Articles·The world on the page
Description
You are painting a canvas in the reader’s mind. Give them enough to believe the place, and not so much that the story sits down.
When you write a novel you are creating a world: people, their love lives, the architecture, even the weather. Inside that universe you are omnipotent, which is a dangerous sort of fun. If the setting is another century or a remote planet, you have to bring the place alive or the reader will be walking through fog. You are painting a canvas in their mind. They see what you allow them to see. That should be just enough for the story to make sense, to have credibility and richness, and not so much detail that the story fails to move.
Even a familiar setting needs the same depth. A group of people in the present day, in your own town, is not automatically visible. Not all of your readers live there. To a reader on the other side of the world, your mundane high street is exotic. Treat it as if you were introducing it to a stranger, because you are.
More than what it looks like
With every new location, set the scene. Most writers can say what a place looks like. Better writers put the reader among the smells, the sounds and the textures. Choose those details so they create a feeling of time and location, not a catalogue. A wet wool coat, a particular bus brake, the taste of the air near a harbour — one true sensation will do more than a paragraph of architecture.
Objects, and the condition they are in, can carry theme. A cracked cup is not only a cracked cup if the book is about a household that is failing to hold. Weather can be a backdrop and, used sparingly, a pressure on the scene. The mistake is to describe everything because you can. The reader’s mind will furnish a room from three well-chosen facts. Give them thirty and they will leave the room.