Everyone knows your story needs to take place somewhere, right? Your characters can’t just float in a vacuum, and being so vague about your setting that your readers can’t even begin to imagine it would be a pretty bad idea. But how, exactly, do you describe settings in your writing?
To be exact, a setting is not just a place, it’s also a time, but in this post, we’re going to talk about physical places specifically, the world of your story. Fun!
Related posts: How to write about places you’ve never been in – Describing character appearance – Researching settings for historical fiction – Fantasy writing tips
Why describing places matters
It’s very strange reading something and not being able to picture at all where the story takes place. Yes, you could say that right now the characters are in front of Westminster Abbey and then they’re going to the Tower, but although these are very famous places, you can’t just rely on your readers to do the imagining for you. We need to be able to anchor ourselves into your world somehow.
Also, you’re not describing the places just for the sake of having visuals – or at least you shouldn’t be – because any descriptions can also do more at the same time. When you say things like “the snowy mountain loomed above them like an oncoming storm” or “the little cottage’s windows were glowing with the warm orange hues of a sunset and the smoke twirled up from the chimney”, you’re also setting the mood of the scene and your story.
Describing places can also help describe people. “None of the paintings in her home were straight and even her best furniture was covered by dirty laundry” certainly says something about the person who lives in that house, wouldn’t you say?
One last reason to include some kind of setting descriptions is the passage of time. When your readers can understand that your characters are moving through space, they automatically understand that time is passing as well.
Why you should avoid info-dumping
Okay, so now you know you need to describe your settings somehow. Why not just dump it all on the first page to make sure your readers know *exactly* what the story’s world is like? Because that’s boring.
Yes, there are numerous classic novels that start with describing the vast estate that the story takes place in, but modern readers expect the story to start straight away. If you’re going to present a lot of information at once, you need to remember that thing about descriptions doing more than one thing at a time AND keep the tension up. It’s not impossible to do that, but it’s also not easy.
You need to get your readers care about your story first, and that means you need to have characters worth caring about doing stuff. That way you can introduce their world gradually and organically, which is what we’ll be talking about in this post.
What is exposition?
I prefer to show you how to do things well rather than have you understand literary terms that describe those things, but I wanted to have a little word on “exposition” since it’s probably something you may have come across.
Exposition is close to description, and it means inserting background information into your writing. Some amount of it is necessary, because even characters’ names are background information, but in general, you want to sprinkle it lightly instead of having it in huge blocks, and do your best to introduce your readers to information about your story’s world in different ways.
I recently finished reading the Scholomance series by Naomi Novik, and often there’s a lot of information about the world given to the reader in big chunks, and although I occasionally stopped to wonder if the world had just stopped moving while the protagonist thinks about the history of mawmouths, usually the writer managed to keep the tension up even in these sections and it was always very pertinent information.
Do your world-building or research first
If you’re writing about a real setting, you’ll most likely need to do some research (unless it’s a place that’s already extremely familiar to you like your hometown) but if you want to write about an imaginary world, you need to build that world first.
How much of this you need to do in advance depends on you and your story, but it’s very hard to improvise all of it when you’re already writing. It also depends on your unique brain if you can imagine it easily inside your head or if you need some kind of reference pictures. But the point I’m making here is that before you can describe a place, you as the writer need to know what it’s like.
For a little help with that, here’s my post on fantasy writing tips that also includes some worldbuilding advice, here’s my post on what to research for your historical fiction, and finally, here’s how to write about places you’ve never been in.
Do you need pictures of your setting?
Like I said earlier, it depends on you whether you can “see” places inside your head or if you have to actually see them before you can write about them.
Me, I really struggle to see places that I haven’t actually seen or been in before, which awkwardly also means that it’s pointless to give me directions to a new place because none of that will stick. Whenever I write, I either use a place I already know as a reference, or I need to find pictures for reference. I don’t use these when writing my early drafts, so my early writing is often very Talking Heads In A Vacuum-esque.
Whether you make a moodboard before you write or look for pictures as you need them, it’s up to you – whatever works. Now, if you’re writing about a place that you made up, you might just be like “Yeah but how do I look for photos of the market square in Northern Grand Plehb when it doesn’t even exist?” and the answer is that you’ll just have to improvise. Look for pictures of different market squares and then take any details that you like, that’s what I do.
