For some writers, the setting, or the story world, is the reason they write. This is a common refrain among fantasy writers that I talk to, that they started writing fantasy because they love the worldbuilding.
Sometimes during our first draft, the setting feels vibrant and alive in our imaginations. That was true for me as I wrote The Lost Girl of Astor Street, my young adult historical mystery, But when I re-read my first draft, I was surprised to find very few descriptive details. The setting had been very real in my imagination, but I hadn’t done a good job of getting the details on the page.
If you can relate, here are some ideas for how to enhance your setting during your edits.
When I’ve slowed myself down, and I’m imagining myself in the scene, I do this by thinking through the senses. What in this scene can my character see, touch, hear, smell, and taste?
Because of my tendency to rush through this step, I’ve disciplined myself to write down several ideas for each sense my character experiences in the scene. Not all of the ideas make it into my revisions, but I’ve still found it to be beneficial to have a big pool of ideas to draw from.
If you’re like me, it’s easy to get into a description rut. I have my characters walk into rooms and notice the same things that they noticed in that other rooms—the wall color, the quality of furniture, and so on. Or I’m always using the same colors for everything.
But you know what’s amazing about being a novelist versus someone who makes visual stories? We’re not limited by any kind of budget we have or what we can find at the store.
You want your character to have a green pinstripe couch? No problem. Want half your book to take place in Bermuda and the other half in Prince Edward Island? Sure. In first drafts, I often default to my habits. My characters are always meeting at ordinary restaurants, walking through ordinary parks, or attending ordinary schools.
If you write realistic fiction like I do, you of course need to be real with your settings, but don’t limit yourself to obvious choices. Same goes for what you pick to describe in a room. Try to go beyond the details like the wall color or furniture arrangement and give us details that show creativity and thought went into crafting this place.
Checkout this brief description of a store from The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater:
Fathom & Sons is a narrow, dark corridor of a shop, stuffed like a Cornish hen, with odds and ends labeled with little price tags that glow like white teeth in the dim light. It always smells a little like butter browning in a pan—so, like heaven.
This is a place we only visit a few times during the story, but still she takes great care in few words to craft an image of the setting. Go forth and do likewise.
This is a technique I like to play around with in edits. Examine your scene and determine what the mood of it is. What is the POV character feeling at this time? What are they going to feel at the end of the scene? What kind of change is going to take place?
Then when you’re crafting the description of your setting, you can think about if there are elements you can draw out that will highlight the mood. For example, if your character is in a fragile place, or something is about to break open in the plot, you might share details like the cracked lamp on the end table or the glass figurines on the mantle.
You can get a bit too on the nose with this one, so sometimes it can be better to draw out opposites. Like your aggressive, fierce character journeying through a meadow full of flowers, or a happy occasion being shrouded in fog.
There’s no right or wrong way to do this, it’s just something to have fun with.
I realize this is an older article, but it’s full of great advice. I tend to write very lean, and layering in settings is always a challenge. Thanks for reminding me that we all tend to default to the familiar in our first draft. It’s not just me then 🙂