# Creating a Sense of Place



## curtis (Jun 4, 2016)

What is the most important part of writing with regard to setting the scene? In The Shining, the tone is sinister and the atmosphere is gloomy. A gloomy atmosphere is the result of presenting physical details in such a way as to create an emotional reaction. What do you enjoy more than setting the scene?


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## Patrick (Jun 4, 2016)

Well, at a basic level, scene setting is a courtesy to the reader. Where are we? Is it day? Is it evening? What's happening? What's the weather like? What's present? Who's present? What period are we in?

But how all that information is handled is up to the writer. Novel's take place, therefore place (and the progression of time) is inherent. Some writers are more descriptive than others. I think imagery is obviously important, so is sound, smell, taste, movement, and then what all of that stuff is doing to the protagonist. That's where you start to get into mood, tone of voice, whatever.

But you don't have to be pedantic about it. You don't always have to put all of that up front. You will most of the time; there's just often no reason not to.

What do I enjoy more than setting the scene? I don't have favourite and least favourite aspects of writing. It's how it all comes together as a whole that counts for me. You know, you have to maintain a view of the forest as much as the trees as you go.


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## escorial (Jun 4, 2016)

i think Steinbeck was superb at this..i can recall reading Cannery Row for the first time and being overwhelmed with character and setting...i read it straight after and wondered how did he do that and i guess because he lived it and knew the scene from experience...


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## curtis (Jun 9, 2016)

To set the scene, could you read books on travelling? Could you read books on sociology? I think sociology could be a unique way to get reactions from characters. For example, a person carries a concealed handgun. He goes to a location where conceal and carry are not allowed. What type of reaction do we get from this person? This scenario further characterizes the person.


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## Patrick (Jun 9, 2016)

curtis said:


> To set the scene, could you read books on travelling? Could you read books on sociology? I think sociology could be a unique way to get reactions from characters. For example, a person carries a concealed handgun. He goes to a location where conceal and carry are not allowed. What type of reaction do we get from this person? This scenario further characterizes the person.



You can read as many books as you like, fiction and non-fiction. How you make a scene come to life and take off in a reader's imagination is to do with the writer's imagination, and so while you want to have an ever-expanding pool of knowledge to draw on, how you see the fictional setting and translate that image into words is what's important. This takes practice.


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## Jay Greenstein (Jun 9, 2016)

The sense of place must come from the protagonist, not the reader, because it's how they see the scene that matters, not the author's view, or intent. Never forget that intent dribbles from the words at the keyboard. Take ten people and have them wander thorough a house. Let them go where they will and look at anything they care to, for as long as they like. Then, have them write a report on what they think the people who live there are like, based on the house and what's in it.

Will the fire marshal look at the same things as the artist? Will the visitor from the third world and the American factory worker draw the same conclusions? As they say, where you stand on an issue depends on where you sit. And our goal is to make the reader sit in the protagonist's seat, seeing everything as that character does. Below is a passage from Dwight Swain's, Techniques of the Selling Writer, on viewpoint, that was a huge help to me:





> By way of illustration, let’s go back to our scene at the mountain lake. Our focal character lies high on a rocky, wooded slope with a pair of binoculars. His purpose is to rescue an abused child whom he believes to be a prisoner in the camp below. The effect we seek to achieve at the moment is one that will excite such intense feelings of compassion and outrage in our focal character that he’ll be blinded to everything except the absolute and urgent necessity of going ahead with the rescue, regardless of personal peril.
> 
> Note, now, how sharply this choice of effect limits us; how strongly it turns us away from most of the potential motivating stimuli laid out below. Meadow, bears, trout, truck, landscape—all must be abandoned, because they offer little chance for the specific kind of stimulus we need: a goad to compassion and to outrage.
> 
> ...


Viewpoint. Without that it's a report.


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## Patrick (Jun 9, 2016)

That isn't scene-setting; it's characterisation. And it's a pretty gratuitous example, nothing more than writing for shock value.

Let's not get the cart before the horse; the novel is the writer's vision, and the protagonist is part of that vision, a very strong part and in fact an ally, but the vision doesn't belong to him/her. The settings and the mood of the book will all occur to the writer. The author's view and intent should guide every facet of the narrative; if it does not, then you believe in channelling spirits and automatic writing. That is not story telling. A story teller is in control, a craftsman.

The place is inherent. Stories take place. The place does not belong to the character; the character belongs to the place. It defines him, creating and destroying him. He is not in control. The writer is in control, and the quality is entirely a matter of the writer's imagination and skill. Viewpoint is a tool, one the writer is, again, in control of, as your example from Dwight Swain demonstrates. What a writer has to do to set a scene is translate abstracts and visions into words that fizz with creative energy.


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## Jay Greenstein (Jun 10, 2016)

> That isn't scene-setting; it's characterisation. And it's a pretty  gratuitous example, nothing more than writing for shock value.


Bear in mind that I posted only s small part of what he has to say on the subject. And the man was a professor, so you'll have to take up if it is or isn't gratuitous with the teaching staff at Oklahoma University.  But that aside, if you, the narrator, step on stage to describe _anything_, the scene clock stops, all sense of realism of the scene evaporates, and the reader gets an external voice talking about how _they_ see the scene. But the reader doesn't care how you see it. They want to know what matters to the protagonist. You and I can stand looking at the same scene and take away two different views of what was seen. Read the report of a political event from two different sources and you'll see that, clearly. So any description that does not reflect how the protagonist percieves it in the moment they call now is a viewpoint break. And fair ids fair. It is their story after all. 

To quote others with the same view:

*“*To describe something in detail, you have to stop the action. But without the action, the description has no meaning.”
~Jack Bickham

And another I feel relevant:

“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader, not the fact that it’s raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”
~ E. L. Doctorow





> The place does not belong to the character; the character belongs to the place.


That same professor, and the others who taught with him disagree. To quote Swain:
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
A person—or a character—is primarily a point of view. His attitudes are the dynamic aspects of his being. The direction he takes and the road he travels depend on them. They constitute his private, subjective, individual mode of adjustment. They’re the reason one man runs from the threat of violence, and another tries to talk his way out, and a third reaches for the nearest club.

A point of view is the sum of how a character sees and reacts to:

(1) Himself.
(2) His story plight.
(3) His world and life in general.

To establish a character’s point of view, you first must provide a background that will logically evoke it.
- - - - - - - -
So first, comes the character. The scenery is _his_ scenery, to support _his_ story, and meaningful to him. Inject anything else and you stop the scene to talk about it, killing momentum.





