So, now you have your setting. You have pages and pages of notes and research. How do you bring these facts to life in the book? How do you write a setting so vivid that the reader is truly transported?
Use Specific Details
You should have enough fodder now to create very specific details about your story world. By specific, I mean a detail that leaves exactly the impression you want to create in the reader’s mind. As much as you want to immerse them in the story world, you also don’t have a lot of time to capture your reader’s attention. This means that you can’t take a paragraph to describe a room. You have to use one or two key, specific details about that room to convey an impression to the reader that will allow them to create a sensory picture of the place in their minds.
For some horribly lucky writers, this comes naturally; while drafting, they get the right details down right away. For the rest of us, there are lists. List the details you might include in the scene about the room–wallpaper, drapes, windows, furnishings, smells, sounds, where the light is coming from. Then pick just a few of these details–the ones that will convey the impression you want the reader to have about the place.
Tie Detail to Action
Next, don’t just write a few sentences with the details in them. Instead, tie the details to actions in the scene.
Green velvet drapes hung over closed wooden shutters. He thrust aside the drapes and threw open the shutters. A smell of baking bread wafted into the room.
See how the action slows? Here’s a better way to do it:
He thrust aside green velvet drapes. A smell of baking bread wafted into the room when he threw open the shutters.
The story stays in motion when you tie details to strong actions.
Pick Details that Convey Mood
Every scene has a mood you want it to convey. Hopeful, dreading, ominous, amorous. Pick details that match that mood. That doesn’t mean you change the setting to match the mood; “a dark and stormy night” has been done to death. But you can pick details out of a bright, sunny day in the park that leave a completely gloomy feel, if that is your goal. Crows picking at trash cans. Bums sleeping on benches. A child crying in the distance. You get the picture.
Use Your Senses
You’ve probably heard this a million times, but I’ll just drill it again because it’s so easy to forget to do while we’re writing. Use all of the senses. Sight, Hearing, Touch, Taste, Smell. Make sure you know which sensory details are present in your scene and include the ones that convey the right impression. One way to think of it is this: Sight and hearing are distant senses. Scenes written with only visual and auditory details convey an outside the frame, watching the action kind of feel. But scenes where the reader can feel, taste and smell the details puts the reader intimately into the scene. Play with these different kinds of details and you’ll start to notice the effect it has on POV and reader distancing.
Don’t Overdo Setting
This is a tough one. You’ve put so much work into researching and/or building your world that you want to tell everyone all about it. To you, every detail may seem precious. But you have to step back and consider the story from the reader’s perspective. Ultimately, they are reading the book because they want to know what happens to the characters. So, hold back. Probably 80 to 90% of the stuff in your notes will never see the pages of your book. Don’t dump in information about the setting for no good reason. The setting should be like atmosphere in a good restaurant: so transportive that the reader isn’t even aware it’s there. They should feel it, not think it. If the setting calls attention to itself through over-description, you’ll lose the opportunity to make the reader feel.
Consistency
This point is so important it gets its own post in tomorrow’s post: 101 TIWIK #40: Consistency Equals Believability.
This post is part of a series of 101 Things I Wish I’d Known Before I Wrote My First Book. Start reading the series at the beginning.
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