Location. Location. Location. The three things that determine a property’s value. Location in fiction may not be quite so important, but it is consistently and vastly underrated. Yes, characters, actions, dialogue, plot development, and even prose are more immediately obvious to the reader, but not to the characters who are the avatars of the reader. To them, their environment takes up a great deal of their attention, both directly, obliquely, and subliminally. But how do you make that setting become real without blatant digression?
Pause for a moment and try to describe the room or area around you. Wood paneled walls. Cream colored rug. Fluffy sofa with a fluffy cat sleeping on it. Well, those are the facts, an accurate inventory of the room. But they do nothing to establish a mood, a feel for the place. That’s where adjectives and adverbs come in. Paneled walls of fake wood starting to warp from mold and mildew. A worn rug with ground in dirt, only the edges showing the original cream color. An old cat sleeping on a battered sofa, exhausted from its pursuit of the endless mice that were the true owners of the house. So, you describe the physical setting while also setting the stage for the events that are about to unfold.
OK, now try describing a setting with which you are familiar but not actually in. A bar. A baseball game. A university auditorium where a middle-aged professor is droning on about some boring subject. Same rules apply, and if you have even a moderate imagination, you can make this work. Then try a location with which you are not familiar. The windswept rocky shore of northern Scotland. The dilapidated dungeon of a ruined castle. The creaking and groaning cabin of a wooden ship making its way across the North Atlantic. Then add in the question of time period. Present day? Circa 1880s? 1500s? If you’re not familiar with the setting, chances are the reader isn’t either, and that makes an accurate description even more important than setting the mood. Though, of course, the reader’s ignorance also gives you a lot more leeway.
This, of course, is dealing almost exclusively with sight, but you have other senses at play as well. What can you smell in the environment, and is some of it so intense you can actually taste it? What kind of sounds surround you, either close at hand or in the distance? And what can you feel? The cutting bite of the wind? The growing nausea of seasickness? The chill of the stone too long from the warmth of the sun? Is there a sixth sense involved, a sense of foreboding, a mental image of the past, thoughts about the future? How does the setting impact the character?
Well, all of this is pretty standard, Writing 101 stuff, like “Write what you know” and “Make your characters real for the reader”. My main purpose with this entry is to raise the question of describing an environment where NO ONE has been before. These are the settings of fantasy and science fiction, and it is – in my humble opinion – why so many books in these genres fail.
I recently read (or tried to read) an anthology of science fiction stories dealing with outer space some time in the future. The plot lines were entertaining, and the prose wasn’t bad, certainly creating a consistent voice. But the characters were like cardboard cutouts, figures with no depth that I couldn’t identify with. Yes, short stories are a different animal with not a lot of space for development, and yes, characterization was not one of this author’s strong suits. But a big factor were the settings. I couldn’t picture the surroundings in which these people were operating, the world too different, the few descriptions too inadequate. Without a feel for the surroundings to anchor them, the characters just kept slipping past me.
I recently finished the third book of the Honor Harrington space series by David Weber, a sci-fi takeoff of the Horatio Hornblower saga from the Napoleonic Wars; you have to have been a Hornblower fanatic to appreciate the tribute. Having spelled out the problems with futuristic space sci-fi, I find Weber does it correctly, dedicating plenty of pages to make the science real with clever tie-ins to old Royal Navy procedures and terminology. Ship classes, ranks, even sideboard honors, things you could easily conceive might transition to a future space-navy and which makes it so much easier on which to hang your hat. I’ve really enjoyed them. Though the fact Weber does some clever pilfering from the Star Trek films as well certainly doesn’t hurt. Use any and all roads and alleys into the mind of your reader
Sword-and-sorcery fantasy, of course, falls right in the middle of these genres. Middle Earth is taken right out of the English countryside, and Hobbiton would fit nicely into the rural shires of Cheshire or Lancaster. It’s easier to picture elves and dwarves and wizards in such a world, and it’s a stepping stone to more challenging environments like Smaug’s lair Under the Mountain and the balrog’s playground in Moria. So an author needs complete control of the setting if they’re going to pull the reader into his world, though it is up to them if they are going to supply their visitors with a sumptuous feast for the senses…or just a light snack.
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