> The place does not belong to the character; the character belongs to the place


Again, the writing teachers disagree. I did an article showing the same scene through various viewpoints to illustrate the point, but since I'm not allowed to mention my own work , here's what Dwight Swain has to say (but he does it a lot better in any case). This is the lead-in to what I pasted in the previous post:
- - - - - - - -
A story is a succession of motivation-reaction units. The chain they form as they link together is the pattern of emotion.

As a helpful step in learning how to forge such a chain successfully, it might be wise to probe a bit deeper into the nature of the motivating stimulus.

The motivating stimulus

 A motivating stimulus is anything outside your focal character to which he reacts.

For a motivating stimulus to do its job well, it must have:

 a. Significance to your character.
b. Pertinence to your story.
c. Motivity to your reader.

A stimulus is _significant_ to the degree that it presents the external world as your character experiences it. Although we may not view it through his eyes, the picture we receive of it must reflect his state of affairs and state of mind. A woman who goes to church to flirt with the man in the next pew zeros in on one set of stimuli. Her neighbor, come to check on the styling of other parishioners’ clothes, reacts to a different group. A friend that seeks spiritual uplift and enrichment approaches with values that draw her attention to things that, to her, mirror such uplift and enrichment.

Yet all three sit side by side within the sanctuary. It’s merely the stimuli they note which make the difference.

It is, in brief, a matter of _selection._

Or consider a tiny mountain lake. Thickly wooded slopes sweep down to the water’s edge along half its shore line. Sheer cliffs rise gray and forbidding on the far side. Two camping trailers and a tent stand in a patch of clear ground down close to the narrow south beach, where a rutted dirt road terminates. There are children at play . . . women cooking . . . a man who bait-casts a hundred yards or so off to one side.

The road, in turn, leads away from the lake, around a spur of brush, then off along the edge of a meadow thick with wildflowers—columbine, trillium, bellwort, violets.

Now a pickup truck approaches, bouncing noisily along the road. Far away across the meadow, behind a hillock and almost in the shadow of another spur of brush, a pair of bear cubs frolic under their black-furred mother’s watchful eye. Close to the center of the lake, a rainbow trout jumps, and the bait-caster on shore pauses, rod poised like some sort of long, strange, quivering, insectile antenna.

What will your focal character notice about this scene? To what specific fragment will he react? Is his lens fixed on the trout? The bears? (And if so, which one?) The blonde child peering from the tent? The approaching pickup? The sound of the pickup’s motor? The gray rock faces of the cliff? The columbine? The bellwort? The big, raw-boned woman in Levis who hunkers by the fire, poking sullenly at her frying bacon with a stick?

It’s hard to overemphasize the importance of your focal character’s—and your—choice. For to a very considerable degree, your readers will draw their conclusions as to the meaning of the focal character’s reaction on the basis of context—that is, the stimulus or motivation that provokes it.

Especially is this true if said reaction is objectively written, non-introspective, physical reaction.

Thus, a film editor may place a close-up of an actor’s face directly after a shot of an actress lying dead in a coffin. Invariably, the audience will thereupon interpret the actor’s expression, however blank, as one of grief.

But suppose, instead, that our editor cuts the self-same reaction shot in after a frightening scene—one in which a madman lunges at the camera with an ax, let’s say.

This time, the audience will promptly declare the actor to be registering fury, or horror, or courage, or shock, or what have you.

Do you see the issue? The right reaction is the direct product of the right stimulus. Choose the correct fragment of motivation and you control the direction of your story. If you want a particular reaction, pick a stimulus that will evoke it. A good external motivation makes your character’s consequent behavior completely logical to your reader.

Conversely, the _wrong_ motivating stimulus is the meaningless or ambiguous one. It bores or confuses or irritates the reader. Worse, it may become a false plant, a false pointer . . . prepare him for something that isn’t going to happen; head him down the wrong road.

For unconsciously, your reader takes it for granted that every stimulus in your story is brought in for a purpose. If a gun, or a car out of gas, or a loose board in the porch floor is introduced, he assumes that you’ll pay him off for noting it by giving it a function later. Not to do so will net you the same brand of deserved resentment you’d draw from your wife if you were to have her bake a cake for a party which you secretly knew had been canceled. For you to focus on a mysterious redhead or a scream in the night or a stolen wallet and then not have it influence the course of your story can only make you the target for reader outrage.

So, how do you emphasize the significance of a stimulus properly?

You use the technique of the motion-picture close-up. That is, you direct and control your reader’s attention by telling him what you want him to know and that only . . . just as the film director hammers home the importance of a trembling hand or an open door or a shattered doll by filling the screen with it to the point that it dominates everything else past all ignoring.

To this end:

(1) You choose the effect you want this particular stimulus to create, in terms of motivating your focal character to desired reaction and, at the same time, guiding your reader to feel with him.

(2) You pick some external phenomenon—thing, person, event—that you think will create this effect.

(3) You frame this stimulus so as to pinpoint the precise detail that highlights the point you seek to make.

(4) You exclude whatever is extraneous or confusing.

(5) You heighten the effect, by describing the stimulus in terms that reflect your focal character’s attitude.


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## EmmaSohan (Jun 10, 2016)

Jay, what do you think of this?


> Bending under the weight of the packs, sweating, they climbed steadily in the pine forest that covered the mountainside. There was no trail that the young man could see, but they were working up and around the face of the mountain and now they crossed a small stream and the old man went steadily on ahead up the edge of the rocky stream bed. (For Whom the Bell Tolls, 1940, page 11).



To me, this is just scene. If there is a purpose to crossing a stream or the forest being pine, I don't understand it. If there is something I am supposed to remember, I don't because I just glaze over. I basically never write this way and don't want to. But it is Hemingway. Can't this be a style?


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## afk4life (Jun 10, 2016)

I'll just say what no one else is. Unless you've at least tangentially been in the same situation, it doesn't matter how good your writing and staging is, it will fall apart. Can I do two pages of a soldier in Vietnam in 1973? Sure, even though the most tropical place I've been is very safe Hawaii and the worst that's happened to me from other people is someone smashing out the car windows where me and my friends were. I could probably stretch it to ten pages and make it semi-convincing, at least enough to keep someone reading, but it's going to fall apart because it's not something I've experienced. That's what we do as writers is use our experiences to create stories. So you can take something that's happened to you and extrapolate on it and that works, but if you're trying to write something not even close to your experiences there's very few writers that can pull that off.

As far as actually setting a scene, everyone's right, it depends on the protagonist. My opinion is it's much better to let the majority of that be based on their reactions because you're both establishing character and scene at the same time. It's just going to make your story so much stronger if you do it that way. I enjoy writing it that way much more, also.

Take 

It's a gloomy night and the sky is purple with thunder. He's smoked one cig and since he can't smoke indoors he's about to light another, and a strange noise catches his attention.

