Setting the mood might mean candles, music, wine. Setting the scene, though, means telling your reader where the hell they are.
As a writer, you likely often find yourself writing in one of two modes:
Imagination running on full-power, everything vividly playing out in your mind as your fingers dance over the keys.
Tired. Doubting. No imagination. You’re just trying to meet that stupid writing goal you set for yourself, so you squeeze out a word…another word…a sentence…
In both of those modes, writers often forget a key element: scene setting.
When you’re feeling inspired and it’s all just flowing out of your fingers, you’re picturing things clearly. It’s easy to forget that your reader doesn’t have that picture, unless you give it to them. Which often requires more detail than you might think.
When you’re feeling uninspired, you might be struggling to picture the scene yourself. You’re just trying to crank out the essential action beats and dialogue. So if you can’t clearly visualize the scene, your reader certainly won’t be able to.
What is scene setting, and why does it matter?
Failing to set the scene is something I’ve seen frequently among newer writers. Their characters might be great, the plot might be thrilling, the worldbuilding deliciously complex, but readers aren’t going to be able to fully appreciate any of those things if they just don’t know what’s happening.
And that’s what scene setting does—it gives your reader the perhaps-boring-but-definitely-essential details of:
Who
What
When
Where
(and sometimes,) Why
Let’s break it down.
Who is present in the scene? MC only, or are they with other people? Are there passersby?
What is the MC (and the other present characters, if relevant) doing? Sharpening a sword, eating dinner, watching a movie?
When is this, in relation to the last scene? Whenever there’s a scene or chapter break, or any sort of time lapse, the reader will be searching for clues as to how much time has passed. Don’t make them search too hard.
Where is the MC? Are they outside, inside; somewhere familiar, somewhere new? What’s in their surroundings?
And, sometimes, why are they where they are, when they are, doing what they are doing? This might be inherently implied, but in some scenes, you may need to spell it out a little. Especially if what’s happening in this scene doesn’t seem to correlate with what happened in the last scene. If the MC uncovered a huge family secret in the last scene, and now they’re grocery shopping, we might need some explanation. Maybe they’re shopping because they find it relaxing, and they need time to think. Maybe stress gave them mad cravings. Maybe they have to act normal, to avoid anyone else finding out what they know, so they had to cheerfully accept their spouse’s request to stop at the store.
How to set the scene, with examples
Don’t just dump all these details on your reader at the opening of the scene.
Jerry was sitting in his living room, staring at the carpet. The entirety of his father’s side of the family was in the house, some scattered around him chatting, some in the kitchen preparing food, some keeping an eye on his younger cousins. It was Thanksgiving day, one week from when Jerry had learned his mother’s secret.
That gets the job done, but…meh.
Instead, weave the details in bit by bit, starting with whatever is most essential for the reader to start visualizing the scene (usually who and where). Try to fit in all the W’s within the first few paragraphs of a new scene.
Jerry stared at a scattering of crumbs on his living room carpet. He suspected one of his young cousins had made the mess. Any compulsion he felt to clean it up was overruled by the likelihood of those crumbs being soaked in baby drool, and his unwillingness to move—sitting here, motionless, was safest. His aunts and uncles and grandparents milled and chatted all around him, drifting from one moving target to the next. They honed in on whoever looked alert, alive. Jerry, holding up his phone in his lap so that it roughly aligned with his line of sight, hardly looked either.
Besides, the crumbs would soon be taken care of by his dog. Rex never let any dropped morsel live for long. The labrador was just too occupied in the kitchen, licking his chops as Jerry’s mom and several aunts flurried about to prepare the Thanksgiving feast.
Despite the risk of appearing alert and open for conversation, Jerry couldn’t keep from glancing up at his mother. She looked a tad flustered, cheeks red from the oven’s heat, but she smiled and laughed easily with his aunts.
All of them were unaware of what she’d done. Who she really was.
