In a post on Writer Unboxed, David Corbett says the exterior of your setting can communicate significant information about your characters’ interior lives. “Description in fiction cannot be separated from point of view, even in its most objective, omniscient variations,” Corbett says. “This link between description and point of view means that physical details never merely convey information about the exterior world; they also cannot help but tell us something about the perspective—psychological, moral, emotional—forming the impressions being recounted.”
Corbett examines examples from China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station, Kate Atkinson’s One Good Turn, Lawrence Osborn’s On Java Road, Adrian McKinty’s The Cold Cold Ground, Jean Rhys’ Quartet, and Denis Johnson’s Angels.
