Setting isn’t everything to a story, but it is important. It tells a reader if the book is in a small town or a city. Contemporary or historical. If the country is different or culture is different. Setting sets the boundaries around where the character will move.

Many times a writer understands they must have a setting for their novel, but they can still make the mistake of not putting together a setting for each scene. Problem is, the reader needs to know where the characters are throughout the book. Each scene needs a setting.

Here are four mistakes to look out for in each scene for a novel.

White Room

Unless you’re writing a play, the reader will become lost without some detail in the setting to focus their imagination. Sometimes new writers think that less detail is better in order to allow the reader to ‘fill it in’ with their own imagination, but this is a misconception that will get your manuscript rejected or sent back with a lot of red ink on it. Readers don’t need every detail, but they need to know enough details to differentiate the characters, the settings, the days, the timeline, etc.

Details give your story life. Details allow your reader to immerse themselves in the character’s world without using their brain too hard. When the reader picks up fiction, even if they want to solve the crime before the writer, they’re still looking for a reprieve from the real world. They want to relax into the story, which they can’t do without some details. If they can’t picture the surroundings, the story becomes boring or worse, generic.

But don’t become so afraid of writing a generic book that you give TOO MUCH detail. The reader doesn’t need to know that the protagonist always put cereal in the bowl before the milk UNLESS that idea or world view is going to come back around in the story. On the other hand, if the writer wants to SHOW how hectic one character’s life is, they can do so by describing how untidy their house is because they never have time to clean it, how the children are always a few minutes late and how her hair is never quite smoothed down. All that conveys to the reader that the character is without saying, “Her life was very busy.”

When we write mostly dialogue or mostly in the character’s head and leave out a description of where they are, we are writing ‘in a white room’. That means, there is too little detail. The reader can’t picture where the character is. Have you ever read a story where  the protagonist is somewhere completely different than you imagined? Many times it’s because the writer has seen them move, but the reader hasn’t. Don’t be that writer!

Readers need to see where a character is and what’s around them. Readers want to know about the noises and the smells and the sounds. If the character is in a city, the reader wants to know if the city looks like cities they’ve seen or if it’s completely different. If in the woods, readers want to know what type of woods. Is it hot? Is it cold? What kind of plants or trees? Are there any houses or buildings? Where is the sun? If they’re in a room, readers want details about the room. Is it clean? Messy? Big? Small? Crowded? Spacious?

Don’t leave these things out of the story because chances are, no matter how good your dialogue is, the reader will get bored. They aren’t watching a theater show (which still have backdrops and props), they’re reading words that are supposed to not only build the characters in their heads but also the setting.

Talking Heads

Another mistake writers make is something editors call ‘talking heads’. That’s when a writer gets a dialogue going and forgets to add in setting. There are no nuanced motions of the people talking, nothing to say how each person is reacting to the conversation, no description of the room or area the characters are in, and many times the writer forgets to say anything about anyone there who isn’t talking. Many times, dialogue is at the forefront of the story, but what is happening around the conversation, as well as how a character is reacting in their body language or with their eyes, gives life to the story that dialogue can’t.

We don’t want to leave the dialogue completely and have the reader forget the conversation is going on, but the reader needs some clues to help fill in the scenery. To see what the camera lens of the writer sees.

Let’s look at an example:

“Hi.”

“Hi.” Ryan smiled, his perfect teeth showing.

“What the hell, Nick?”

“What?”

“Whatever. Just…whatever. Let’s get lunch.”

That is talking heads.

Okay, not the greatest writing in the world and a little exaggerated, but I have read manuscripts with pages almost as sparse as this.

What’s the problem with it?

We can’t see the people who are talking. We don’t know where they are, if they’re moving, if there are other people around them, etc. This dialogue tells the reader nothing. If a reader is reading a book for enjoyment and they find this happening, chances are they’ll forget where the characters were in the first place. They might let it go, but if this happens too often, a reader could feel like they don’t know what’s going on and end up leaving the book for another.

Let’s look at how we could change the dialogue above:

Kate saw Ryan standing near the hot dog stand. Even after five years of marriage, he still grabbed her attention.

“Hi,” she murmured, sliding up to him.

“Hi.” Ryan smiled, his perfect teeth showing. When she looked into his eyes, Kate noticed he was looking past her. Kate followed his gaze to a woman in hot pants and stilettos hurrying down the street, her giant breasts bouncing up and down.

“What the hell?” Kate pushed herself away from Ryan. She didn’t want to make a scene on the street, but she could feel her body heating, her breath becoming more shallow.

Ryan’s attention jerked back to Kate, his eyes jerking forwards and backwards as though he couldn’t control where his attention went.