Only he knew. Had known, for a week now, but had said nothing. He’d just stared at his phone, at the carpet, smiled when it was expected and spoken when spoken to. All while the secret slowly devoured him from the inside like acid.
Don’t forget ongoing scene setting
That’s setting the scene at the opening, but the thing is, you need to continue scene setting throughout every scene. It keeps the reader grounded. It helps them visualize.
Dialogue exchanges are another place where writers often struggle to sufficiently set the scene, and that leads to something called “floating heads.” I’ll talk about that more in a future post, but the gist is—too much back-and-forth dialogue without action beats, description, or sensory details leaves the reader unable to really step into the scene, because they have nothing to visualize.
So, whether you’re in full-strength-inspiration, words-flowing-freely writing mode, or uninspired, I-just-need-to-finish-this-page mode, don’t skip those scene-setting details. You can always go back in and add them later, if writing them in the moment bogs you down.
Unsure? Ask a beta reader!
If you’re not sure whether you’re hitting the right balance of scene setting, get a fresh set of eyes on it! Ask someone to read the scene and tell you whether they can visualize it. This is something I’m happy to give quick, free feedback on, too, for individual scenes.
So, what does a book editor actually do? You send them your book, your baby, and how will they care for that baby? Will they tear it to shreds? Is it all about red ink and “fix this, fix that” comments?
As I’ve journeyed my way from being a writer to being an editor, I’ve found that it’s about a lot more than that. I think one of the best ways to think of a book editor is as your readers’ advocate.
An editor is to your book what a good teacher is to your kid
Like I said, I’m a writer, too. Have been all my life. So, I know that side very well.
Writing is personal. That book really does feel like your baby sometimes. And how do parents feel about their kids? They love them and think they’re the cutest, smartest, all-around-best baby ever born. And they’re all wrong, naturally, but in a perfectly acceptable way.
So in this analogy where your book is your baby, think of a good book editor as your kid’s teacher. They’ll never be you, never have such a vital role in the kid’s life, but they can certainly be very influential. They can have an incredible influence on a child, helping to shape them and guide them as they grow. You do most of the work to turn a baby into a full-fledged functioning human, but you can’t do everything. You don’t have the training, time, or experience to teach your kid all that they need to know, from math to history to finances to emotional intelligence. They need teachers for some of that.
Plus, let’s be real—socialization isn’t just something you do with puppies. Kids need to be out in the world, exposed to other people, to learn how the world really works and where they belong in it.
In the same way, your book needs input and gentle molding from outside sources who can be objective and spot the problems in your blind spots. It needs guidance and polishing in the subjects you struggle with, the same way a kid needs to learn science and literature from those who are trained in it.
As a book editor, that’s what I try to do. I help authors strengthen the weak areas. That’s different for each writer—some are great at character development, but struggle with plot and structure. Some write with a delightfully clever, witty style, but they’re not great at the technical details of grammar and syntax. Some write flawless action scenes but trip up on dialogue.
An editor advocates for your readers: what will they enjoy?
So, how does that make me your readers’ advocate? Well, my job, at the end of the day, isn’t to fix commas and give you a checklist of problems. My job is to make your book enjoyable for readers.
That can mean a lot of things, of course. Fixing commas might be part of it, since grammar exists for a reason. Copy editing is all about that technical polish that makes the book enjoyable because it’s clean and clear.
While copy editing is what a lot of people think of when they think of editing, though, that’s actually one of the last stages. First comes developmental and line editing.
Developmental editing is where I make your book enjoyable for readers because the characters are unique, dimensional, and relatable. The plot is exciting and strong. The pacing has the perfect up-and-down flow that gives readers those page-turning highs with gentle breathers in between.
Then, line editing is where we make it enjoyable by making your writing sing. Too many short sentences are choppy and sharp. Too many long sentences become dry and confusing. But when you mix the two, a short sentence here, a few long ones there, you get music. The words you use, how often you change paragraphs, your use of action beats versus speech tags in dialogue…all this and more is what gives your writing its rhythm.