Describe your story’s places through your characters
Alright, so now we’re getting to the real substance of this post: HOW to do all this. Yay!
Details about the places in your story aren’t interesting if you just list them. You’re writing a novel, not a shopping list or an ad for real estate. Let your characters, the ones that exist in your story and aren’t just floating in space, experience and interact with the places around them.
Let’s start with experiencing.
Use your characters’ senses to describe the places in your story
You’re right, taste doesn’t often come to play when we’re describing a place unless it has such a pungent smell that you can feel it on your tongue, though naturally your characters can eat things that are very relevant to those places. But since you can also use the senses of touch, smell and hearing, you don’t need to default to seeing and to what things look like.
Imagine a cellar in your character’s house. (I’m currently imagining the cellar at my grandmother’s house, of course.) How will your character experience it? Will they feel the colder air on their cheeks, smell the moisture in the air and hear only muffled sounds from elsewhere in the house? Will they see the cobwebs in the corners and the box of old potatoes?
No, you absolutely don’t need to include every single sense for everything you describe, that would be very tedious and boring to read. A few well-chosen details are enough to bring your places to life, especially when you choose surprising and interesting details.
Remember your point of view when describing things
Did you think point of view was going to be relevant here? Because it is.
When you’re writing in first person or third person intimate, you’re writing from one character’s POV at a time so your readers can safely assume that any and all observations belong to that character. That’s why you don’t necessarily have to say “I saw the horse on the field” unless there’s something surprising or interesting about it, like “I saw the horse on the field but couldn’t spot its owner nearby, which was alarming”.
When you’re writing from the omniscient POV, you do need to attribute observations to someone since it could be anyone in your story, but since your narrator can be all-seeing, you don’t need to have a specific character hearing the horse neighing when you can just say the horse neighed, unless it’s relevant that Marigold in particular was the one hearing it.
Have your characters interact with their setting
You want your characters being active instead of just standing around talking or lying in bed thinking. Have them do stuff! Put things in their hands! External stuff can also put friction between the characters and what they want to do, which is what you’re going to want most of the time. They can’t just glide straight to their ending like it’s a slip-and-slide.
Why settle for saying the heavy velvet curtains covered the windows when you could have your character drawing the curtains and feel their heaviness (and perhaps sneeze from the dust)? And don’t just have your lovers sit around while having an argument – have one of them dust their valuables while the other is trying to get them back to the canopy bed. Or something, I don’t know why all these characters are living in a mansion.
Again, you don’t need to do this for every single detail in your story, but it’s a useful tool to have in your toolbox and it helps you bring your cool story world to life. As a fun bonus, you can also reveal what your characters are like through their actions, so you’re really making your writing pull its weight.
What your characters say and think about the places they’re in
I left this last because it shouldn’t be the primary thing you rely in, but your characters absolutely can also talk about what’s around them and have thoughts about them. Something like this:
I had always hated how the old door squeaked when I came in. “Watch out for the rabbit droppings on the floor,” I told Steve when he followed me inside.
It’s fine for dropping some details while also showing what your characters feel and think about those things, but if you rely on it too much, it will start to feel like your reader isn’t really there and is only getting to hear the characters’ side of things.
You’ll also want to avoid having loads of background information in dialogue, because it can sound really forced. I mean, why is that guy lecturing about the history of the town anyway? Do the other characters really need to hear it, or is that the only way you know how to tell your readers about it?
Try your best to avoid saying “there was”
I don’t often get into the nitty-gritty details of language in this blog, because although the principles of storytelling can be applied anywhere, you might be writing in a different language than English. In fact, even I write in a different language a lot of the time, which is my native language Finnish.
In this case, though, I’m getting into grammar a little, because it affects your storytelling.
When you say something like “there was a horse on the field”, it sounds distant and passive, which you often want to avoid. What is the horse doing on the field? Say that. “A horse galloped on the field” or “a horse was eating grass on the field like it was preparing for a long winter”.