Versus

I put out my cig and glance at the sky and it's crackly and a real strange spooky shade of purple that I don't like. A storm is about to break and I know I gotta get inside but just one more cig and then there's a noise in the bushes I don't like.


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## Jay Greenstein (Jun 10, 2016)

> Can't this be a style?


Sure it can be a style, and an editor in 1938 would be thrilled to get the manuscript. But today?

Several things happened that drastically changed the publishing industry. One was TV. It put visual entertainment in every house and in direct competition with an evening of reading. And how could writing compete? Film and TV put the viewer in the room with the protagonist, reading expression and the scene and making their own judgments, which give the feeling of participating in the story, directly. The viewer decides if they trust a character, based on the same visual clues the protagonist is using. 

But when they turned to the writing of the day it was filled with vivid descriptions of what the _writer_ saw happening. The writer compensated for the missing visual and audible clues the protagonist was using with vivid, and often poetic language. But could that compete with in-your-face action? Too often it's the writer explaining the story to the reader.

The second thing that changed the ground rules was the advent of cheap disposable books, in the form of what they called, "pocket books, available for a quarter instead of several dollars. Early, they reprinted existing books, but then came the hard boiled detective genre, which took the reader to a place where the visual arts couldn't go, into the protagonist's head.

Take a look at the opening of, _I the Jury_. It's 100% in the protagonist's "now." We view everything through the protagonist's eyes, as against being told about it by a storyteller. If Mike Hammer doesn't find something important enough to react to, it doesn't exist, which speeds the act of reading and gives the action more impact. And, it's 100% told in motivation/response units. It sold over three million copies, and spawned an avalanche of such books. But of more importance, it, and others like it, showed that books could compete very well with film if they stopped telling and focused on showing, which is, in reality, another name for a strong viewpoint.

Yes, you can still write in a more literary style, and there are lots of successes, but the vast majority of what's published today is more character-centric and emotion-based—especially in adventure, romance, and sci-fi. And what are most hopeful writers working on?


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## Patrick (Jun 11, 2016)

Jay Greenstein said:


> Bear in mind that I posted only s small part of what he has to say on the subject. And the man was a professor, so you'll have to take up if it is or isn't gratuitous with the teaching staff at Oklahoma University.  But that aside, if you, the narrator, step on stage to describe _anything_, the scene clock stops, all sense of realism of the scene evaporates, and the reader gets an external voice talking about how _they_ see the scene. But the reader doesn't care how you see it. They want to know what matters to the protagonist. You and I can stand looking at the same scene and take away two different views of what was seen. Read the report of a political event from two different sources and you'll see that, clearly. So any description that does not reflect how the protagonist percieves it in the moment they call now is a viewpoint break. And fair ids fair. It is their story after all.
> 
> To quote others with the same view:
> 
> ...



The appeal to authority really doesn't cut it. Professor or not he's allowed to have opinions, and I am sure we wouldn't want to hold professors to the standard of having to speak Ex Cathedra every time they open their mouths or take up their pens.

I'd be interested to know what you mean by "explain anything". I didn't mention exposition, though exposition is part of the novel.

The fact that we have different witnesses of the same scene with independent reports of what they saw doesn't shed any light on what good storytelling is, since with those two different perspectives we still have two reports. What separates a report from the novel is a really multifaceted conversation, but viewpoint cannot be the determining factor. The elements of prose style are far more significant in setting a scene. I think that's a sound logical deduction.



> A person—or a character—is primarily a point of view. His attitudes are the dynamic aspects of his being. The direction he takes and the road he travels depend on them. They constitute his private, subjective, individual mode of adjustment. They’re the reason one man runs from the threat of violence, and another tries to talk his way out, and a third reaches for the nearest club.
> 
> A point of view is the sum of how a character sees and reacts to:
> 
> ...



He has a very formulaic view of writing, one I don't share. But if the basic point is that we need to be selective about what we include in our scenes, then of course. We can't have so much going on all the time. This has as much to do with mental resources as anything else. I tried to have a conversation with EU Remain Campaigners earlier on the high street and to begin with they were trying to all talk at the same time, that combined with the passing traffic and the amount of people walking by made debate impossible until it settled into a back and forth one-to-one. It really doesn't have anything to do with viewpoint, however, because any viewpoint you can think of in such a scene will not be able to handle the sheer confusion of detail being given. It's the writer's job to focus on the items of interest.



Jay Greenstein said:


> Sure it can be a style, and an editor in 1938 would be thrilled to get the manuscript. But today?
> 
> Several things happened that drastically changed the publishing industry. One was TV. It put visual entertainment in every house and in direct competition with an evening of reading. And how could writing compete? Film and TV put the viewer in the room with the protagonist, reading expression and the scene and making their own judgments, which give the feeling of participating in the story, directly. The viewer decides if they trust a character, based on the same visual clues the protagonist is using.
> 
> ...



I think you're too worried about television, Jay. For example, if you read A Game of Thrones and then you watch the television series (though both are great fun), you realise just how much texture is left out by the tv show. The show cuts from one location and scene to another, and the scenes are so condensed there's no room for all the intricacies the novel gives you. Take even the prologue in the first story and its counterpart in the tv series. the tv series doesn't come close to capturing the suspense of the book because it's so condensed. The book delays the reveal in a way the tv show can't because of time and budget constraints. Vivid imagery in a book gives the reader his/her own unique mental picture. That is something television and film will never be able to replace or compete with directly.  What television often competes with is the internet, a battle it is sorely losing. People who want to read books and to be transported to foreign lands where they can play and be delighted by the vast sandpits of imagination, can and still do find time to read. This amounts to no more than having the concentration to put aside the distractions of modern life to read.

Stylistically, there's very little to comment on in _I, The Jury_, except to say that the title has good resonance with the prose: _I did this, I did that. _Maybe this is the sort of thing you enjoy, but it wouldn't do for me at all, because one of the things I try to do in my own writing is to cut as much of that dead freight out as possible. One of the good things about reading is there are lots of different experiences to be had. Read Hilary Mantel's _Wolf Hall_ and _Bring up the Bodies, _and compare the experience to _I, The Jury_.


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## Jay Greenstein (Jun 11, 2016)

> The appeal to authority really doesn't cut it. Professor or not he's  allowed to have opinions, and I am sure we wouldn't want to hold  professors to the standard of having to speak Ex Cathedra every time  they open their mouths or take up their pens.


Perhaps I'm old fashioned, but I can't seem to get the hang of the idea that all opinions, be they from someone honored for their success or "I think I'm a pretty good writer," are no more than personal opinion That's why I don't present my personal view without identifying it as such. Swain, for example, when he was teaching, had a student list that read like a who's who of American fiction. And he has people who made the NYT best seller list endorsing his words.