Put all these things together, and your baby is all grown up. She’s ready to strike out on her own and make you proud.
Working with authors, not against them.
Like a teacher with a parent, I work with authors to improve the amazing story they’ve created, not against them to fix all its problems. I fill in the gaps with the things you might struggle with, whether that’s pacing or POV consistency or worldbuilding.
And through the whole process, my edits and suggestions aren’t based on my preferences. My only goal is the readers’ satisfaction—how can we edit this to be the clearest and most interesting to them?
His eyes narrowed. Her eyes darkened. She gazed longingly. His eyes flashed. They glared daggers.
Read it all before, haven’t you?
Eyeballs get more than their fair share of screentime in a lot of novels, especially by newer writers. Any overdone habit in writing starts to stand out and feel repetitive—not to mention boring. But even if it wasn’t repetitive, writers should still practice using fewer eyeballs… because it just doesn’t mean anything.
“His eyes flashed.” What does that mean? What does it mean for eyes to “darken”?
Sure, you could probably come up with an explanation of what such reactions would actually look like if they happened in real life. But it would still be kind of vague, and it might not be the same explanation someone else came up with for the exact same description.
Enter: Body Language
Alternatively, what about this:
He threw his hands in the air.
She crossed her arms across her body, rubbing one hand absent-mindedly against the opposite bicep.
He squeezed his lower lip between his teeth and shoved his hands into his pockets.
She backed up a step, the muscles in her neck becoming etched under her skin with tension.
Those are tangible actions. If I had more talent, I could draw those poses for you. And, when paired with the context of the scene, readers can usually interpret what that body language means.
That’s the first reason body language is more effective than eyeball descriptions—it’s tangible, and that means readers can visualize it. Have you ever been reading and felt like you were just glossing over the words on the page without absorbing them? One possible reason for that is when the reader just can’t picture what’s happening on the page, in which case they can’t get into the story. (Of course, other possible explanations include a lack of caffeine to activate the imagination or a lack of dragons to make it worth reading.)
There’s another, even more important reason to focus on body language, though.
Empathy.
Reading is a practice of empathy. No seriously, it is. There are studies on the subject, demonstrating that reading helps develop empathy. That’s because we have to use empathy to put ourselves in the shoes of a fictional character and experience their story.
Where “Show Don’t Tell” Comes In
This ties back into that writing rule you probably feel bashed over the head with sometimes: “show don’t tell.” Body language is one of the best ways to show rather than tell a character’s emotions. And the importance of showing, rather than telling, emotion is that it forces the reader to figure it out for themselves, making them an active participant in the story.
You could just tell them that Character A is sad and Character B is angry, but where’s the fun in that? Instead, you show them that Character A is hunched over a half-eaten bowl of soggy cereal, staring at nothing. You show them that Character B sits on the other side of the room with their hands in fists. They fidget and roll their shoulders and take a deep breath every now and then, biting their lip and squeezing their fingernails into their palms until it hurts.
Wanna know how I came up with those descriptions? I physically acted them out to find actions that felt familiar to me as sadness or anger. And that’s what your reader will do, in their mind—they’ll picture themselves doing the same actions, literally putting themselves in the character’s shoes, in order to understand what they’re feeling.
Empathy.
Drawing your reader into the story, giving them chances to actively participate by empathizing with the characters, is what takes your book from “cool premise, but I just couldn’t get into it” to “I couldn’t put it down” and “I loved the characters.”
So, no eyes when writing emotion?
Back to eyeballs for a moment. Of course, I’m not saying you should never use eyes for emotion…just don’t default to it. And be mindful of which eyeball phrases make sense and which are just a little too abstract. A character’s eyes flashing or glowing is weird (unless they aren’t human, perhaps). But things like glaring, eyes darting, squinting, eyes glued…those phrases are tangible expressions that readers can visualize. They’re not particularly subtle, however, as far as “show don’t tell” goes, so body language is still often the stronger choice.
I’d love to hear your favorite tips and tricks for showing rather than telling characters’ emotions!