“What?” He was always so good at playing innocent.

“Whatever,” Kate said, marching up to the hot dog stand. She needed a distraction. “Just …whatever. Let’s get lunch.”

Spend too much time world building without dialogue

Last week we talked about Talking Heads: written dialogue that lacks clues about where the speakers are, what is happening and what might be changing in the setting as they speak. 

This week we’re going to talk about something I see more often with writers who tend to come from the academic world. Or, let’s be real, it happens when we’re trying to be more literary. The type of writing we do so that those who read The New Yorker will like us. Ahem, will like our story. 

When we write with an eye towards being called ‘literary’, we leave off things like dialogue. And why not? We all read the classics in school. We know that ‘superior’ writing has pages and pages of loooooooooooooong paragraphs with very little dialogue. Dialogue is so …modern. 

Oh, dear. And do we remember how we tried to skip some paragraphs just to get the book finished in time for the test? Not that I don’t like a good classic, because I actually do like them. But that stye doesn’t sell well these days. And to be fair, those writers KNEW HOW to tell stories, despite the long paragraphs. 

And storytelling is what we’re learning to do a little bit better every day. Right?

So what’s the problem with no dialogue? The problem is that when we write pages and pages without dialogue; we are telling the reader ALL THE THINGS we think they should know. Instead of immersing the reader directly into the story and letting them figure it out for themselves. 

If we have to write an essay all in the name of understanding the world the characters inhabit, then we aren’t storytelling correctly. At least, not in the way of drawing the reader into the story so that they never want to leave. Which is what makes for a viral, best-selling book. And who doesn’t want one of those?

We are social beings and we want to see that the characters we’re reading about are social beings as well. Readers rarely want a dissertation on the guy walking through the mountain and the history of the monastery he’s headed to. The reader wants to hear the conversation the protagonist has with the surrounding people, with the monks or the other tourists, etc. 

The best way to immerse the reader in the book’s world is to have the main character interact with people around them. In other words, Dialogue.

Whether it’s complex or simple, dialogue shows us how the people speak, how they treat one another, and what the main character thinks of their world. It also gives a believable reason for the protagonist to react in their head if you like writing inner dialogue. Writing dialogue gives the writer the opportunity to have the body of the protagonist move and react, which makes them real. And you know that ‘Show, don’t tell’ thing? Dialogue can show anger or happiness or confusion, etc., without having to S-P-E-L-L it out for the reader. And since readers hate having thing spelled out for them, this is a good thing.

I mean, imagine if C3PO or Yoda never spoke, but we just got descriptions of them and their past. It wouldn’t be the same! We wouldn’t have the memes!

I think we’re very influenced by television and film these days, which changes our way of storytelling. That isn’t bad, but we have to remember that film and books cannot tell a story in the same way. In movies, the director can zoom out and flash back without dialogue to show something (take the mine blowing up in Hunger Games to show how her dad died) and be back to the present in a matter of seconds. 

On the written page, though, writing out a mine explosion takes much longer. Making sure the reader understands what’s going on while still being engaged with the present is much more difficult to do with writing. We can’t treat our books like movies. The reading brain doesn’t function in the same way that the viewing brain does.

This is part of the delicacy of storytelling. We don’t want Talking Heads, we don’t want a White Room and we also don’t want clumps of essays. Which is why book coaches use the verb ‘weave’ a lot when it comes to writing a story. Because the setting, the dialogue, the protagonist and co-characters and background and perhaps even history all have to work together throughout the story to keep the reader engaged.

Not using another sense other than sight

With the influence of television and movies, writing these days has become very sight-driven. Writers tend to want their books to be seen almost like a movie going on in the readers head. With this objective in mind, writers have become very good about adding in details according to sight, and forget to add details using other sense such as sound, smells, touch and taste. (Most writers actually do also include FEELINGS or INTUITION especially if they’re writing in the first person. If you aren’t, that is something to add to the list of senses.)

Your protagonist can taste and smell and hear and feel, unless they have a disability, so add those descriptions to the story! And if they DO have a disability, make sure your writing reflects how the protagonist experiences the world, even if subtly. For instance, if the protagonist can’t smell, but sure the description from their POV never includes any sort of smell but is heavier on the touch and sound of things. RedWall, by Brain Jacques, (Amazon or IndieBound) is a wonderful example of using all the senses in the setting. Probably because he was specifically writing the story for the children at the Royal School for the Blind. Definitely worth checking out to see how to add touch, smell, sound and taste to a setting.

Remember, not everything has to be in a story with the first draft. Checking settings can come after the story is fleshed out. But be sure to check your scenes for these mistakes before sending the manuscript off to the editor. It will save you money in the end!