When you use your characters to describe the places in your story, it naturally helps you avoid saying there was this and that. Other times, just pause and think how else you could say it, or let the Future You worry about it during editing. You don’t need to stress about removing all instances, just focus changing most of them to something more active and interesting. That will make your writing sound less like describing a still-life painting and more like real life.
Does your place have character?
This is one of those things that is easy to notice but difficult to explain how to do. When we talk about a place having “character”, it means it is unique and almost like a person with its own whims and quirks.
If you want your writing to sound like you, you can’t just say things the way that everyone else is saying. You’ll also want to include things in your setting that might not be totally expected everyday things, or at least you need to notice things that other people wouldn’t notice.
How the places in your story change also puts “character” in them. If an old house is very different at night compared to what it’s like during daylight, it adds to its character and makes it feel alive. Again, just a few, well-chosen details could really make the places in your story seem like they have their own personalities and own agenda.
How to put it all together in your writing when describing places
There are no right answers to how to describe places in your writing, only suggestions, and you need to decide for yourself what tactics you’re going to use and when. Sometimes the best solution really is just to say “There was a horse on the field”. The purpose of your writing is to put pictures in the minds of your readers, and if a specific picture isn’t that important, you don’t need to put a lot of effort into it.
You also have your own writing style, and the specific book you’re writing has its own mood, so I can’t give you an exact prescription for describing the places in the story you’re writing, just tips, tools and recommendations. Oh, and of course, examples. Let’s look at this:
She was writing on a laptop and the TV was on in the background. A black cat was sleeping next to her on a green blanket. The sun was already bright outside and it was a cloudless day, but the grass was still brown and there were no leaves on the trees. There was no one on the dark green velvet chair in the corner and there was only cat hair on it.
Not a very captivating scene, or what do you think? It is, however, my living room at this very moment. Let us jazz it up a little.
The TV droned in the background as she typed on her laptop, the little black cat snoozing next to her on a green blanket. Outside, the sun shone brightly from the cloudless sky, though the tree leaves were yet to sprout and the grass was still brown. The armchair in the corner of the room was empty, and only cat hair covered its green velvet upholstery.
You can see I left “grass was still brown” as it was. I did have a think about it, but then I decided the grass wasn’t a crucial part of this scene and it was okay as it was. You can do similar judgments about your own writing. If I wanted to change it, I could give it some kind of an action, like “the brown grass was still waiting for spring”, but the grass isn’t really doing anything interesting or significant.
I also stopped at the manner adverb in “shone brightly“, but then decided it’s one of those things that I would normally leave for my Future Self to decide in the next round of edits. Not all manner adverbs are bad, but they’re simply not very descriptive, and often you might want to choose some stronger words instead of them. Moreover, I’m not trying to show perfection, just process.
Lastly, some writing exercises for describing places
If you’ve ever read this blog before, you know that I don’t like dealing out writing tips and expecting you to get them, I want to give you ways to actually apply them to your writing. That’s where writing exercises come it! There are a couple of exercises in my old post about describing places, but here are some more.
- Imagine a bedroom in a luxurious French castle, and write a paragraph about it. Then look for a picture that matches what you imagined as closely as possible, and then write another paragraph using the picture as reference. How is the experience different? Which paragraph was easier to write, or sounds better?
- Think of a place with a lot of stuff going on, like a rainforest or a busy mall, and write about a character walking through it and really experiencing it.
- Then, think of somewhere emptier, like a snowy mountain top or a desert, and write about a character spending the night there.
- Do you know a place with a distinct vibe? Maybe a little cafe in Paris or an independent bookstore in your hometown? Write about it, and try to bring its character to life on the page.
- Write about your surroundings without using any adjectives. I know it’s difficult, and I’m not saying adjectives are bad, but this exercise will help you use more of your vocabulary and look for more creative solutions.
- Stop where you are! Come up with something you can taste, smell, feel, hear and see right where you are, and ten things that you could do there. Then write a short passage that includes all that information. You probably wouldn’t normally write something like that, but again, it’s good practice.
If you want more exercises for describing places and for other important writer skills, you should get my free collection of writing exercises here 👇
Protagonist Crafts is a blog about writing fiction, written by a published author and creative writing teacher. You can find more writing tips and inspiration in the blog and you can get the best author tools at Writer Lifestyle on Etsy.