My feeling is that you can't argue with success. If I have two opposing viewpoints on how to achieve publication, and only one of them has made  living at it, I tend to side with success.





> I'd be interested to know what you mean by "explain anything".


*“*To describe something in detail, you have to stop the action. But without the action, the description has no meaning.”
~Jack Bickham

The way around that is to give the protagonist a plot related reason to need that information in his decision making. If you looked at that opening section of _I the Jury_, the  narrator could have opened with a small essay explaining why the detective was there, and what his relationship was with the dead man. But instead, he gave the protagonist reason to reflect on it, and feel sadness, a bit of incidental character development, while bringing the reader up to speed without the necessity of freezing the actors in place.

Doing that can't seem even remotely real if the characters are living the scene. Wouldn't you ask a stranger who appeared in the room with you and began discussing you, who they were, and what was going on? The fact that the characters don't react when the narrator explains things kills all sense of reality.





> He has a very formulaic view of writing, one I don't share.


You don't have to. No one says we have to write in any style. But the goal of the exercise is to to attract and please readers. Demonstrably, at the time he rwas writing, he was able to do that, are many of his students. Remember, people used to pay a good deal of money to attend his classes and workshops. And nearly 200 people have endorsed that man's books. A great many more have praised his co-teacher's ideas, as well, so while they don't resonate with you, you cannot dismiss them for everyone else. Remember, you write in the literary genre, a writing style in which readers _expect_ the author to play a central role, and we are often in the narrator's not the protagonist's viewpoint. But that doesn't apply to romance, adventure, sci-fi and fantasy, etc. I'm not claiming that one or the other is superior, just that there is a significant difference that we need t take into account as we write.





> . For example, if you read A Game of Thrones and then you watch the  television series (though both are great fun), you realise just how much  texture is left out by the tv show.


I've seen both. It's not that the left things out, or changed them for the sake of change. It's that the medium change makes things that were impossible easy, and vice versa. In film, in an eyeblink the reader sees the scene and everything in it, so they get dress, ambiance, and situation incidentally, as the characters live the story. because much of the critical internal decision-making cannot be shown with expression change they must create action and dialog to do that, and in some cases that won't work, so they change the story. 

But on the page, all that we can show must be simplified, so that the act of reading about the scene doesn't take so long that the reader is bored. As a rule of thumb, if it takes longer to read about a character doing something than it would to live it, your story is dragging. The film isn't trimming for budget, but because there's no way to get into the character's persona so deeply that we view the scene as _they_ interpret it. We know Will's view of the officer in a way that would take at least a muttered conversation to impart in the film version. 

But that aside, turn to the print version. In the opening section, there's damn little authorial intrusion, only the characters living the scene in real-time. There are a few explanations, but other then the single info-dump on the officer's appearance those are directly related to one of the character's internalization.

And of more importance, the action is 100% motivation/response based, 100% character and emotion-centric. During the section where Waymar is leading, and the fight, we are hard in Will's viewpoint, and see things as he does. So while you discount Swain's words, the example you use subscribes to them 1:1.


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## Patrick (Jun 11, 2016)

Jay Greenstein said:


> Perhaps I'm old fashioned, but I can't seem to get the hang of the idea that all opinions, be they from someone honored for their success or "I think I'm a pretty good writer," are no more than personal opinion That's why I don't present my personal view without identifying it as such. Swain, for example, when he was teaching, had a student list that read like a who's who of American fiction. And he has people who made the NYT best seller list endorsing his words.
> 
> My feeling is that you can't argue with success. If I have two opposing viewpoints on how to achieve publication, and only one of them has made  living at it, I tend to side with success.



I don't offer my views as a path to publication. It just becomes a bit tiresome when publication is brought up as a way to dismiss my views. I simply haven't had the time that Sol Stein has had, but it doesn't mean I don't know how to write. Maybe I don't know how to write, but we aren't discussing Patrick vs Sol Stein; we're discussing the creation of a sense of place. To condense: I am saying the elements of prose style are more important, and you're saying viewpoint is more important.



> *“*To describe something in detail, you have to stop the action. But without the action, the description has no meaning.”
> ~Jack Bickham
> 
> The way around that is to give the protagonist a plot related reason to need that information in his decision making. If you looked at that opening section of _I the Jury_, the  narrator could have opened with a small essay explaining why the detective was there, and what his relationship was with the dead man. But instead, he gave the protagonist reason to reflect on it, and feel sadness, a bit of incidental character development, while bringing the reader up to speed without the necessity of freezing the actors in place.
> ...



Well, description and exposition aren't the same. Exposition has to be handled deftly, and it's usually best not to lead with it. It's best to get the reader into the scene and to raise questions. When it comes to description, R.R. Martin is very descriptive and his writing isn't typically considered literary fantasy.



> You don't have to. No one says we have to write in any style. But the goal of the exercise is to to attract and please readers. Demonstrably, at the time he rwas writing, he was able to do that, are many of his students. Remember, people used to pay a good deal of money to attend his classes and workshops. And nearly 200 people have endorsed that man's books. A great many more have praised his co-teacher's ideas, as well, so while they don't resonate with you, you cannot dismiss them for everyone else. Remember, you write in the literary genre, a writing style in which readers _expect_ the author to play a central role, and we are often in the narrator's not the protagonist's viewpoint. But that doesn't apply to romance, adventure, sci-fi and fantasy, etc. I'm not claiming that one or the other is superior, just that there is a significant difference that we need t take into account as we write.



It's worth pointing out that I am currently writing literary fantasy, but I don't write the way I do because of the labels; I write the way I do because I try to be the best writer I can be. I don't think prose style is limited to literary fiction. Isn't it a disservice to all the "genre" writers who work very hard to establish a unique voice? I rather think it is. My objective isn't to slam Sol Stein. I am sure you and many others admire him for very good reasons, so I'd rather not make the discussion about him. I've been responding to you about the subject of scene-building. And you'v left out almost all of my comments on it to focus on the parts of my post that concern Sol Stein (I am getting confused over his name now).



> I've seen both. It's not that the left things out, or changed them for the sake of change. It's that the medium change makes things that were impossible easy, and vice versa. In film, in an eyeblink the reader sees the scene and everything in it, so they get dress, ambiance, and situation incidentally, as the characters live the story. because much of the critical internal decision-making cannot be shown with expression change they must create action and dialog to do that, and in some cases that won't work, so they change the story.
> 
> But on the page, all that we can show must be simplified, so that the act of reading about the scene doesn't take so long that the reader is bored. As a rule of thumb, if it takes longer to read about a character doing something than it would to live it, your story is dragging. The film isn't trimming for budget, but because there's no way to get into the character's persona so deeply that we view the scene as _they_ interpret it. We know Will's view of the officer in a way that would take at least a muttered conversation to impart in the film version.
> 
> ...



