How to Quickly Establish the Setting in Scenes

by C.S. Lakin, @LiveWriteThrive

Setting is largely ignored by writers, and that’s a shame. Setting is not only important in fiction to transport your readers into your story, it’s one of the most versatile tools in your writer’s toolbox.

Regardless of whether the setting is an important element in a particular scene, or you want to be vague, or you’re continuing with your characters in the same place as the prior scene, you should always have your character notice something about his surroundings to ground the character in location early on.

Every time you put your character in a new/different place, you need to establish the setting. Even if your character has been there before, there are always ways he is interacting with the setting.

What is your character going to notice when entering a new space? She’s going to notice things that catch her eye or other senses. She’s going to notice things that are out of place or intrigue her or affect her emotionally. She won’t notice things that don’t matter to her or she ticks off as expected and ordinary.

She will quickly survey the room. Her attention might land on the plastic pink chairs in the children’s dentist office waiting room and the funny rug with a town and cars on it. Maybe the weird antiseptic smell that reminds her of pink bubblegum. But if she’s been in this waiting room a dozen times, she may ignore it all.

However, she’ll no doubt note how many people are in the room, how they’re dressed, approximate ages, what they look like, how they’re positioned, and their moods. But how much time and attention will she give to these elements?

Describe Only What Your Character Would Notice

The answer depends on her mind-set, what she’s thinking about. If she’s preoccupied by something and her “mind is elsewhere,” she won’t notice hardly anything. In that case, you can show her sitting in one of the pink chairs as her young child heads to play with the toys scattered across the funny rug, a brief indirect mention of setting details, as she thinks about what all this dental work is going to cost her and frustrated her insurance won’t cover any of it, trying to figure out which bills to skip paying this month, and how she’s going to afford groceries.

In contrast, if nothing is preoccupying her mind, she might take time to look around her. Bored, she might search for a magazine to read and take in minor details of the room. Or maybe the terse, hushed conversation another parent is having with her misbehaving child draws her attention.

Once you’ve determined what your POV character’s emotional and mental state are for your scene (which should center on the purpose of your scene and the action that’s about to take place), you can decide what she should notice when she enters a new space.

It might be what your character sees when she gets out of her car, what the air smells and feels like, one small detail that catches her eye. Don’t just write out a laundry list of typical, predictable details—think strategically. What will enhance or affect the character’s mood that will work best in your scene?

I’ve heard some instructors suggest a good general rule: have the character notice three things (which are shown as sensory details) when in a new setting or at the start of a scene. Filmmakers call this initial introduction to each new setting an establishing shot—it establishes where the character is, which is crucial.

Here are a couple of establishing shots in Barbara Kingsolver’s novel Animal Dreams:

We left the truck in the company of other pickups and station wagons at the edge of town and walked up into the narrow streets. There wasn’t a soul out, but lines of smoke drifted from the chimneys and the big adobe beehive ovens that squatted in every third or fourth backyard. A black dog pawed at the edge of a frozen puddle. The ladders that connected one rooftop to the next were drifted lightly with snow. One house had a basketball hoop nailed to the end beams. Front curtains everywhere glowed with warm interior light, though it was still early afternoon, and strings of bright red chilis hung by the front doors.

The attic was pleasantly chilly and smelled of pine. Decades of summer heat have forced droplets of resin out of the rough floorboards, which in cooler weather hardened to little amber marbles that scattered in all directions as we shifted trunks and cardboard boxes. The afternoon is fixed in my memory with the sharp smell of resin and that particular amber rattle, like the sound of ball bearings rolling around in a box. It’s surprising how much of memory is built around things unnoticed at the time.

These descriptions feel personal, and they should. In deep POV, readers experience place through the senses of the character as well as her response to it.

Learn from Your Own Observations

When you leave an air-conditioned dark, cool building in the heat of summer in a place with high humidity, like the deep South, what do you notice upon pushing out the doors?

I notice immediately the brightness and quality of the light. I notice the humidity shift—the moisture in the air and the stickiness on my skin. I’ll then notice nearby sounds and smells, all within a few seconds of exiting the building.

When a character is confronted with a sharp shift in sensory detail, he should notice and react to it. A blind person may not see visuals, but he can feel the hot sun on his shoulders. His other senses are heightened, as would a character who is blindfolded.

Writing instructor Heather Sellers suggests asking these ten questions to help you (and your readers) set the stage wherever you plan to place your character:

1. Where are we? What room, neighborhood, town, county, place?
2. What time is it? What minute, hour, day, month, year?
3. What is the weather outside like? What’s the atmosphere inside like (lighting, hot/cold, smoky, comfortable, etc.)?
4. Who is there, “onstage”? Who just left? Who is nearby?
5. Who is expected?
6. What just happened?
7. How old is each person “onstage”?
8. What are people wearing? What do they have in their hands?
9. What is in the room/location? What “stuff” is around?
10. What is the dominant smell?

You can come up with your own set of questions, but always keep in mind your POV character can only know what he knows and will only notice what catches his interest.

Practice the technique of showing setting elements indirectly as you move characters through the space they’re in. That’s one of the best way to establish the setting. Use the setting to support or prop up the purpose of your scene, reflect and affect your character’s mood, and ground your character in a place that feels real and tactile.

Don’t discount the importance of setting—it’s the world of your character that you want readers to be drawn into.

Want to master crafting powerful settings? Enroll in C. S. Lakin’s new online video course that will give you technique and exercises to evoke settings that will immerse your readers. You can find all her online courses for fiction writers at Writing for Life Workshops on cslakin.teachable.com.

C.S. Lakin is an award-winning author, blogger, copyeditor, and writing coach. She has taught thousands of writers how to improve their craft through her blog, Live Write Thrive, and her online school. She is the author of the Writer’s Toolbox series of books on novel writing and does more than two hundred manuscript critiques a year.

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