The Un-Set Scene

Awhile back I wrote a post on how to decide when you’ve over-described something. Today, I’d like to discuss the opposite problem, specifically as it relates to scenes.

As they read, most people will picture the events of the story in their minds, almost like scenes from a movie. An author’s task is to find a balance between too much description and too little description. They must describe a scene vividly enough for the majority of readers to picture it clearly, but not with such long-winded detail that a large number of readers might get bored. But often, authors fail to set a scene almost entirely.

I’m not talking about neglecting to mention the color of the carpet or the type of trees in the forest; I’m talking about forgetting to mention that the action is taking place inside a room of some sort or that your characters are in the forest. It’s surprising how many new writers don’t think to mention where a conversation is taking place. They might, for instance, mention that three characters are sitting at a table eating nachos while they argue, but they won’t tell us where the table is. It could be in a kitchen, a dining room, a bar, a restaurant, a cafeteria, or a break room, but the audience doesn’t know for sure until halfway through the conversation when a waiter comes in to ask them if they want dessert.

This is often called “White Room Syndrome,” because for all the audience can tell, the action is taking place in a blank white room. Great for the Matrix, but not so much for most other stories.

So, how little is too little when it comes to description? Here’s a few basic bits of information about setting that you should generally try to get across to your readers within the first few paragraphs of a scene:

Where is the immediate action taking place? Are your characters indoors or outdoors? If they’re indoors, what sort of room are they in—a kitchen, a bedroom, an office, a parking garage, a space station control center? If they are outdoors, what sort of terrain is around them—forest, plains, a lake, a river, red-rock desert, the void of space? What is the weather like? Give your readers a few words to set the backdrop to the action.

Where are your characters at in that space? Are they clustered around a table in the corner? Is one of them sitting on the ground against a rock while the other two climb a tree at the edge of a clearing? Are they strapped into seats at their stations on the bridge of the space ship? Give some basic information about where your characters are in relation to the setting and to one another.

Whose setting is this? Does the room, house, car, spaceship, or even the field or the planet, belong to one of the characters? Are they trespassing? Are they simply out in the unclaimed wild? This can be cleared up with a simple adjective—they sat in Calvin’s kitchen or he ran through the king’s forest. Are your characters masters, owners, regulars, visitors, strangers, or interlopers in this place?

What time of day is it? I don’t mean the exact hour and minute, but rather a general sense of time as it relates to the scene. Is it day, night, dawn, or dusk? Is it dark out or light out? A daytime conversation in the park will have a completely different feel than the same conversation in the same park in the middle of the night. If it is pertinent, you might want to give readers a sense of the season as well.

If this is the first scene of the story, then what time period is it in? Ever read a story that you thought was taking place in a medieval setting, only to have someone drive up in a car? Or a story that seemed modern until someone mentioned the warpgate to Jupiter? It’s pretty disconcerting. Try to give your readers a clear sense of the era (and by extension, the genre) right from the get-go.

If this is not the first scene of the story, then where is this setting in relation to previous settings? The importance of this information varies from story to story. You could write an entire story that takes place in an unnamed city without it ever being a problem—the character could move from their apartment to work to a bar to a seedy nightclub without you needing to explicitly state where are those places are in relation to one another. However, if you jump locations and characters from scene to scene this may become important—if the last scene was the King of Rohan at Helm’s Deep, and then you jump to the hobbits sneaking into Mordor, it could be helpful to let your readers know that they’ve moved several hundred leagues away.

And that’s really it. You can add more detail to the setting than what I’ve listed above, but you probably shouldn’t have less. Imagine that you’re sketching the scene out with a pencil—these are the most basic lines that you’ll need for it to be clear that you’re drawing a scene and not just a person, a place, or a thing. For more tips on writing description, check out some of the posts listed here and here.

Position: On vs. To

     As she walked down the sidewalk, Leslie noticed a small kosher deli to her right.

     As she walked down the sidewalk, Leslie noticed a small kosher deli on her right.

The only visual difference between these two sentences is the words to and on. But can you tell me how the two sentences differ in meaning?

Trick question—they don’t. Oh, it might be possible to argue that the word on implies a slightly closer proximity than the word to in this usage, but that’s a flimsy difference. Really, these two sentences mean the same thing.

It’s probably because on and to can be used interchangeably in a case like this that I see them so often mixed up in a similar case:

     A narrow, weathered wooden wardrobe stood on the right of the room.

     A narrow, weathered wooden wardrobe stood to the right of the room.

These two sentences do not mean the same thing. The first one implies that we are in a room, and a wardrobe is standing in the room on the right side, perhaps against the wall or something. The second sentence implies that there is a room, and outside the room on the right there is a wardrobe.

What changed? Why are on and to interchangeable in our first example, but not in our second? The difference is the object of the preposition. In other words, what are these objects located to the right of?

In our first example, the deli is to the right of Leslie—a person, a thing. In our second example, the wardrobe is on (or to) the right of the room—a place, a location in its own right. Because there’s little to no chance that a deli would be located on Leslie’s person, on and to can both be used to mean beside or somewhere on that side of. Because the room could easily contain the wardrobe, however, we have to be more specific—on the right means it is located inside the boundaries of the room, while to the right means it is located outside those boundaries.

This photo is for educational and illustrative purposes only and is not intended as endorsement or approval on the part of The Story Polisher or any of its affiliates of the practice of dressing dogs or any other animals in clothing of any sort for the purpose of taking humiliating pictures or any other purpose.

Note that Leslie could serve as a location. For instance:

     The purse hung on Leslie’s right.

     The purse hung to Leslie’s right.

The second sentence clearly means that the purse is hanging on something beside Leslie, whereas the first sentence is a little confusing—is the purse hanging on Leslie’s right shoulder, or is it hanging on a peg on the wall to her right?  Usually, when you use on to indicate that an object is located within the boundaries of a location, you’ll want to be more specific:

     The purse hung on Leslie’s right shoulder.

Bam. Clear as can be. Even our earlier example can be made clearer this way:

     A narrow, weathered wooden wardrobe stood on the right side of the room.

Much clearer, no? A little specificity can go a long way. But in the long run, just remember: when denoting location, on and to cannot be used interchangeably if they are relative to a place.