I didn't proffer that example for any of the things you discuss here, though. I used it to demonstrate that the merits of a book aren't in direct competition with television.


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## Terry D (Jun 11, 2016)

curtis said:


> What is the most important part of writing with regard to setting the scene? In The Shining, the tone is sinister and the atmosphere is gloomy. A gloomy atmosphere is the result of presenting physical details in such a way as to create an emotional reaction. What do you enjoy more than setting the scene?



Wow! Lot's of stuff going on in this thread, and it seems to have gotten a bit away from establishing a sense of place, or "setting the scene". Here's my take:

The author is wholly responsible for setting the scene and whether he chooses to do that through omniscient description, or POV based observation, he absolutely has to do it to pull the reader into the story. IMO the best way to establish a sense of place is to focus on details utilizing as many of the senses as possible. I'm not talking about indiscriminately stuffing sights and sounds, smells and textures into your work. That can work, but you can also over-do it easily. Scene setting is where writing becomes a lot like painting. A skilled painter carefully chooses which details she is going to include to achieve the appearance of reality. The writer must do the same. One precisely chosen detail can create a sense of place for the reader far more quickly and efficiently than two pages of indiscriminate description. Word choice is critical to this process. Don't call the old house scary, tell me what makes it scary. Does it have peeling paint, or does it have 'flakes of faded paint hanging like strips of diseased flesh'? Broken windows, or 'windows leering blankly, shattered and blind'? You get my drift.


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## Patrick (Jun 11, 2016)

Terry D said:


> Wow! Lot's of stuff going on in this thread, and it seems to have gotten a bit away from establishing a sense of place, or "setting the scene". Here's my take:
> 
> The author is wholly responsible for setting the scene and whether he chooses to do that through omniscient description, or POV based observation, he absolutely has to do it to pull the reader into the story. IMO the best way to establish a sense of place is to focus on details utilizing as many of the senses as possible. I'm not talking about indiscriminately stuffing sights and sounds, smells and textures into your work. That can work, but you can also over-do it easily. Scene setting is where writing becomes a lot like painting. A skilled painter carefully chooses which details she is going to include to achieve the appearance of reality. The writer must do the same. One precisely chosen detail can create a sense of place for the reader far more quickly and efficiently than two pages of indiscriminate description. Word choice is critical to this process. Don't call the old house scary, tell me what makes it scary. Does it have peeling paint, or does it have 'flakes of faded paint hanging like strips of diseased flesh'? Broken windows, or 'windows leering blankly, shattered and blind'? You get my drift.



That, to me, is the essence of it, Terry.


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## EmmaSohan (Jun 12, 2016)

Hi Jay. Since my writing is very minimal in physical detail, this is an important issue for me.

Some people seem sure that the writer should "paint" the scene -- describe it vividly, so the reader can see it. And put in the other senses too. I suspect they appeal to readers who like that much detail.

You are basically saying that's wrong. Instead, only details that are relevant to the story or characters? (I am not sure.) I'm agreeing (for at least some readers), but I need to know more about when to use detail and when not to.

As maybe a prod to discussion -- I describe the male lead as having a "car", and I have this scene: "He's dressed nice and he looks nice. Sports coat. So I'm not over-dressed. That's a relief." No color of sports coat, even though she (narrator) would certainly notice.

In contrast, in your_ A Chance Encounter_ you have "The tire tracks led to a forest green Hummer,..." Why did you use that much detail? I am not disagreeing, I am just asking.


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## Kyle R (Jun 12, 2016)

I love when the setting pops off the page—vivid, crisp, described so concretely that the reader feels like they're right there as they read it. But there's also a point where it can drag on the story. Like anything, too much of a good thing tends to be bad.

For that reason, I like when the author establishes the setting in broad strokes early on, just to ground the reader with a good sense of place. As the story moves on, the writer might pepper in more details here and there, to help build the atmosphere. Mostly, though, I find I care more about the characters, and what they're doing, than I do about staging and the background.

It's kind of like balancing act. Too little setting, and your stage might feel sparse, like your characters are floating in negative space. Too much setting, though, and your characters might feel crowded out by a background that's too busy and bustling.

Gotta find that sweet spot where the setting is vivid, but still pushed far enough back to keep the characters where they belong: front and center. :encouragement:


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## Jay Greenstein (Jun 12, 2016)

> I don't offer my views as a path to publication. It just becomes a bit  tiresome when publication is brought up as a way to dismiss my views.


But anyone who reads our work will see it, and evaluate it, in comparison to what they're used to seeing, so far as presentation methods. We all use the same punctuation and sentence/paragraph structure techniques because that's what readers expect, be we writing fiction or nonfiction. Romance writers have readers who have expectations that differ from adventure, and literary writers have their own norms. So if your goal is to please the reader you take that into account and write what will entertain the customer.

If a writer's presentation methodology is unfamiliar to the reader, they'll have to work harder than normal, and adjust their expectations to what's provided. But if the moment-to-moment reading doesn't compensate for that extra effort with extra enjoyment, they'll stop before the end of page one, and you've wasted the time to write anything more, because no one will see it.

Publishers are our customer. The reader is theirs. Surely you're not saying that if we want to achieve success, the criteria of the publishers—which are based on what readers react favorably to—is immaterial? Yes, we can ignore the fact that the publishers say no to our submissions and self-publish. But self-publishing only counts if the number of sales is significant. And I say that as someone who has self-published more then one or two novels.

We have an implied contract with our reader. They give of their time, and perhaps money, and we provide something worth that investment. And that means that we can't take the view, "I write as I please, and you can read or not read, as you please," and call ourselves writers except in the sense a ten year old can, because they put words on paper. We can ignore everything the schools and the publishers say. But to do that knowledgeably, we should know what we're rejecting, and why, rather than do it out of laziness. It would seem to make sense to try it their way and build in that instead of reinventing the wheel.

I'm not trying to argue, or disparage your writing. But as someone who owned a manuscript critique service, I can tell you that in the real world, fully 75% of what's submitted to a publisher is written by someone still using the skills of twelfth grade English Composition, because they are unaware that there's any other way to write. Of the rest, all but three are what a publisher would call, amateur (their term, not mine). Not one in ten knows what a scene goal is, and how it helps them. Fewer than that know what a scene is, or why it almost always ends in disaster for the protagonist. And that pretty well explains why the rejection rate is 99.9+%. Given that, dismissing the views of the educators and publishers as restrictive and unnecessary would seem a less than balanced view.

