artifacts can be used to infer the behavior from which they result. Because of this, the spatial context of artifacts, including their relationship with the natural environment, is more important than the artifact itself. Removing an artifact from its context destroys much of its potential to help reconstruct human behavior. -From Forensic Taphonomy: the Postmortem Fate of Human Remains by William Haglund and Marcella Sorg
In other words, context is everything. Context is all you have.
What does this mean for creative writing?
Let's say your character writes her former lover to confess that she never got over him - that she walks past his downtown apartment every morning, dreams and fantasizes about him, wonders about his life.
Now, imagine she mails this letter knowing that her former lover is married. This certainly changes the emotional, psychological, and moral nuances of the story.
What happens if this man is unhappily married? Does it matter if the woman is married, too? What if their affair began - and ended - while both were already engaged?
Context, however, can be more far-reaching and broad. Imagine the lovers live in a culture where adulterers are punished by stoning. The letter suddenly takes on a dual nature - as criminal and personal confession. The saliva on the stamp and seal are samples of DNA for the court. And the mailing is (possibly) an act of marital and literal suicide.
Or imagine bombs falling on the city, strict police curfews, massive unemployment, terrorist attacks. This certainly changes the context for love. What if the woman is part of a resistance movement? And the man is not?
The facts (events, characters, place) do not create the whole story. Rather, conflict and meaning arise from the resonance between context and facts. This will be the theme for the next series of posts, about forensic archaeology, taphonomy, and context.