《Writer Room》Taking Your Reader On a Journey

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The NINC conference is held right near where I live, on the beach in Florida. It's in a pretty, bland resort, and I love seeing out-of-towners' reactions to everything from the sunset over the Gulf of Mexico to the humidity.

See what I did there? I told you exactly where the conference was, through my unique filter. Read on to see why that's important.

I sat in on a session about scene setting in fiction. The presenter was New York Times bestselling author Julia Spencer-Fleming, and she was fabulous. Here's what I learned today, and I hope you'll get something out of it. I definitely did!

Her point: you, as the writer, are taking the reader on a journey. Readers want to live in the skin of your characters. They want to touch, taste, smell, and FEEL what your characters are experiencing.

But that's difficult, Tamara! How do you do this as a writer?

By using precise, descriptive language about the setting, through the eyes of your characters.

Fleming gave an example. There are two characters, walking through the woods. One knows a particular forest well and is a seasoned hiker. Another has never been hiking, or in a forest, at all.

Both people would view their environment — their setting — quite differently, right? They would describe it in vastly different ways, from the names they use for the trees (one might use precise scientific names for the trees, while the other might just say "tall, green trees.") to the way they view shadows and light.

"Make the place so real that readers want to live there," Fleming said. "Environment shapes us. Who we are shapes our prospects and futures. Who characters are comes out of where they came from."

Scene setting should do one of two things, she said. Either move the plot forward or illuminate something about the character.

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Here are some dos and don'ts of scene setting, according to Fleming:

* Don't write a travelogue or give driving directions. Scene setting does not mean pages and pages of what each character sees along their journey, and street directions of every step they take. It's okay just to write that a character went from one place to the next in a sentence or two. Pick and choose from important details that only your character would observe, and save the important movement scenes for details that will reveal information about your character.

* Go beyond cliches. When you're writing a first draft, you probably will rely on some cliches when crafting your setting. We all reach for those during first drafts, but go back and work on your descriptions in later versions. Your book will be better for it.

* Know the place you're writing about. If you haven't been to the place, try to think of a similar location you have been, and use the details from your memory to create a scene. Or, use Google Street view and a lot of research. Read non-fiction books about your place, even if it's just for your own context.

* When crafting about details that affect your characters, think about how they fit into the overall theme of your story. Fleming gave an example from one of her mysteries, about a town that was flooded — and she described every character using water-themed language. She used emotion descriptions such as "plunged into icy water" and "noticing the wetness" in the air. "Flooded," and metaphorically drowning in life was a theme of her book.

* Use all of your senses to describe a place. Smell and sound are especially evocative and transport the reader to a new world.

*Get outside, away from your computer and phone. Observe the world. Stop distracting yourself. Rely on your memory and your feelings so you can draw on them later while writing.

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