Writing is a journey, one we will never complete. It's my view education is more productive than a drunkard's walk approach to acquiring craft. We can ignore everything the teacher says. But we can't use knowledge we never acquired.

But Terry is right. Since this has evolved into yet another discussion between us, rather than a general discussion of the subject, it's time to end it.


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## Aquilo (Jun 12, 2016)

EmmaSohan said:


> Hi Jay. Since my writing is very minimal in physical detail, this is an important issue for me.
> 
> Some people seem sure that the writer should "paint" the scene -- describe it vividly, so the reader can see it. And put in the other senses too. I suspect they appeal to readers who like that much detail.
> 
> ...



I can't speak for Jay, but it's like mentioning 'room'. A reader can't picture and feel involved in the scene (characters, plot etc) when 'room' is mentioned, but expand the description even slightly: bedroom, and the reader can instantly relate. You can use 'car' if it's not important, same with neglecting colour, but sometimes expanding that can help ground the reader instantly in the why, where, when and set an impression of character, plot etc:

tire treks led to a black Mercedes-Benz [will give a different impression to] tire treks to led to the firetruck-red trike, [or] tire treks to the princess-pink scooter 

I agree that whether the colors are relevant comes down to story. Inspector Morse (UK detective Novel) always drove a red Jaguar, and it underpinned his class of being an Oxford University scholar and a lover of opera, despite being involved in a UK police force who, at the time, would mostly employ ex military. His red Jag became an icon for him (and that stays with me now even though they stopped airing Morse back in the 90s due to the lead actor (John Thaw) dying). Much later, with the likes of Inspector Frost, he drove a beat-up blue Ford, and a lot of that was to reflect a struggling middle-aged man and cuts to the UK force.

Sometimes cars and specific colours are important in mine, other times they're not and 'car' will be used. Describing anything else just doesn't add anything to the story or character. So I'm more a relevance writer, but then a core of my romance is psych thriller, where state of mind through environment is the focus. A wok on a stove always has an alternative meaning.


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## Jay Greenstein (Jun 12, 2016)

> In contrast, in your_ A Chance Encounter_ you have "The tire tracks  led to a forest green Hummer,..." Why did you use that much detail? I  am not disagreeing, I am just asking.


It's because the car becomes important to the scene. Also, since it's the only car not under a blanket of snow, she would notice that detail.

Hope this clarifies.


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## Patrick (Jun 13, 2016)

Emma, as long as you maintain the focus of giving pleasure to the reader, there's no reason to prohibit anything in your description. If something seems bland to you, don't write it. But if you have an interesting metaphor or simile that creates a vivid image, then absolutely use it. Adding colour, sound, smell, etc, can be done purely to give pleasure to the reader. Remember, there are different kinds of pleasure in reading as there are in life, and you'll never please everybody with your writing; it simply isn't realistic to try to. Some people want a red wine, others want a cup of tea, and there are those who want a fizzy drink. In fact, I like all three in moderation and at different times. I like to read James Joyce. I also like A Song of Ice and Fire, and for very different reasons.

But you will never be your own unique experience if you constrain yourself and try to please everyone. I am sorry, if you're a red wine, you're a red wine. You'll have to just deal with it. Similarly, if you're a pepsi, you're a pepsi. Be what you are and be most free when you write, and with enough practice you will offer a unique experience that readers find pleasant. If there were a list of rules everybody could follow to create that unique sense of place in fiction, everybody would be doing it, but there isn't, because creating a sense of place in fiction is about taking abstracts like mood (happy, sad, whatever) and translating them into words and mental pictures, sounds, smells, etc. That is the art of the thing, and nobody can teach you how to do that. I can't teach you how to write my kind of metaphor and simile, just as you can't teach me yours, but I can tell you you'll never grow as a writer if you deny yourself the tools at your disposal. The important thing is to use them judiciously.


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## EmmaSohan (Jun 13, 2016)

Jay Greenstein said:


> It's because the car becomes important to the scene. Also, since it's the only car not under a blanket of snow, she would notice that detail.
> 
> Hope this clarifies.



No, not really. She would notice a lot of things which you do not describe, such as which way the Hummer was pointed.


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## EmmaSohan (Jun 13, 2016)

One explanation is that too much physical description isn't good and not enough isn't good.

But many people here are saying that some description is better than other detail. They think about detail, and add it to the story if it helps and leave it out if it doesn't. That actually seems to fit my reading experience -- I am annoyed by description that has no purpose; the rest is fine. Kilroy's fishing story has "too much" description, but I ended up wondering how he had pulled me into his story so well and guessing the description helped. But a single sentence of description will annoy me if I think the author is just doing some obligatory detail.

Should I judge that way?

Its the same for "walk" versus "strut". Some people say strut is always better. Or that could be detail that should be added only if it adds to the story.

That still leaves the question of how description adds to a story. I believe, and some people seem to be agreeing, on the value of once piece of description to allow the reader to visualize the scene. But that's just one reason to have description, right?


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## afk4life (Jun 13, 2016)

I keep seeing a lot of overanalysis and focus on "rules." If it works, it works, and your descriptions should be enough that they don't leave the reader feeling like they are sitting a black hole but not so much they think they took one too many pills. And the trick, imho, is to try and describe more than you're actually describing by being evocative. i.e.



> It's the first time he's visited the boat since he was a kid. He pokes at the peeling blue-gray paint with his finger and it flakes away, stabbing him under his fingernail, and he yelps and watches the paint fleck fall onto his dirty sneakers. Even through the rust underneath he can still make out the initials he so crudely scratched so many years ago, _T&E_, Tommy and Emma, and it draws a tear to his eyes because just like the crumbling hull of the boat, too much had happened to him. He pulls out a folded-up notebook from his back pocket, and the old photo of them falls out. He retrieves it from deck and sits on the dust-covered decaying bench where he held her hand so many years ago and there's an ominous creak like it's all about to collapse on him. So many ghosts to write about.


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## EmmaSohan (Jun 13, 2016)

afk4life said:


> I keep seeing a lot of overanalysis and focus on "rules." If it works, it works, and your descriptions should be enough that they don't leave the reader feeling like they are sitting a black hole but not so much they think they took one too many pills. And the trick, imho, is to try and describe more than you're actually describing by being evocative. i.e.



A lot of overanalysis? Moi? I've already been told I deserve the merit badge for that. Laughing.

Right, if I mention a detail, I almost always then work it into the meaning of my story. If that's what you mean by evocative. But not always. Did you want to talk about exceptions?

