We read books to escape, to find new adventures, to have new experiences . . . and to visit new places without ever leaving our own chairs. Great novels conjure up places as vividly as they conjure up characters and action. Charles Dickens’ detailed descriptions of the slums of Victorian England; Bram Stoker’s atmospheric Transylvanian forests; Charlotte Bronte’s bleak Lowood School—these settings create vivid canvases upon which the action of their stories take place and they introduce us to places we would never otherwise be able to visit. Settings don’t have to be exotic to be exciting. They just need to be vividly drawn and create a strong sense of place.
But conjuring up a sense of place is also one of the hardest aspects of writing. Here are a few tips:
- Use Specific Detail: Say your scene takes place in a forest. Give the reader as much specific detail as possible. What types of trees are in the forest? What else grows there—bushes, flowers, weeds? What season is it? Are there animals? A tropical forest might be filled with flowers and jungle vines; a northern forest might consist of pine trees and scrub bushes. The more specific you can be, the more vividly your readers will picture the scene. But what if you haven’t been in a forest recently or you don’t know anything about trees?
- Research. The library and the internet are excellent research resources. There you can find everything you might ever need to know about forests, or medieval castles, or New York City, or any place else you might be trying to describe. You may not need all the details that you discover, but you also never know when a detail may come in handy. What if your setting is wholly imaginary? Base it on a real place and pick and choose your details and disguise them, accordingly.
- Don’t forget all the senses. Places are not just defined by what you can see; they are also defined by their smells, their sounds, and their lighting. Physical description is important, but just as important is the focus on intangibles: the smell of a wood-fire or the sound of a bird, for example. Weather also plays a role in creating a sense of place, as does light. Is it dark or light in the forest? Cold or warm? Wet or dry?
- Don’t over describe. Pick your details. If you spend too much time describing every tree in the forest or every sprig of grass, your readers will get bogged down in detail and lose track of the action. Remember: the description is supposed to add to the story, not detract from it! Pick the details that matter the most and focus on them.
- Describe through action. Space out the description via action instead of bunching all the description into one paragraph. For example, if you have a character walk into a library, rather than having the character pause, look around and describe what he or she sees, intersperse the description as the scene unfolds. Using action to convey detail keeps both the story and the reader moving.
Ysabeau Wilce has lived many different places, including San Francisco, Anchorage, Miami, Mexico City, Madrid, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Philadelphia, and Brooklyn. She's always brought her books along with her everywhere she has moved. Wilce was formerly a museum curator and when sitting in on a lecture she first came up with the idea for Flora Segunda, a series of young adult books. She has a graduate degree in military history and lives with her border collie in Chicago.
