I remember the first review I ever got from a stranger. It took my breath away. Some random book nerd who didn’t know me from Adam read my book and understood exactly what I was trying to do, and furthermore felt so strongly about it that they shared it with the world.
It was the kindest of reviews. It spoke in the warmest terms of my characters, my story, my themes.
There was just one thing missing.
And it haunts me.
The book, they said, was light on setting.
So naturally I’ve thought about that every single day for the rest of my life.
I don’t take naturally to setting. I’m not a very visual person. I suspect it has to do with my autism diagnosis, but I’m not sure. Some autistic people I know are incredibly visual people. The human brain is weird, and apparently my particular brand of weird struggles with noticing the physical environment.
Like many shortcomings, it has a way of becoming a superpower. I’m aware that it’s something I don’t naturally succeed at; therefore, I’m conscious of the flaw and work hard to correct for it. That doesn’t mean I always nail it. But it means that I’m learning, and that’s the constant goal of every writer. I started asking people who looked at my writing what I could improve in my setting, and they told me, and so I started reminding myself to do that, and here we are.
Generally, when I’m approaching a scene, I start with the five senses. This is because it was once pointed out to me that, while I love writing a scene that centers on food, I rarely describe how a room smells. “They’re roasting a chicken and baking fresh bread,” they said of a particular scene. “You can smell that house down the street for sure.”
I don’t advise that you hit all five senses necessarily. You certainly shouldn’t do it every time. Your reader will notice. People often tell me to underestimate my reader, but that comes back to bite me every time. I assume they know all my darkest secrets, and then I’m on my guard against them. So I never repeat the same sensory pattern twice. I don’t need my reader to be certain exactly what every single detail is of the room. I don’t need them to hear the traffic unless it’s important for them to hear the traffic (more on that later). But I need them to be convinced that I know. And in order to convince them of that, this infinitely savvy reader, I must actually know.
So, I check in with all five of my senses and see what they notice. If it’s interesting, in it goes. Usually it’s not, just as most things in most rooms usually don’t require notice. Even Sherlock Holmes only really cares about a handful of clues, no matter how many extraneous objects there may be.
Extraneous objects. What a segue, for now it is time to talk about how we choose.
I am a big fan of making my writing work harder than it wants to. Sentences, paragraphs, even chapters — they like to say what they say and mean what they mean. It’s their natural state.
The problem is this: all readers are conspiracy theorists. Indeed, all humans are. You’ve probably heard a million experts in a million contexts talk about how our brain loves pattern seeking, so I won’t revisit that here. But it’s important that we know that the reader is pattern seeking, so we know how to exploit it.
You’ve gone through all five senses. You’ve got a bunch of sensory details, most of which you can’t include. Which do you bring in?
Firstly, the obvious: what does the reader have to know? Will your character notice the smell of gas? Does the sunlight catch their lover’s eyes? Are they going to pick up that teacup? What are the actual, physical facts of the scene which need to be communicated in the scene?
Okay, those are givens. Cross those out. You don’t even need to think about those because they’re already present.
What’s left?
Look for patterns, connections. Pretend it’s a New York Times daily puzzle of some kind. What do they say? What do they say about your story, your characters? My first book revolved around a pun. It wound up being a deeply meaningful metaphor about the nature of motherhood and sacrifice. All because I decided to play a little game with a deep focus on a physical detail: the letters in a word in a magic spell.
Once you find some patterns, put in the details which make your reader see the pattern you want them to see. Trust me, they love that shit.
You’re left with another scattering of facts you don’t really need. These are the eleven herbs and spices, the thing that keeps the people coming back. None of them are going in.
Instead, we’re going to look at them slantwise. Do they have an opposite? What’s the most unexpected version of this? Go crazy. Maybe the stuffy chemistry professor has a Gatsbyesque art deco office. Perhaps the flamboyant party girl sleeps in a pile of weighted blankets. The gritty tattoo parlor might have a cat who snuggles the ankles of clients. Maybe something even more psychedelic, depending on your genre. It doesn’t have to lead anywhere. In fact, it’s best you make it clear that it doesn’t. This is pure fun.
This is how you get the truly iconic scene setting. The Persian slipper stuffed with tobacco. A lamppost in the woods. The snozzberries taste like snozzberries (sometimes the expected is unexpected, in the right context). None of this means anything really. But isn’t it one of the first things you think of?
Again, you can be selective. Don’t put it all in. Pick one really cool thing. More than that and the scene becomes cluttered. You’ve already got all those other super necessary details. You can’t leave those out just to make room for this.
Now, step back and look at your scene. Doesn’t it look much better? Doesn’t every one of those additions add something vital to the scene?
Go back and take one out. This one’s on principle. This is the proving ground, just to prove we’re not cowards.
That’s it. That’s how I set a scene. It’s not complicated. It can be time-consuming, but that’s fine. That’s the work we love. It’s a treat to get to do it a little bit more.
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