I have a conversation with no narration so no description. Why is that called sitting on a black hole, or negative space, or white walls? Why don't we say that's like eavesdropping? Or hearing both sides of a conversation? Don't we regularly listen to someone talking on the phone to us without needed to know anything about what the room looks like? Anyway, the terminology is biased.


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## afk4life (Jun 13, 2016)

When I say evocative, I'm not talking that granular. I mean using whatever -- descriptions, dialog, action -- to evoke how it is for that character to be in that moment. And you can do that with dialog, I mean it's as simple as



> "I ... I guess I can come by," he says and he's real quiet, and now I wish I hadn't asked.



And I guess that's narration, but otherwise it's just a lot of back and forth of he said, he said, etc., or just a lot of back and forth. In that one sentence, even totally outside of any context, you get that whomever's narrating it just asked a question that made the other person feel awkward, uncomfortable, and maybe even commit to something they didn't really want to, and the narrator himself now feels bad for pushing it, so now they're both super uncomfortable. That's what I mean by evocative. To explain that, I used 55 words whereas the dialog was 21. Even without the narration and just dialog, you can communicate things by the way the character is speaking, hesitation, excitement, etc. 

That in a nutshell is a lot of what a main focus when I write is, I try to get the reader to understand what going on in the character's head. That's a good way to get readers invested is to make them feel like they're right there with the characters.


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## Terry D (Jun 13, 2016)

Setting the scene and establishing a sense of place isn't about going minimal, or going over-the-top. It's about using your voice to do whatever it takes to put your reader into the story's setting. Here's how some pretty successful authors have done it:


They rode on and the sun in the east flushed pale streaks of light and then a deeper run of color like blood seeping up in sudden reaches flaring planewise and where the earth drained up into the sky at the edge of creation the top of the sun rose out of nothing like the head of a great red phallus until it cleared the unseen rim and sat squat and pulsing and malevolent behind them. -- Cormac McCarthy describing a sunrise in, _Blood Meridian._

The sun loses its thin grip on the air first, turning it cold, making it remember that winter is coming and winter will be long. Thin clouds form, and the shadows lengthen out. They have no breadth, as summer shadows have; there are no leaves on the trees or fat clouds in the sky to make them thick. They are gaunt, mean shadows that bite the ground like teeth.  -- Stephen King, writing about the change from summer to fall in, _'Salem's Lot
_
As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans. Ernest Hemingway on a good meal of oysters and wine.

[FONT=Merriweather, Georgia, serif]A large drop of sun lingered on the horizon and then dripped over and was gone, and the sky was brilliant over the spot where it had gone, and a torn cloud, like a bloody rag, hung over the spot of its going. And dusk crept over the sky from the eastern horizon, and darkness crept over the land from the east. -- John Steinbeck, on a sunset from _The Grapes of Wrath.
_
In each case -- like it or not -- the author is trying to create a connection between the reader and the setting. That's done as much by which details the writer chooses to share, as it is by how he writes them. The details chosen might change, but the work put into making them vivid and memorable will not. There's no one way to do it; there's no formula for how to establish place; there's just your gut, your experience, and your writer's ear.[/FONT]


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## Newman (Jun 13, 2016)

curtis said:


> What is the most important part of writing with regard to setting the scene?



Its relationship to the message.


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## bdcharles (Jun 13, 2016)

curtis said:


> What is the most important part of writing with regard to setting the scene? In The Shining, the tone is sinister and the atmosphere is gloomy. A gloomy atmosphere is the result of presenting physical details in such a way as to create an emotional reaction. What do you enjoy more than setting the scene?



i thought I answered this already but apparently not ... hmm, the most important part of writing wr/t scene setting. I think it is down to word choices, pressing words into sevice to convey only what you want to convey, nothing more. You're not just describing physical things but the sense they evoke, the way they might be perceived. Let's try it. I'll describe my writing office here and try and infuse it with my personality (not that I have one; I'll just assume one for the purposes of this exercise). Let's go with dungeonesque and ghoulish:



> Dual orbs of lambent orange, suggestive of night cats, hang in the chill air. My feet crunch through wires and broken detritus, as if some zany professor had laboured here season after season, growing madder as his vision of a friendly robot companion morphed into something more troubling.



So I picked 2 things and made them a bit creepy~ish and dramatic with "dual orbs", plus a few clip-on images - madder, zany, troubled - before inventing a notional crazy professor to help my cause


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## Patrick (Jun 13, 2016)

Terry D said:


> As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans. Ernest Hemingway on a good meal of oysters and wine.



That's my favourite.


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## Jay Greenstein (Jun 13, 2016)

EmmaSohan said:


> No, not really. She would notice a lot of things which you do not describe, such as which way the Hummer was pointed.


No, she would see those things because they're in her field of vision. But if you notice, you react. She had no reason to react to the direction it was facing. She noticed the color because it would stand out in the dead white environment, and force her to notice. Yes, I could have said "Hummer" and let it go at that, but the color says it's not a military version, and is probably a rich man's toy, which we later learn it is (a conclusion the reader will come to, in passing). But of the most importance, since she noticed it she has to react to it, which she does. As a car it's backdrop. But because of what it represents _to her_, it forces her to realize that she was a fool to go to work in such weather. That matters, because had she not, she might have come across as someone too dumb to know it was foolish of her. My goal, in the opening, was to portray her as someone likeable, who has low self esteem, then take the reader through the process of recovery, as she grows and changes though the story.

In her field of vision are a great number of things, all of which would be visible to someone watching the film version. But a picture is worth a thousand words, which is four standard manuscript pages. And that picture is static, while the film presents such a picture twenty-four times every second. If we try to match that all we have is description, 99% of which the protagonist is ignoring.

It's a limitation of the medium. And one powerful way to get around it is to tell the reader of only what matters to the protagonist in their moment of now. And by presenting the environment as enrichment to necessary plot development lines, we never have to stop the action and lecture the reader on "stuff." If she notices, it matters, so that's another thing author doesn't have to explain.

By placing the reader in her now, we get out of the immutable history approach, and make her future what ours is to us: uncertain. And once we do that, the reader will speculate on the result of whatever strategy the protagonist is trying to implement. And if they speculate, and wonder, they care, and become a participant, mirroring the actions and desires of the protagonist. And that's what makes them turn the pages.


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## Kyle R (Jun 14, 2016)

EmmaSohan said:


> I have a conversation with no narration so no description. Why is that called sitting on a black hole, or negative space, or white walls? Why don't we say that's like eavesdropping? Or hearing both sides of a conversation? Don't we regularly listen to someone talking on the phone to us without needed to know anything about what the room looks like?



Eavesdropping is a cool way of thinking about it.

