In a recent post, C.S. Lakin says too many writers ignore the power of setting in their fiction. “Setting is perhaps the most versatile and useful element in fiction,” she says. “It can reveal character motivation, backstory, past trauma, and the story’s cast, as well as reveal emotion and supply tension.”
It’s not enough to describe a few random elements and hope your reader gets a feel for the place. Instead, you should choose the sights, smells, sounds, and textures your POV character experiences, and filter them through their perspective. This will enhance characterization and create mood, as well as describe your setting. “As with character description, what your POV character notices should tell the reader something about him,” Lakin notes. “Characters, as with real people, should be affected by the setting they’re in, and that’s why carefully choosing where to set your scenes is important.”
Lakin shares passages from Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s Shadow of the Wind to show how a great writer uses perspective, sensory language, and weather to set a mood and delineate character while describing a scene.