Usually, though, when I'm talking on the phone, I'm noticing my surroundings, paying attention to the voice on the other end of the line, having my own internal dialogue, and physically doing something, too.

Even during a phone call, there's usually a lot going on—even if the character's just lying back on her bed, squinting up at a water stain on the ceiling.

Of course, you can go as bare-bones as you like! It's a matter of personal preference, really. Sometimes you only want the dialogue, for pacing reasons (or perhaps because the conversation is the only thing that matters at this point.) Most of the time, though, I think the more you flesh things out, the better it reads. (But that's just me.)

For example, here's the same conversation, one version sparse, the other version filled in (with narration, internal dialogue, and description). Notice how the reading experience changes. :encouragement:

—

"Sarie, you can't go on like this."

"Mm hmm."

"I'm serious! Come out with me. Let's do something."

"I don't know."

"Well, I do. I'm coming over."

"What? No, no, it's—"

"I'll be there in a few minutes."

"Oh, God!"

—

Jem's voice filled the receiver, his crisp English accent snapping the end of each word. "Sarie, you can't go on like this."

"Mm hmm," Sarie replied. But she wasn't listening—not really. Mostly, she was focused on a water stain on the ceiling, its yellow-tinged edges stretched out above her bed. If she squinted just right, it looked like a giant fried egg ready to drop right on her stupid head.

"I'm serious!" Jem shot back. "Come out with me. Let's do something."

_Do something_? As if that would fix anything. Sarie rolled onto her side, squishing the phone between her ear and her blue comforter. "I don't know," she said. She looked down and grimaced at the fabric bunched by her nose. Up close, it was probably the ugliest shade of blue she'd ever seen, filled tiny dark specks, as if the whole damn thing was littered with flat, dead fleas. How the hell had she never noticed this before?

"Well, I _do_ know," Jem said, his voice suddenly sharp and bold. Something rustled over the line, then there was the unmistakable jingle of keys. "I'm coming over."

"What?" Sarie bolted up. Her room was a mess. _She_ was a mess. Talking to Jem was one thing, but him coming _over_? In _person_? To _see_ her? "No, no," she mumbled, "it's—"

But Jem cut her off like he was cracking a whip. "I'll be there in a few minutes." Just like that, the line went dead.

Sarie ran her fingers through her hair and groaned. It was just her damn luck, anyway. Why _wouldn't_ Jem come over? In a day where everything else had gone wrong, this only made perfect sense. She shot a wide-eyed glance at the mirror on her door.

Her reflection stared back at her like some wild-haired, baggy-eyed zombie. The only thing she was missing was gaping face wound. "Oh, God!" She flopped back on her bed and jammed a pillow over her face.


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## EmmaSohan (Jun 14, 2016)

Jay, when asked why he presented a detail, said "she would notice that detail." But instead, he had a reason. I don't know what a Hummer looks like, so that visual detail is totally lost on me. But I guessed the part about a rich man's toy, so that's meaningful to the story.

Terry presents 4 quotes that seem dreadful to me. If I'm already reading the book, I skip over them and try to pick up the story; if something like that is the first line, I close the book and go on to another book. Why is the author telling me those things? In my head I understand that some people must like that, but in my gut it's hard to believe.

Kyle argues for detail but presents a passage where almost all of the details are meaningful. (Except for the blue comforter, I cannot see what that had to do with the story.)

So, I am thinking that some readers like to hear detail/description and other readers only want it if it meaningfully helps the story. Don't we see that in whether a writer describes what the main character looks like? It's hard to imagine a more important detail for picturing a story. But some authors don't describe their main character except for what is relevant to the story.


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## Patrick (Jun 14, 2016)

EmmaSohan said:


> Terry presents 4 quotes that seem dreadful to me. If I'm already reading the book, I skip over them and try to pick up the story; if something like that is the first line, I close the book and go on to another book. Why is the author telling me those things? In my head I understand that some people must like that, but in my gut it's hard to believe.



I didn't particularly like them except for the one by Hemingway. The point is that you bring your own style to the table with these things.



> So, I am thinking that some readers like to hear detail/description and other readers only want it if it meaningfully helps the story. Don't we see that in whether a writer describes what the main character looks like? It's hard to imagine a more important detail for picturing a story. But some authors don't describe their main character except for what is relevant to the story.



It depends on the main character and the tone of the book. Both approaches can work. You musn't get hung up on these things, Emma.


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## afk4life (Jun 15, 2016)

I agree with Patrick here. Overthinking is going to send things off the rails, fast. There is no "right" way to do it, there's only a right way for you and your story as the writer. The reason I could always sit down and read Vonnegut in one sitting wasn't because he wrote to a certain playbook, it was because he wrote to his playbook so it was natural for him which made his books incredible reads. Same with every other author I've liked. If you're trying to write to someone else's playbook it's just not going to work. That's the hardest part about writing, and the one that takes the most time, is finding your voice and style. Read as much as you can, and as diverse a selection, and figure out what you like and how you'd do it differently but take inspiration (not emulation) from them. Don't shoot for the moon the first time out, because whatever you throw up there is gonna come back down and hit you in the face.


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## Terry D (Jun 15, 2016)

EmmaSohan said:


> Terry presents 4 quotes that seem dreadful to me. If I'm already reading the book, I skip over them and try to pick up the story; if something like that is the first line, I close the book and go on to another book. Why is the author telling me those things? In my head I understand that some people must like that,* but in my gut it's hard to believe*.



I think Hemingway, Steinbeck, King, and McCarthy can live with that. But, to be fair, those lines are taken out of context, so you don't get the benefit of the flow of the writing up to, and after, that point. None are opening lines. Of the four, McCarthy's excerpt from _Blood Meridian_ (considered by some to be one of the ten best books of the 20th century) is the most 'difficult' because McCarthy isn't much interested in the reader's comfort level, or, if he is, it's an interest in making the reader uncomfortable.

Your gut would be wrong. Most readers have shown more than a passing 'liking' for those four books (the Hemingway line is from A Moveable Feast). Of course you are not required to like them, but there are many millions who do.

As Patrick said, these quotes weren't posted to show anyone how to create a sense of place, only to demonstrate that it can be done in many ways. Remember, we are not talking about character descriptions here, or delving into a discussion of description, this thread is about establishing location, about grounding the reader in the 'where' of the story -- the environment. I've written stories in which the 'where' was as vague as "a dark room with cement block walls", and as detailed as describing everything inside a large pole building used to house and train fighting dogs. Both were done for specific reasons. That's the key, a writer needs to decide how important place is to the story and then do whatever it takes to communicate that to the reader. In my opinion, place is usually very important -- far more important than what a character looks like, or what he wears -- almost like an additional character.


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